The Daily
'The Interview': Senator Ruben Gallego on the Democrats’ Problem: ‘We’re Always Afraid’
Sat, 15 Feb 2025
The Arizona lawmaker diagnoses what he thinks needs to change in the way his party communicates with men, Latinos and Trump voters.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What challenges are Democrats facing post-election?
Democrats, having lost the Senate and the presidency, are struggling to come up with a unified strategy, not only to stop Trump's agenda, but also to win back the voters they need who moved towards him in the election. It's a real moment of soul-searching for the party.
So over the next month, I'll be having a series of conversations with influential Democratic politicians to understand their internal debates about the way forward. My first is with Arizona's junior Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego. Gallego's win over Republican Kerry Lake was one of the few bright spots for Democrats in November.
Chapter 2: Who is Senator Ruben Gallego and what is his political background?
A former member of the House, Gallego won in a tight race by overperforming Kamala Harris among key demographics that Democrats have struggled with, especially men and Latinos. Gallego is the son of an immigrant single mother and grew up poor.
He eventually went to Harvard and then became a Marine fighting in Iraq and ultimately ended up in politics where he says his story of struggle and success helped him connect to voters. He has a lot of advice for and criticism of Democrats right now, as I discovered when I sat down with him earlier this week in Washington, D.C., Here's my conversation with Senator Ruben Gallego.
Senator, I almost don't know where to start because so much has happened in such a short amount of time.
And it occurs to me, you're a first-term senator, but you were in the House for about 10 years before that. And you were in Congress during the first Trump administration.
I was, actually, yeah.
Yeah. So I guess I'm wondering, does this time feel different?
It does. And two things. Number one, a lot of what you see Trump is doing now is what he tried the first time around. But this time around, we don't have Republican allies. And what that means is that we're basically fighting on our own. For me, this is more reminiscent of when I was in the statehouse, when the Republicans had full control of the House, the Senate, and the governor.
Yeah, and the governor in Arizona. And there was just no way stopping them except for trying to find the best way to bring to light, you know, what problems they were causing, what they were violating, what they were going to overall just like turning the state into.
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Chapter 3: How can Democrats effectively oppose Trump's agenda?
And right now, I think that's where you're seeing a lot of the Democratic establishment party elected officials trying to figure out what to do.
Do you see a shift in how seriously the party is taking this moment?
I do think that the party, and at least talking to my colleagues, are starting to see that this is an existential threat if they keep going down this road. If we can't rely on the judiciary to be part of those checks and balances, then what is left? I think what I'm seeing is a lot of people that are just kind of frozen.
And, you know, it's something that happens a lot when situations come out of the norm. And so people want to make something that's not normal, normal, because if you actually have to accept the reality, it gets very, very scary.
And I guess the big question for Democrats is what it means to be an effective opposition party. And I think there are two issues here, right? One is what Democrats should actually do effectively. to counter Trump's actions. And the other is how you should communicate what you're doing. On the first, there is talk of using government spending, which has to be negotiated by March 14th as leverage.
Obviously, the risk is that if there is a shutdown, the Democrats will be blamed for that at a moment when, indeed, the party is trying to beach voters, rebuild itself, communicate that it is a party worth voting for. Is the risk too high?
I mean, the risk is always there. We can't be afraid of failing. That's number one. I think that's the biggest mistake I've seen Democrats do is that we're always afraid. We're always afraid of failing, so we don't take risks. It's okay for us to recognize that that is a potential fallback. But we could also be working to mitigate that somehow. And what does that look like?
You know, making sure that we meet the moment where the American public is. And maybe that moment will happen soon. I'm not sure it's March 15th. But making sure that we're talking to them, we're showing them that we're the ones that are trying to be the people that are, number one, protecting the Constitution, number two, fighting for you. Because all this... BS that's happening right now.
Prices are still high. The cost of eggs are still high. People can't buy homes. And I think that's the one thing that we still need to figure out how to pivot back because that's where the Republicans are the weakest at. They own this economy now and they're not doing stuff for everyday Americans right now.
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Chapter 4: Why are Democrats struggling to connect with Trump voters?
My wife warned me before I left for work today, not to swear. Okay. But the problem is, I think, you know, we have to separate what we're hearing from kind of the D.C. crowd, from what we're hearing kind of in the streets, from what we're hearing about everyday common Americans. Because, you know, I go back to Arizona. They're actually not talking about USAID. Right.
And they're not talking about the courts. They're still talking about egg prices. They're still talking about the cost of everything. So one of the things we have to be very mindful of is that we may engage in a fight, but the rest of the American public may not be with us because they don't understand this fight.
And we need to make sure that we're matching our politics to what actually is happening in the world because sometimes when we have that disconnect, we miss. And then we miss really, really badly. And unfortunately, now we know, we can't miss because when we do, it has political implications.
Like the stuff that's happening right now is because we entirely miss where the American public was during the 2024 election.
I want to take a step back because, as we've mentioned, Democrats are trying to redefine their party. And your victory in a state that Trump won has been framed as possibly offering a model for what kind of message actually works. You outperformed Harris in your state, meaning that you won over some Trump voters. Why do you think that happened?
