Democrats are scrambling to keep the Senate. Could an old-school bipartisan help save it?

“Everybody’s got their comfy shoes?” Jacky Rosen scanned the room full of union workers who were preparing canvas for her in Reno, Nevada. The room erupted in response.

“Those gym shoes are going to be worn out,” the Democratic senator told the crowd. “But that’s OK. Those holes in the bottom mean you’re doing the good work … helping return the Democratic majority in the United States.”

Rosen has been wearing out her own shoes – crisscrossing the state and running one of the most aggressive and persistent re-election campaigns in the country as she fights to preserve her own career, and a precarious party advantage in the US Senate. Her campaign message has matched her practical footwear.

Her platform has focused on a few big, national issues – including the cost of living and abortion – but also many small ones specific to her geographically vast, politically enigmatic state. She touts her record preserving a local postal hub in northern Nevada, bringing in money for a solar facility.

“We’re trying to take care of what we have here, and we want our kids to have a good place to grow up,” she told members of Culinary Workers Union Local 226 – a powerful organisation representing tens of thousands of hospitality workers in the state. “That’s what everyone wants.”

With early voting in Nevada already underway, Rosen holds an eight-point lead in polling averages. But she’s not letting up or taking any chances. Armies of volunteers from unions and a coalition of moderate and progressive political groups are knocking on doors on her behalf. And a barrage of advertisements, on the radio and television, in English and Spanish – are tearing down her opponent Sam Brown, a Donald Trump-backed Republican that Rosen has characterised as extreme.

The race will be a test of whether candidates like her – a pragmatic, old-school bipartisan focused on local issues – can prevail in a politically polarised country. The outcome in Nevada will help determine which party controls the closely divided Senate, with the power to either impede of enable the agenda of Trump or Kamala Harris.

In April, the non-partisan Cook Political Report had ranked the race a “toss-up” – in a swing state that appeared increasingly inscrutable to pollsters. In 2022, the Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto won her seat by fewer than 8,000 votes.

And Rosen’s challenger, Sam Brown, a military veteran and Purple Heart recipient, had the makings of a model candidate – one who could help Republicans pick up a Senate seat and flip the chamber for the party. But by August, the polling agency had moved the race to “leaning Democrat” – citing growing enthusiasm for Democrats following Harris’s entry into the race, as well as Brown’s failure to drum up much enthusiasm.

“Sam Brown just didn’t turn out to be the candidate that I think Republicans hoped he would be – in terms of energy, in terms of fundraising, in terms of just doing what’s needed,” said David Byler, chief of research at the polling firm Noble Predictive Insights. “And then you have a Democratic incumbent who doesn’t have any obvious flaws.”

Paradoxically, Rosen’s unobtrusive temperament and heads-down approach to her first term could become her greatest asset. In Las Vegas and Reno, dozens of voters told the Guardian they weren’t particularly familiar with Rosen’s record – but she seemed to be doing just fine.

“She does what she says she’s gonna do,” said Vivian Jackson, 69, of Las Vegas. “They try to attack her, but she’s not like that. She’s a real person.”

“She’s occasionally said some stuff that’s given me pause,” said her neighbour Kenneth Logan, 65, a retired bartender and veteran who lives in west Las Vegas. On several issues, his politics are to the left of Rosen’s. “But I’m probably going to vote for her. She’s doing fine, and I can’t think of a candidate I’d vote for instead of her.”

Rosen is a former computer programmer and synagogue president who was hand-picked to run for Congress, and then the Senate – seemingly out of nowhere – by Harry Reid, the former Democratic senate leader from Nevada who helped reshape the state’s politics over his long political career. In 2018 – after serving just two years in Congress – she unseated Republican senator Dean Heller with a five-point margin, largely relying on support from the state’s powerful labour unions and by emphasising her support for the Affordable Care Act and immigration reform. Heller had embraced Trump and voted to repeal the popular health care law.

Six years later, Nevada – like the US at large – is much more politically polarised. Canvassers for the Libre Initiative, a conservative group affiliated with mega-donor Charles Koch’s political network, have been messaging to mostly Latino voters that Rosen is closely tied with the Biden administration. “She voted 94% of the time with Joe Biden,” said Eddie Diaz, a strategic director at Libre in Nevada. “And people are not better off than they were before.”

But unlike many of her colleagues, Rosen has shied away from a national profile, forgoing the Democratic national convention in August in favour of staying in Nevada to campaign there.

