Democrats are losing Latino men. Ruben Gallego has advice on winning them back.
As Democrats work to sort through last week’s election results and determine their causes Groups of Latino men missingA Hispanic Democratic senator-elect has some advice for party leaders and senior advisers: “Get out on the grass and meet real Latinos.”
cbs tuesday news expected Gallego won the U.S. Senate race in Arizona against Republican Kari Lake. He believes much of his party is out of touch with key demographics without which, he says, they cannot win national elections.
“You can’t win nationally without Latinos,” Gallego said Tuesday in a wide-ranging interview with CBS News senior White House and politics correspondent Ed O’Keefe. “…Without Latinos, there’s no path into the Democratic Party, into the national party.”
exit poll Vice President Kamala Harris’ Latino male loss to President-elect Donald Trump is a major blow to a party that has long relied on Latino men as part of a broad coalition blow. Democratic leaders and staff spent much of last year openly worried about the outcome.
Gallego said looking forward, candidates need to go out And find where the Latinos are. Gallego focused on bringing his campaign to Latino voters — sometimes without talking about politics at all. His campaign hosted rodeos, boxing watch parties and barbecues. His team delivers food to construction shift workers on the site early in the morning after get off work. Knocking on doors when shift workers are exhausted and preparing for the next day doesn’t work, he said.
“Talk to them. Talk to them as much as you can,” Gallego said. “And don’t expect you to be able to talk to them one way through television.”
Gallego said there are “millions” of Latino men out there who are not afraid to speak their mind.
Democrats on the national stage also miss the point when talking about the issues. migrant. Gallego’s first Spanish-language television ad is about border security. Gallego said Latinos in Arizona have seen the immigration crisis at the border with refugees pouring into the country and called it “chaos.”
Gallego said that during the campaign, “we didn’t actually talk about immigration reform because we knew Latino voters didn’t believe in it anymore,” meaning Latino voters didn’t believe Washington would actually pass a massive bill. Immigration Reform Act. near future.
Instead, Congress needs to focus first on strengthening U.S.-Mexico border security to build trust, he said.
But O’Keefe said the message could be a tough pill to swallow for fellow Democrats.
“I’m a pharmacist about to hand out very tough pills on the Senate floor,” Gallego said.
Gallego also suggested that Democrats were falling short of their goals in addressing inflation. Gallego, who was born on Chicago’s South Side to a Colombian mother and a Mexican father who raised four children on her own, said he knows what it’s like to grow up struggling. He sees flashing warning signs of inflation not only in the polls, but also in his conversations with working-class family members and voters.
“For someone who grew up working class, there’s nothing sadder than working hard but not being able to provide for your family,” Gallego said. “I knew instinctively that’s what these people were going through.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a man say I can’t do this,” Gallego said. “I couldn’t keep working but still nothing changed and that’s when I realized this was really a problem.”
Gallego was raised by his mother, became a U.S. Marine and served in the Iraq War. He moved to Arizona to work in local politics, running for and winning a seat in the state House of Representatives before winning his first congressional race in 2014, representing most of Phoenix and Glendale.
He started out on Capitol Hill with a reputation as an outspoken progressive and was one of the Democrats calling on the U.S. Senate to ditch the filibuster. But Gallego has shifted his political leanings toward the center in recent years, reflecting the state’s roughly three-way split in voter registration between Democrats, Republicans and independents.
Nearly two years ago, he launched a Senate campaign that focused on promoting and promoting his military service, an important credential in a state with a large population of service members and veterans and a history of electing veterans, including the late Republican Senator John McCain. submitted to Congress. Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema declared in March the nominal Democratic primary opposition and polls showed him with an early lead. She won’t run Fight for re-election and avoid a three-way race.
Before Sinema won her Senate race in 2018, no Democrat had been elected to the Arizona Senate in three decades, although she later left the party. Then in 2020, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won a hotly contested Senate race to serve out the remainder of McCain’s term following his death.
Gallego won’t abandon Trump voters — or any voters — in the race, he said.
A rising star in the party, Gallego, a veteran and Latino who won in states won by Trump, brushed off questions about a future run for president.
“Can I rule out running? I can — I can rule out a lot of things,” Gallego said. “The first thing I want to focus on is this U.S. Senate race.”
“It’s not a rejection,” O’Keefe noted.
“That’s not a sure thing either,” Gallego said, adding a Spanish word for patience: “Calm down. “
contributed to this report.
