November 7, 2018

Democrat Jacky Rosen Just Won Dean Heller’s Nevada Senate Seat

It was the only seat in the chamber Democrats flipped Tuesday.

Jacky Rosen speaks in Las Vegas in October.Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA

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Republican Sen. Dean Heller conceded to Democratic challenger Jacky Rosen in Nevada’s US Senate race. It was the only seat in the chamber Democrats picked up Tuesday after a string of other losses.

Rosen—a freshman congresswoman who represents southwestern Nevada, including part of Las Vegas—hammered Heller’s votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a strategy Democrats across the country utilized to unseat GOP incumbents. She also got a boost from national gun control groups, which backed her campaign in protest of Heller’s unwillingness to back gun reform measures after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that left 58 people dead.

As Mother Jones‘ Tim Murphy reported, Rosen enjoyed strong support from the Culinary Workers’ Union, which represents nearly 60,000 casino and hotel workers in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The union led a massive grassroots effort to boost Democratic candidates like Rosen and Susie Lee, who won the House seat Rosen is vacating.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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