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Rosen brings Senate campaign to Douglas County

Dave Price
Special to the Sun

U.S. Senate candidate Jacky Rosen spoke of life and family experiences before political experience during an appearance on Sunday, Jan. 21, at the newly opened Douglas County Democrats headquarters in Minden.

Rosen, 60, of Henderson, explained why she wants to exchange her role as representative of Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District to occupy a Senate seat currently held by Sen. Dean Heller.

“We all deserve a senator who’s going to worry about families, take real life experience and put that to work advocating for real people every time,” she said.



A relative newcomer to politics, the Democrat won a congressional race in 2016 by about 4,000 votes over Republican Danny Tarkanian.

“I have a full life of experience that matters, maybe even more than sitting in a room pushing paper in Washington for however many years,” Rosen said. “I want to try to do good and remember there are people behind every action we take, whether it’s a family, business, person, mom or daughter.”

Her experiences include growing up in Chicago as the granddaughter of immigrants. She was introduced to Nevada nearly 40 years ago when her parents — her father a salesman and mother a homemaker — moved to Las Vegas while she was attending the University of Minnesota.



Rosen shared memories of the challenges of working to help pay her way through college.

“I worked as a banquet waitress and computer programmer in the beginning, so I know what it’s like to scrimp and save,” she said.

Now, her own daughter is a college student and her husband, Larry, works as a radiologist in Southern Nevada. She also spoke about working through adversity when her parents and in-laws faced health issues.

“All four of them got old and sick at the same time and I was lucky enough to have the resources to quit my job and be a full-time caretaker,” she said. “Anybody who has cared for their aging parents or grandparents, you know it’s a roller coaster. I need no notes to talk about what families go through and the choices they have to make.”

The freshman congresswoman has seen politics first hand in the past year since taking over a seat vacated by Joe Heck, who lost a 2016 Senate bid against Catherine Cortez Masto. Rosen serves on the House Armed Services and Space, Science and Technology committees.

She is also part of the Problem Solvers Caucus — co-chaired by Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Tom Reed (R-NY) — which works with the No Labels advocacy group to encourage bipartisanship.

“You might remember people say that Tip O’Neill or Ronald Reagan used to argue all day, but that they were friends at night. That’s how they got things done, because they had relationships,” Rosen said of the caucus, which consists of about 50 members. “This Congress, many of us decided we wanted to do something different, so we formed an official caucus with an equal amount of Democrats and Republicans. Our whole goal is to come to the table for discussions and figure out what we can talk about and to ask our leadership.”

This week, the caucus released a report outlining policy recommendations to build a 21st century infrastructure network for America.

“I’m on the infrastructure sub-taskforce and we’ve put together a framework of things we think need to be discussed,” Rosen said. “All these things effect our infrastructure … roads, dams, bridges, airports, broadband are very important.”

Infrastructure issues are important to rural and urban America alike, she added. Broadband is one issue she views as important to rural Nevadans.

“Having that broadband is really important in having those providers come out,” she said. “It needs to support your schools, telemedicine for you to get healthcare.”

Rosen fielded questions from the audience at the conclusion of her visit. Among those, she was asked about her views on DACA.

“I think you can go to any family in America and find an immigrant story, of how they got there, where they came from, why they came and what their desire was,” she said. “So these kids, their parents brought them here, this is their home. They’re going to school. They’re going to college. They’re in our military. We need to let these young people become full members of the country they call home. I think you’re going to see lots of negotiations continue to go on and I’m hoping that cooler heads will prevail and we will pass a clean Dream Act.”


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