Ruben Gallego’s Win In Arizona Is A Playbook For Democrats In Key Seats

When Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced he was working for Senate in Jan. 2023, taking over each Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat-turned-independent, and a future Republican challenger, Republicans had been virtually rubbing their arms collectively in delight. A 3-way normal election would cut up non-GOP votes between Sinema and Gallego, they hoped.

Even after Sinema introduced her determination to not search re-election in March, some Republicans argued that Gallego’s progressive background could be a legal responsibility in a head-to-head match up with Republican Kari Lake, a former native TV anchor who ran for governor in 2022.

On Election Day, Gallego defeated Lake by 2.4 proportion factors, whilst President-elect Donald Trump took the state by simply almost 6 factors.

Gallego’s victory was one of many Democratic Occasion’s biggest triumphs this election cycle. It is usually a case examine for a way the identical candidate can channel progressive anger at a Democratic turncoat after which transfer far sufficient to middle to win in a purple state — all with out abandoning his causes for working within the first place.

Gallego caught some fortunate breaks. Chief amongst them was the collection of Lake — a polarizing Trump supporter with a mile-long paper path of anti-abortion remarks, in a state that voted decisively to guard abortion rights — as his Republican opponent.

However success alone couldn’t have secured a Senate seat.

Gallego needed to reassure Arizonans he was a viable various to the established order. That meant threading a really explicit needle, working a marketing campaign in opposition to Sinema that will assist, quite than harm, his possibilities in opposition to Lake within the normal election. So he attacked Sinema from the left, however solely in a slender sense: by specializing in her company ties and depicting her as beholden to rich donors, quite than the folks of Arizona. It was the form of populist message that was tailored for a second when inflation was high of thoughts.

“The point wasn’t to go to the left of Sinema,” recalled Rebecca Katz, a senior advisor to Gallego who helped engineer Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s win in 2022. “The point was to stand up for what Arizonans wanted.”

On the similar time, he undercut extra common points of Sinema’s centrism, like a border security-centered strategy to immigration, by co-opting them himself. He leaned into his personal working-class upbringing and background as a fight veteran of the Iraq Battle to ascertain credibility as somebody who would put pragmatic options above occasion and beliefs. And whereas he’s loath to confess it, he additionally took concrete measures to dissociate himself from the “progressive” label.

Gallego campaigned relentlessly for each vote throughout the state — a method that proved particularly fruitful with Latino males.

“Arizona is a center-right state. There’s no doubt about it. There are 300,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, and the only way a Democrat wins in Arizona is by building a really big coalition,” Gallego informed HuffPost. “That means you have to get Republicans and independents. You have to get Democrats that maybe are disaffected. And I had 23 months to do it.”

Sinema was one of many highest-profile Democratic obstacles to items of Biden’s agenda (alongside now-independent Sen. Joe Manchin, who represents the way more Republican state of West Virginia). She theatrically voted in opposition to together with the $15 minimal wage in a COVID-19 aid package deal; opposed getting rid of the filibuster, even for voting rights laws; fought to restrict the federal authorities’s energy to barter prescription drug costs with drugmakers; and prevented the closure of a tax loophole for hedge fund managers.

By Sept. 2022, her favorability numbers had been underwater with Arizona Democrats, signaling that she would have a tough time surviving a main. Sinema responded in December 2022 by changing into an unbiased who nonetheless caucused with Senate Democrats.

Gallego, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus via the top of 2022, determined to assault Sinema as somebody who was out of step with unusual Arizonans, quite than hit her for not being progressive sufficient. Even earlier than he made his Senate run official, he accused her of being excessively near her “Wall Street friends.”

As soon as Gallego kicked off his marketing campaign in January 2023, his rags-to-riches biography served as a compelling distinction with what he depicted as Sinema’s coziness with elite donors. In an announcement video that was greater than three minutes lengthy, Gallego tearfully described his expertise of the American dream: rising up in poverty because the son of a single, immigrant mom; defying the percentages to attend Harvard; serving in a Marine corps firm that suffered among the highest casualties of any within the Iraq Battle; and selecting public service to assist struggling households just like the one by which he was raised.

Gallego closed the video with a jab at Sinema that underscored his central marketing campaign theme, with out even mentioning her by identify. “If you’re more likely to be meeting with the powerful than the powerless, you’re doing this job incorrectly,” he stated.

On the similar time, Gallego, a consultant of solid-blue and majority-Latino components of Phoenix, sought to emulate Sinema’s centrism on border safety and immigration coverage.

