PHOENIX – Building authentic connections with working-class voters can help Democrats find their way back to power in Washington, incoming Democratic Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego of Arizona said Friday.
Taking stock of election results that showed him doing significantly better than other Arizona Democrats, Gallego said he put a lot of work into telling his compelling life story and connecting with voters. As a result, Gallego said, even as voters grew skeptical of the Democrats, they believed him when he said he would look out for regular people.
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“People got to know who I was and what my values were, and so that they got to know me as Ruben the Marine veteran, Ruben the dad, Ruben the working-class kid who has lived the American dream and wants you to live the American dream,” Gallego told The Associated Press. “And I think when things started going bad we were able to resist the tide because people knew me and they had a perspective of me, they knew I was fighting for them.”
Gallego defeated Republican Kari Lake by 2.4 percentage points, even as fellow Democrat Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump by 5.5 points in Arizona. That’s a nearly 8-point swing for the Democrats from the top of the ticket to the Senate race.
Gallego overcame a hardscrabble childhood to become Arizona's first Latino senator. He was largely raised by a single mother after his father left the family and was imprisoned for dealing drugs, leaving Gallego to work multiple jobs to help with bills while in high school. He was accepted to Harvard University, joined the Marines and fought in Iraq with a unit that sustained heavy casualties.
That story featured prominently in Gallego's campaign speeches and advertising.
Democrats don't need to have such a harrowing life story to succeed in tough races, he said, but they do need to relate to the voters they're asking to trust them.
“What’s most important is for you as a candidate to be able to connect with everyday voters and make sure they understand in you and see in you that you are gonna fight for them,” Gallego said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be the same story as me, but somehow you need to be able to connect and to be able to do it an authentic way.”
Voters need to believe that Democrats are for the working class over elites and small businesses over large corporations, he added.
“We need to be able to go back to our economic roots where we are literally known and understood as being for working families,” Gallego said.
AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 4,000 voters in Arizona, shows Gallego won Hispanic men against Lake, even though Harris and Trump split them in Arizona.
Young men of all races and ethnicities broke for Trump in the presidential race but were evenly divided between Lake and Gallego in the Senate contest, according to AP VoteCast.
Overall, about 1 in 10 Trump voters split their ticket to vote for Gallego, while very few Harris voters also chose Lake. Among members of the two major parties, only about 8 in 10 Arizona Republicans voted for the combination of Trump and Lake, whereas about 9 in 10 Arizona Democrats voted for Harris and Gallego.
Gallego is wrapping up his term in the House and will take his Senate seat in January, replacing Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat and later became an independent.
Despite being fiercely critical of Sinema's steadfast opposition to ending the Senate's filibuster rule, Gallego said Friday he would not vote to eliminate it if Republicans try to do so.
“It’s not my job to make their job easier,” Gallego said.