Jacklyn Sheryl Rosen (née Spektor; born August 2, 1957) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Nevada since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the U.S. representative for Nevada’s 3rd congressional district from 2017 to 2019.

Rosen was elected to the Senate in 2018, defeating Republican incumbent Dean Heller.^[1] She was the only House freshman to win a Senate seat in the 2018 midterm elections and the only challenger to defeat a Republican incumbent senator in 2018.

Rosen was born on August 2, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois, to Carol, a homemaker,^[2][3][4] and Leonard Spektor, a car dealership owner who had served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.^[3] Rosen’s mother was of Irish, German, and Austrian descent, and her father’s family were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Austria.^[5]

Rosen attended the University of Minnesota and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1979.^[6] While she was in college, her parents moved to Las Vegas, where Rosen moved after graduating. She took a job with Summa Corporation and worked summers as a waitress at Caesars Palace throughout the 1980s. While working for Summa, she attended Clark County Community College (College of Southern Nevada) and received an associate degree in computing and information technology in 1985.^[6] She began working for Southwest Gas from 1990 to 1993.^[7]

Rosen has touted her efforts to “build a business”, but a Reno Gazette-Journal review of public records found no evidence that she held a state or local business license. According to Rosen, she ran a company between 1993 and 2002 of which she was the only employee. Her business served two main clients, Southwest Gas, which was Rosen’s former employer, and Radiology Specialists, a Las Vegas-based physician group that employed Rosen’s husband.^[8]

A former computer programmer with no political experience at the time, Rosen was asked by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, also from Nevada, to run in the 2016 election for the U.S. House seat being vacated by Republican Joe Heck.^[9] On January 26, she declared her candidacy for Nevada’s 3rd congressional district.^[10] Rosen won 60% of the vote in the Democratic primary election^[11] and narrowly^[9] defeated Republican nominee Danny Tarkanian in the general election.^[12] She was sworn into office on January 3, 2017.

• Committee on Armed Services
  • Subcommittee on Military Personnel
  • Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces
• Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
  • Subcommittee on Energy
  • Subcommittee on Research and Technology

• Congressional Arts Caucus^[13]
• Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus^[14]
• Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues^[15]
• Problem Solvers Caucus^[16]
• Congressional Coalition on Adoption^[17]

Rosen was elected to the U.S. Senate on November 6, 2018, defeating one-term Republican senator Dean Heller to become the junior senator from Nevada. Her candidacy, announced on July 5, 2017, was endorsed by former President Barack Obama^[18] and former Vice President Joe Biden.^[9] During the campaign, Rosen emphasized her support for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and criticized Heller’s vote to repeal it in 2017.^[19][20] At the time, Rosen voted in the U.S. House against Republicans’ attempts to repeal Obamacare.^[20]

Rosen defeated Heller, 50.4%–45.4%. Heller carried 15 of Nevada’s 17 county-level jurisdictions, but Rosen carried the state’s two largest, Clark (home to Las Vegas) and Washoe (home to Reno). She won Clark County by over 92,000 votes, almost double her statewide margin of more than 48,900 votes.^[21]

Rosen was one of only two non-incumbent Democrats, alongside Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to win election to the Senate in 2018. She is also the 37th freshman member of the U.S. House to win a Senate seat and the first woman to do so.^[22]

Rosen is seeking a second term in 2024. She faces Republican nominee Sam Brown, a retired U.S. Army captain.^[23]

Rosen was on Capitol Hill for the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. At the time, she was in the Russell Senate Office Building before being evacuated to a secure, undisclosed location. She tweeted during the attack, calling the event “reprehensible” and writing, “It’s time for us as a nation to come together and denounce hate and violence.”^[24]

• Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
  • Subcommittee on Aviation and Space
  • Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet
  • Subcommittee on Manufacturing, Trade and Consumer Protection
  • Subcommittee on Security
• Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
  • Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety
  • Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security
• Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
  • Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
  • Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management
• Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Special Committee on Aging

Rosen has been described as a liberal Democrat at times and as a moderate at others.^[25][26][27] As of April 2020, FiveThirtyEight found that Rosen’s votes aligned with President Trump’s legislative positions about 36% of the time.^[28] The American Conservative Union gave her a 5% lifetime conservative rating in 2020.^[29]

Rosen supports abortion rights and has been endorsed by NARAL Pro-Choice America.^[30]

In April 2019, Rosen was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Trump encouraging him “to listen to members of your own Administration and reverse a decision that will damage our national security and aggravate conditions inside Central America.” The letter asserted that Trump had “consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance” since becoming president and that he was “personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity” through preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding. The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries created less migration to the U.S. by helping to improve conditions in those countries.^[31]

Rosen supports an assault weapons ban.^[26]

Rosen supports the Affordable Care Act and its provisions that prevent patients from being denied insurance or charged more due to age or a preexisting condition. She supports allowing citizens to buy into Medicaid as an alternative option that would compete with private insurance companies.^[32][33]

In January 2019, during the 2018-2019 government shutdown, Rosen was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb recognizing the FDA’s efforts to address the effect of the shutdown on the public health and employees while remaining alarmed “that the continued shutdown will result in increasingly harmful effects on the agency’s employees and the safety and security of the nation’s food and medical products.”^[34]

In February 2019, Rosen was one of 11 senators to sign a letter to insulin manufactures Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi over increased insulin prices, saying the increases kept patients from receiving “access to the life-saving medications they need.”^[35]

In August 2019, Rosen was one of 19 senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar requesting data from the Trump administration in order to help states and Congress understand the potential consequences if the Texas v. United States Affordable Care Act lawsuit prevailed in courts. They wrote that an overhaul of the health care system would form “an enormous hole in the pocketbooks of the people we serve as well as wreck state budgets”.^[36]

In April 2019, Rosen was one of 41 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to the housing subcommittee praising the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 4 Capacity Building program as authorizing “HUD to partner with national nonprofit community development organizations to provide education, training, and financial support to local community development corporations (CDCs) across the country” and expressing disappointment that Trump’s budget “has slated this program for elimination after decades of successful economic and community development.” The senators wrote of their hope that the subcommittee would support continued funding for Section 4 in Fiscal Year 2020.^[37]

Rosen supports “comprehensive immigration reform” but does not believe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency should be abolished.^[26]

In 2018, Rosen was one of three U.S. House Democrats to break with their party and vote to make individual tax cuts permanent.^[38] She supports a $15 hourly minimum wage.^[26]

Rosen resides in Henderson, Nevada, with her husband, Larry, a radiologist.^[39][7] They have a daughter.^[40] Before entering politics, she served as the president of the Congregation Ner Tamid synagogue, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Henderson.^[7][41] She has cited the philosophy of tikkun olam as a key part of her decision to enter politics.^[42]

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• List of Jewish members of the United States Congress
• Women in the United States House of Representatives
• Women in the United States Senate

• Official U.S. Senate website
• Jacky Rosen for Nevada campaign website
• Jacky Rosen at Curlie

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Legislation sponsored at the Library of Congress
• Profile at Vote Smart
• Appearances on C-SPAN