In Could 2023, Gallego despatched letters to high Biden administration officers warning that border communities had been “unequipped” for the surge in migrants that will observe the expiration of pandemic-era guidelines proscribing their entry, and he demanded extra assets from the federal authorities. Gallego would later get right into a public combat with Biden’s Federal Emergency Administration Administration when high officers there refused the congressman’s invitation to tour the border with him. He known as on Biden to concern an emergency declaration concerning the southern border. And he endorsed the hawkish bipartisan border safety invoice that Sinema herself had negotiated with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). (Trump’s objection to that laws in the end prevented it from arising for a vote.)

“I think [Sinema] assumed he would be to the left of her there, but Ruben knew we needed real solutions on the border and thought the bill was the right thing to do for Arizona,” Katz stated.

Maybe sensing Gallego’s power, Sinema introduced she would not be working in March. That spared Gallego from a doubtlessly treacherous three-way race.

However Gallego’s early efforts to convey urgency about border safety laid the inspiration for a general-election push with comparable themes, making him one of many Democrats who most successfully undermined the GOP’s place on that concern. In commercials concerning the border, Gallego forged himself as a pragmatist prepared to each criticize Biden’s inaction and what he noticed because the empty Republican demagoguery that led to the collapse of Sinema’s bipartisan compromise invoice.

“Rather than fighting, we need Democrats and Republicans to work together to create real solutions,” he stated in a border safety advert that his marketing campaign ran in each Spanish and English. In that spot, he emphasised his immigrant roots and promised to defend Dreamers — whereas additionally discussing the necessity to beef up surveillance know-how.

Gallego informed HuffPost his moderation on the border stemmed from altering circumstances on the bottom. He believed the current inflow of asylum seekers on the border — a wave that peaked in Dec. 2023 with over 300,000 folks processed — included a major variety of financial migrants who used asylum legislation as a loophole to enter.

“The system was clearly, clearly being abused — abused because they knew that they would not have a court date for five to seven years,” Gallego stated. “When you start to hear working-class Latinos that generally are more moderate when it comes to immigration, say, ‘This is a problem. I don’t like the chaos,’ it was very easy for me to bring that reality into politics.”

Gallego and his crew are reluctant to play up how a lot he moved to the middle. Requested about his efforts to memory-hole his progressive affiliations within the Home, Gallego rejected the phrases “progressive” and “moderate” as “D.C. talk.”

“People in Arizona just want to know: Are you going to fight for me, or are you not going to fight for me?” he stated.

However Gallego quietly let his membership within the Congressional Progressive Caucus lapse on the finish of 2022, a proven fact that not-so-coincidentally turned public after Sinema formally withdrew from the race in March. Requested to elucidate his causes for leaving, Gallego’s marketing campaign referred HuffPost to his remarks on the time, when he stated he left as a result of caucus membership dues had gone up.

Gallego had additionally repeatedly been a co-sponsor of a longtime effort to create a single-payer well being care system, known as “Medicare for All,” beginning in 2017. When the newest Medicare for All invoice was launched in 2023, although, he didn’t signal on.

Gallego informed HuffPost he not helps Medicare for All as a result of he has been impressed by the insurance coverage protection positive factors in recent times below the Reasonably priced Care Act.

“I was always for any approach to get more people coverage,” he stated. “And when I saw a better approach, with the recent advances of the ACA, I decided to stick with that push.”

Maybe the most important signal that Gallego was ready to gore progressive sacred cows got here when he secured the endorsement of the Arizona Police Affiliation in August. The APA, an umbrella group for 25 native police unions, endorsed Trump for president however backed Gallego for Senate, citing his help for federal public security funding.

The day after getting the group’s endorsement, Gallego despatched a letter to the Division of Justice objecting to its use of a consent decree to impose stricter oversight on the Phoenix police division. The consent decree settlement was the results of a DOJ report documenting patterns of racial bias and brutality, however the APA decried the report as a “smear campaign.”

The timing of Gallego’s letter raised some eyebrows. However Gallego’s Senate marketing campaign denied on the time that he had dedicated to opposing the consent decree in an effort to safe the group’s endorsement. “There was no agreement,” Hannah Goss, Gallego’s communications director, informed a native TV information outlet. “Ruben Gallego has a record of fighting for Arizona’s law enforcement in Congress and is proud to have the support of the Arizona Police Association.”