“I think she’s done a decent job so far, and that’s largely because she’s moderate, and bipartisan,” said Kim, 66, a mental health and wellness educator who said she didn’t want to share her full name because many of her family and clients are staunch Republicans.

Her partner, Luis, 55, used to belong to the same synagogue as Rosen. “It’s a small world,” he said.

Gladis Blanco, a political organiser with the Culinary Workers Union in Reno, said she credits Rosen for working with the administration to lower the cost of asthma medication. A single mother of five, Blanco said both she and several of her children have asthma – and new price caps on inhalers have transformed her family’s monthly budget. “When I tell voters about that they get so excited,” she said.

Meanwhile Miguel Martinez, a Reno city council member who has been canvassing on behalf of Rosen and Harris, said he was especially impressed that Rosen successfully fought against the US postal service plan to move all mail processing from its Reno facility to California, which locals, especially in remote regions of rural northern Nevada, worried would result in delayed medication deliveries and mail ballot processing. “That was a really big win in our community,” he said.

And much like her mentor Reid, who was famous for funnelling funds to the state, Rosen has managed to win allies by delivering federal aid to the state’s cities and rural communities.

In recent weeks, several rural Republican officials have backed Rosen over Brown – noting, simply, that they’re happy with the incumbent’s record. “Jacky Rosen helped bring Democrats and Republicans together to pass the largest infrastructure investment in a generation,” said Nathan Robertson, the Republican mayor of the small eastern Nevada town of Ely. “That law is now leading to better and safer roads for our residents, including $24m in federal transportation funding to improve Ely’s streets and sidewalks and revitalise our downtown.”

Ed Lawson – the Republican mayor of Sparks, a small city just outside Reno – similarly cited all the funding she has brought to his region. Just a day prior to his endorsement, Rosen and Cortez Masto announced that they had secured $275m in federal funding to enhance a major highway corridor east of Sparks.

“I’m a lifelong Republican who has never voted for a Democrat, but this November I’ll be voting for Jacky Rosen,” he said.

It has helped Rosen’s cause that Brown has floundered though the election cycle.

With early voting underway, the Senate Leadership Fund – the Republican party’s main outside group supporting Senate races – announced it would spend an addition $6.2m on TV, radio and digital ads for Brown. But it’s unclear if the funds will come too late.

Brown has often leaned on his personal story in appeals to voters. In 2008, when he was a US army officer in Afghanistan, his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. The explosion caused third-degree burns and Brown had to endure dozens of reconstructive surgeries. The experience was transformative, Brown has said. “God saved me for a purpose,” he wrote in a recent campaign email.

But while he has made clear why he’s running for office, he has struggled to define how for voters he would govern.

Trump endorsed Brown just days before the primary elections and since then Brown has clung tightly to the former president and his platform. Brown said he wouldn’t have supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or the Inflation Reduction Act – Biden administration programs that have brought unprecedented federal dollars into the state and help fund a range of projects. His past support for storing nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain – a third rail of politics in the state – has also left the impression that he is out of touch with Nevada.

Such missteps have opened the opportunity for an easy critique – that Brown is a newcomer, one who moved from Reno to Dallas in 2018, and simply doesn’t know enough about the state.

His muddled stance on abortion has also played badly. In attack ads, Rosen has called Brown a “Maga extremist” who would take away abortion rights. And though Brown has responded by saying he supports Nevada’s current law, which allows abortions up to 24 weeks – he has repeatedly dodged questions on whether he’ll support the state’s abortion ballot initiative, which aims to enshrine Nevada’s abortion rights in the state constitution.

Nearly 70% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats said they opposed criminalising abortion, according to a recent poll by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland.

Diane Gutierrez, a 65-year-old real estate agent based in Reno, said she is personally opposed to abortion, due to her faith, but believes it should remain protected. “I don’t believe that that should be taken away from any woman,” she said. “It’s just not OK to go backwards.”

A registered non-partisan, Gutierrez said she’s voted for both Republican and Democratic candidates in the past. But in recent years, she has gotten more involved in volunteering with the Democratic party – and has largely steered clear of Republicans. “The party has had time, but they haven’t selected good candidates,” she said, adding they’ve failed to make a good case to voters. Initially, she thought Brown bucked the trend.

“Being from a military family – my dad was a marine – I appreciate Sam Brown and thank him for his service because obviously he paid a huge price,” she said. “When you’re in the military, you have respect.”

But his failure to define a platform of his own has been disappointing, she said. “I would like him to speak up more,” she said. “Where’s Sam Brown? Is he in Nevada? It’s like, ‘Sam – say something.’”