Because I do understand that not all Trump voters are actual straight down the line Trump voters. I think there's a lot of people that voted for Trump because they were frustrated with what was happening in this country. And we weren't afraid to reach out to them. And we went to some of the hardest places in the state, some Republican counties. We sat down with Trump supporters.
We weren't afraid to talk to them. And we did it repeatedly.
You think Democrats are afraid to talk to Trump voters?
I think Democrats are afraid to talk to Trump voters. I think Democrats are afraid to talk to people that are going to criticize them. And I think that's, you're just, you know, in a state like Arizona, there's 300,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in Arizona. I had no choice. It was either do it or you're not going to make it. And so we went out there, we sat down, we met with them.
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Chapter 5: What strategies did Gallego use to win over Latino voters?
I mean, men, for example. Yeah. You've been described to me as a bro. And not in a bad way.
Yeah.
You won Latino men by 30 points in an election that saw Trump dominate that group.
Yeah.
I know men are a very sort of broad group, but what do you think Democrats have misunderstood about men?
we could be working to make the status of men better without at the same time diminishing the status of women. And a lot of times we forget that we still need men to vote for us. That's how we still win elections. But we don't really talk about making the life of men better, working to make sure that they have wages so they could support their families.
I also think some of this is just purely psychological that a lot of times we just can't put our finger on. But During my campaign, I noticed when I was talking to men, especially Latino men, about the feeling of pride, bringing money home, being able to support your family, the feeling of bringing security. For them, they wanted to hear that someone understood that need.
And a lot of times we are so afraid, I think, of communicating that to men because we think somehow we're going to also diminish the status of women. And I think that we need to understand that that's going to end up being a problem. The fact that we don't talk this way at all to them makes them just think that we're not really, we don't really care about them.
When in fact, even when we're not talking about them and we're not campaigning about them, the Democrats on par are actually very good about the status of working class men. And I think Democrats need to figure out how we communicate that to guys and be like, hey, we're going to make sure that you're going to have a good paying job so you can start a family, go out.
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Chapter 6: What role does class play in Gallego's political messaging?
You said effing. I said effing.
That's not the word you used. Why did you get it wrong?
Because I was right then. In 2022, this is when I was the head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, we had polling that showed that there was no slippage happening because men, especially Latino men, were frustrated, but they felt that things were getting better. And there was also an understanding, especially from women, that Democrats were better for them.
With the recession, with the personal recession, not necessarily the government recession, continuing on more and more and more. And with housing pricing not going down, that's when things just started sliding. Economically, we weren't meeting the demands of where they were. I think they were willing to be hopeful because Biden had just gotten in.
A lot of the stimulus money still had not worn out. But starting around like early 2023, a lot of the stimulus money went away because we negotiated with the Republicans for it to go away. Interest rates stayed high. And for a lot of families, Latino families, owning a home, buying a home is part of the American dream. And now it has gone even further and further away.
So the economics just did not improve. And as soon as some of us heard it, we started putting up the warning signs, but it just wasn't heard. Lastly, what also is the difference is that the way that Trump communicates is actually more apt to get younger Latino men voters because where they gather their information, where they listen to politics, is where Trump is more often versus where we are.
He's on podcasts all the time. He's at UFC fights. He's at all these things where they actually see him being a real quote-unquote man. And going into the election in 2023, I also warned Democrats about that we needed to get out there. Like I had a lot of recommendations that weren't listened to.
Like I wanted, you know, President Biden go to the Copa America game and sit next to some Latino celebrity. You know, I love boxing. I'm like, let's go to some boxing matches, right? Let's take some Democrats to boxing matches and meet where, you know, a lot of Latinos are. And the fact is when you go into a big election in 2024 –
And you're going to have a lot of young men coming to vote for the first time that didn't vote in 2022. And all they're learning about politics is through podcasts, through UFC fights. You know, we're going to start losing that vote if we don't. And we did. And we need to figure out how to get into that world.
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Chapter 7: Why are economic issues critical in shaping voter behavior?
That's not the right message.
No, these people want to be rich. They want to be rich. The base Democratic voter wants to be rich, and there's nothing wrong with that. And so our job is to expose when there are abuses by, quote unquote, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful. Then that's how we get those people that want to aspire to that to vote for Democrats.
So Elon Musk, Donald Trump, are these the people who have actually figured out how to connect with the working class? Yes, yeah.
We just had an election that proved that. I mean... Why? Well, I think because they are... I think they, you know, both are two things that I think a lot of Democrat politicians are. Number one, they actually understand, quote-unquote, the consumer, right? And because they are engaged in everyday... you know, one way or the other, trying to talk to the consumer. And in this case, it's the voter.
They're salesmen, essentially.
Yeah, exactly.
And they understand who the client is.
The client's the voter. And they don't care, by the way, that's the other thing that's, you know, they don't care how they get the sale done, right? This is why you saw during the campaign, Trump said, you know what? No tax on tips. We're not going to tax security, all this kind of stuff.
And, you know, on the other side, people were like, well, that's where they're going to do something and do it in balance to the budget deficit. What did Donald Trump care? He just wanted her to win, right? What is Elon Musk going to do? He just wants to win, right? He knows where the voter is and he'll get there however he can get there.
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