Gallego took warmth from progressives and civil rights teams for the transfer, however it additionally helped neutralize Lake’s claims that Gallego was an anti-police radical. Gallego touted the endorsement in an early October TV advert that featured a uniformed police officer praising Gallego for supporting legislation enforcement funding.

“He’s certainly not an anti-police guy, so I think that was very helpful for him,” stated Barry Markson, a registered Republican lawyer who hosts a preferred centrist radio present in Arizona.

Gallego’s deal with his army service likewise created a permission construction for conservative-leaning independents and average Republicans to vote for him.

In a general-election advert blitz that started in March, Gallego launched himself to the broader citizens as a veteran of the hard-hit “Lucky Lima” firm who returned with a dedication to do proper by veterans again residence. Gallego, who has been open about his struggles with post-traumatic stress dysfunction, was an unique co-sponsor of a legislation that gives well being care advantages for veterans affected by the army’s use of poisonous burn pits and launched a invoice that will stop the army from clawing again separation for veterans who qualify for incapacity advantages. He additionally invited two of fellow survivors of Fortunate Lima firm to attend the March state of the union deal with as his company.

Gallego’s progressive previous was a “huge concern” for Yasser Sanchez, a conservative immigration lawyer in Mesa and former GOP Latino organizer who left the Republican Occasion out of disgust with Trump. Sanchez deliberate to vote for Gallego it doesn’t matter what, due to Lake’s help of baseless conspiracies concerning the 2020 election, however earlier than endorsing the Democrat publicly, he wanted assurances that Gallego was much less partisan.

Sanchez recounted how Gallego allayed his doubts in personal by underlining a country-over-party ethos honed within the army. “He talked about his military service — how he didn’t care what political party people were in, as long as they were working for the common cause, which was to get the mission done,” stated Sanchez, who Gallego would come with on a listing of Republican endorsers.

On the similar time, Gallego continued to run on plans to boost the state’s minimal wage to $15 an hour, in addition to crack down on rich tax cheats and company value gouging.

Gallego’s messaging on inflation, specifically, required a deft contact. He managed to indicate empathy for unusual households and run in opposition to the established order, whereas touting his vote for the Inflation Discount Act’s prescription drug cost-lowering provisions — certainly one of Biden’s signature legislative accomplishments.

A TV advert from April exemplified that strategy. Gallego begins by bluntly telling Arizonans struggling to pay payments, “That’s not your fault” — a line he personally insisted on together with, in response to Katz.

“In Congress, I fought to finally lower the cost of prescriptions by holding pharmaceutical companies accountable,” he says within the advert, with out mentioning Biden. “In the Senate, I’ll keep fighting big corporations so hardworking Arizonans can breathe a little easier.”

Gallego additionally didn’t be a part of different Democrats in powerful races — like Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio — in sitting out the Democratic Nationwide Conference in Chicago in August.

As an alternative, Gallego used his speech on the conference to spotlight his sacrifices and people of different Democratic veterans, who he invited onstage with him. It was meant as a degree of distinction with Trump, who mocked the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a wounded Vietnam Battle veteran, and who reportedly known as all army service members killed in motion “losers.”

“John McCain was an American hero. Show some respect!” Gallego stated.

The primetime TV look paid off. Within the 24 hours following the speech, Gallego raised $1 million.

Gallego’s expressions of reverence for McCain, nevertheless real, had been a part of a deliberate technique to reap the benefits of a divide amongst Arizona Republicans. McCain represented the state’s previous, and enormously diminished, GOP institution — a faction characterised by nationwide safety hawkishness, a dedication to propriety, and skepticism of the xenophobia and fact-free populism of Trump and his loyalists.

Lake, against this, is certainly one of Trump’s most uncompromising disciples. She not solely maintains that Trump received the 2020 election, but additionally claims to have received her personal unsuccessful governor’s race in 2022. Lake was nonetheless engaged in litigation to overturn the 2022 outcomes via Election Day in 2024.

What’s extra, Lake particularly bashed McCain and the Arizona Republicans who establish together with his model of politics. “We don’t have any McCain Republicans here do we? Well, get the hell out!” Lake stated at a 2022 marketing campaign occasion, the place attendees booed the point out of McCain’s identify.

“Ruben benefited from having yet another MAGA, extreme-type candidate running against him,” Markson stated. “For at least some percentage of Republicans, they just don’t like her.”

