Nevada Senate opponents paint each other as extremists in debate lacking fireworks

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada Democratic U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen and Republican challenger Sam Brown painted each other as extremists, but fireworks were few during their only face-to-face debate in a presidential battleground state where the Nov. 5 election could determine control of both the White House and the Senate.

The election pits Rosen, a first-term senator seen as a political consensus-builder, against Brown, a retired Army captain who bears scars from battlefield injuries and is endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Brown repeatedly aligned himself with Trump on domestic and foreign policy while calling Rosen a political insider and “elitist,” singling out her stands on immigration reform.

“This is again what you would expect out of an elitist from D.C. whose own neighborhood has more security than our border with a gate and security guards,” Brown said during the live televised debate.

Rosen said she is proud of her record in Washington and defended her support for President Joe Biden’s policies intended to ease inflation and make housing more affordable, as well as her efforts to work across the aisle with Republicans.

“My opponent is so stubborn and so extreme he often uses the words ‘not negotiable’ and ‘no middle ground,’” Rosen said. “I am proud to be one of the most bipartisan, effective and independent senators.”

The hourlong appearance hosted by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas was aired live in both English and Spanish. Abortion, inflation and immigration are among the leading issues and voters have been inundated with ads for both candidates.

In answer to questions about the Middle East, both said Thursday night they opposed the president’s threat to suspend aid to Israel if Israel does not allow more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza within the next month.

“We do not need to be drawing red lines on what Israel can or cannot do or how we will support Israel,” Brown said.

Rosen said that while she does not support “the ultimatum,” the U.S. must support Israel “in its fight against terror.” She said she does support “our responsibility to help those civilians who are suffering in Gaza, or to help limit civilian causalities. We can and must do both.”

Brown, who said he was “someone who has seen the horrors of war,” defended Trump’s foreign policy in general.

“I can be an ally of his in the Senate,” he said.

Brown, during a campaign rally last Friday in Reno, promised to secure the U.S. border; make housing more affordable; lower prices on food, fuel and medication; end taxes on tips; and eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits.

Rosen argues that her challenger is out of touch with Nevada residents, where nonpartisan and other voters make up nearly 40% of the statewide electorate of 2.4 million. Voting leans Republican in rural areas and Democratic in the two most populous and urban areas: Las Vegas and Reno.

Records show Rosen has a 3-1 edge in fundraising and spending and a lead in polls of voters. Several Republican elected officials have said they intend to break ranks with the GOP and vote for Rosen, including the mayors of Sparks, near Reno, and Ely in rural eastern Nevada.

Rosen has a hometown advantage in and around Las Vegas, where she has lived for more than 40 years. She was a computer programmer and president of a prominent synagogue in suburban Henderson before she was elected as a congresswoman in 2016 and defeated a GOP incumbent to move to the Senate in 2018.

Brown was badly wounded in 2008 while serving in Afghanistan and spent years recuperating before leaving the Army in 2011. He started a business helping veterans get medical care and ran unsuccessfully for a Texas statehouse seat in 2014 before moving to Nevada in 2018. He lost a GOP primary bid in 2022 to challenge Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

The two candidates clashed on abortion, a key issue in Nevada where voters face a ballot initiative aimed at enshrining in the state constitution a 1990 law that makes the procedure legal up to 24 weeks. Democrats across the nation have made abortion rights a central message since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, with new Trump appointees, overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision establishing a nationwide right to abortion.

Rosen accused Brown, who ran previously for elected office in Texas and Nevada, of having “a decade-long record of saying that he’s against any exceptions on abortion, even in the case of rape or incest.”

“I would not vote for a national abortion ban,” Brown said on the debate stage, before steering his answer to a description of his wife’s “very traumatic” experience having an abortion before the couple met. Brown and his wife Amy described the experience in an NBC News interview earlier this year.

“I also stand by Nevada’s law, that allows abortion up to 24 weeks,” Brown added.

Rosen accused Brown of changing his position to attract votes and said she expected that he would support a nationwide ban.

“I support restoring Roe v. Wade,” Rosen said, adding that she also supports the initiative aimed at making the right to an abortion up to week 24 of a pregnancy part of the state constitution.

“Women are dying,” Rosen declared. “Women are being turned away from emergency rooms or dying in hospitals. This is fundamentally about freedom.”

Brown has sought to blame Rosen for economic policies of the Biden administration, which Republicans say led to high inflation as the country recovered from the coronavirus pandemic.

Rosen released a new ad this week touting work to lower costs on prescription drugs, stop price gouging by grocery store chains and address housing costs.

Brown has tied himself closely to Trump, who contested his narrow presidential election loss to Biden in Nevada in 2020. The state’s top election official, a Republican, was later censured by the state GOP for certifying that the ballot count was not marred by widespread fraud.

Early voting in Nevada begins Saturday.

___ This story has been corrected to add dropped words in Rosen’s quote in the sixth paragraph.

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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner contributed from Reno, Nevada.