Jacky Rosen Wins Democratic Congressional Primary in Nevada Swing District
Image by Jacky Rosen for Congress
WASHINGTON — The president of a Las Vegas-area synagogue handpicked by the Democratic Party leadership to run in a competitive congressional district won the primary.
Jacky Rosen, a software developer who helms Ner Tamid, a Reform synagogue in Henderson, Nevada, and the largest in the region, handily defeated her rivals in Tuesday’s primary in the 3rd Congressional District. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that she won over 60 percent of the vote in a six-way fight.
Rosen had little name recognition or political experience, but Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate’s minority leader and the boss of Democratic politics in the state, picked her to run and lent her the backing of his fundraising machine.
Reid, who is retiring this year, wants to leave a strong party representation in the state as one of his legacies, and the 3rd District, with an influx in recent years of Democratic-leaning Latinos, is seen as a likely Democratic pick-up now that its incumbent, Republican Joe Heck, is running for Reid’s open U.S. Senate seat.
One of Rosen’s rivals in the primary, a Jordan-born Muslim-American lawyer, Jesse Sbaih, stirred controversy when he said Reid refused to back him because the senator did not believe an Arab Muslim could be elected. Reid strongly denied the charge. Sbaih claimed to have better name recognition than Rosen, and had declared an interest in the seat long before anyone else.
Rosen now faces Danny Tarkanian, a businessmen who won the Republican primary, in the general election. Tarkanian is the son of the late Jerry Tarkanian, the popular and highly successful men’s basketball coach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