A lot of these McCain Republicans, together with former McCain aides Paul Hickman and Bettina Nava, turned outspoken Gallego backers.

In a state the place a majority of voters help abortion rights — a poll initiative enshrining abortion entry into the state structure obtained almost 62% of the vote on Election Day — Lake’s historical past of anti-abortion feedback and positions had been additionally a serious legal responsibility.

After beforehand expressing approval for Arizona’s pre-statehood ban on the follow, which included no exceptions for rape or incest, Lake struggled to backpedal. And quite a few audio clips of Lake disparaging abortion, together with one by which she calls it “almost a genocide,” made it into one of Gallego’s many TV advertisements about Lake’s abortion stance.

“If we had run a generic Republican against him, he would have gotten smashed,” stated a nationwide Republican strategist, who requested anonymity to talk with out authorization. “Kari Lake just sucks up all the oxygen with her shit. She did not do a good job making the race about him.”

Democrats knew that Lake could be a weak candidate. She concurrently had sky-high identify recognition from her gubernatorial run and an unfavorable picture as an election denier, in response to Gallego’s pollster, Margie Omero. The advertisements principally aimed to remind voters that Lake additionally had a historical past of being a hardline abortion rights opponent, as a result of a “lot of voters didn’t necessarily hear her recently on abortion,” Omero stated.

However Lake’s extremism didn’t in itself guarantee a Gallego victory. In spite of everything, Trump carried the state regardless of having comparable baggage, and Democrats did not both unseat any incumbent Arizona Home Republicans or take management of both of the state’s two legislative chambers, the place the GOP holds slender majorities.

And Gallego excelled with quite a few key demographic and regional teams that eluded Harris, uniting a coalition of working-class voters, faculty graduates and simply sufficient disaffected Republicans. Gallego’s robust efficiency with Latino males, a demographic that veered sharply to the fitting this cycle, is particularly putting. He picked up 64% of Latino males and 58% of Latina ladies, whilst Harris obtained 55% of Latino males and 54% of Latina ladies.

Certainly Gallego’s identification as a Latino man performed a job in his enchantment.

However he additionally made an actual effort to enchantment to Latinos in areas the place they felt snug. His marketing campaign commissioned a corrido, or Mexican folks ballad, about Gallego that the marketing campaign shared on social media. He screened a Canelo Álvarez boxing match reside at a boxing health club in Glendale, providing attendees free tacos. He distributed breakfast tacos and occasional to union laborers arriving for the early shift at a job web site, visited low-rider retailers, and held a get-out-the-vote Mexican-style rodeo occasion the Friday night time earlier than the election.

“These are the things that we did that were essential to bringing these men back into the fold and for me to build trust for them, because they knew that, ‘Hey, this guy actually understands me,’” Gallego informed HuffPost.

It helps that overwhelmingly male, working-class settings usually are not new for Gallego. He recollects working development to become profitable as an adolescent, and becoming a member of relations across the TV to observe a boxing match after a tough day’s work.

“I get to wear fancy suits and stuff. But for most of my life, or at least a lot of my life, I had to work with my hands. I had to bring money home to take care of my family, my sisters, my mom,” he stated. “And I remember the pain that a lot of the men in my family felt when the economy was bad, or the pain that they felt when something went wrong and they couldn’t provide for the family.”

Gallego’s outreach to Latinos was a part of a broader technique of taking no area or demographic group with no consideration. He crisscrossed the state to fulfill with even small teams of voters in individual.

Eric Chalmers, a senior adviser to Gallego, characterised the strategy as “go everywhere and talk to everyone” — not only for tactical causes, however as a result of Gallego ran on the thought of reaching out to individuals who have been neglected.

Gallego’s travel-heavy schedule helped him join with distant Native American tribes, specifically. He flew to southern Utah in April to fulfill with the 300-member Kaibab Paiute tribe in a distant a part of northern Arizona accessible solely via a tiny Utah airport, and in October, he hiked down the Grand Canyon to fulfill with the Havasupai folks.

In fact, Gallego had years to reintroduce himself to voters on his personal phrases. Requested to touch upon why Harris fell brief in his state, Gallego pointed to the compressed nature of her 100-day marketing campaign.

“I had 23 months to talk to Arizonans over and over again, so they [got] to know me. And even though she’s the vice president, I don’t think people got to know her,” he stated. “The president was universally unpopular. They just attached all the negatives that President Biden had to her, and she did not have enough time to create her own personality, and her own brand.”