Democrat Jacky Rosen defeats GOP incumbent Dean Heller in Nevada Senate race

close

Video

Democrat Jacky Rosen addresses supporters in Nevada

The Democratic candidate for Nevada Senator speaks to voters after a hard-fought race against GOP incumbent Dean Heller.

Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen of Nevada has been elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican incumbent Dean Heller.

Heller conceded the race to Rosen, a first-term congresswoman, earlier Tuesday night after the hard-fought Senate battle.

With 84 percent of precincts reporting, Rosen had 426,360 votes, or 50.8 percent of the total cast, while Heller had 377,386, or 45 percent.

"Women are winning up and down the ballot. This is a historic night for us," Rosen said in a victory speech early Wednesday, the Hill reported.

"The politics of fear and division -- they have lost," she added, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

Heller had been in office since he was appointed to fill a vacancy in 2011. He was seeking a second full term.

“I congratulated her on what she did,” Heller told supporters in a concession speech, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. “What her party was able to achieve — not just in my race, but all the way down that ballot. We’ve hit blue waves for a couple of cycles and as a party we are going to have to come back together and decide how we’re going to go forward in the future.”

"We’ve hit blue waves for a couple of cycles and as a party we are going to have to come back together and decide how we’re going to go forward in the future.”

— U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who was defeated Tuesday

He said if there’s anything he could do to help Rosen, he and his staff would do it.

Rosen may have benefitted from a wave of Democratic and female activism fueled by opposition to President Trump.

She painted Heller as a rubber stamp for the president and counted on a backlash to Trump to help her oust the incumbent.

Heller was also the only Republican running for re-election in a state Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.

Rosen's win puts Nevada among a half-dozen other states represented by U.S. senators who are both female. Nevada's other U.S. senator is Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.