As Democrats work to sort out last week’s election results and determine why they lost Latino men in droves, a Latino Democrat and senator-elect has some advice for party leaders and top consultants: “Go touch grass and meet real Latinos.”
CBS News Tuesday projected Gallego as the victor in Arizona’s U.S. Senate contest against Republican Kari Lake. He believes much of his party is out of touch with a key demographic he says they can’t win national elections without.
“There is no winning nationally without Latinos,” Gallego said in an extensive interview with CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe Tuesday. “…There’s no path forward into the Democratic Party, into a national party, without Latinos.”
Exit polls show Vice President Kamala Harris lost Latino men to President-elect Donald Trump — a significant blow to a party that’s long relied on them as part of a broad coalition. The results were openly feared most of the past year by Democratic Party leaders and operatives.
Going forward, Gallego said candidates need to go out and find Latinos where they already are. Gallego focused on bringing his campaign to Latino voters — sometimes, without talking about politics at all. His campaign hosted rodeos, boxing match watch parties, and carne asada cookouts. His team took food to construction shift workers at work sites after they’d clocked out in the early morning. Knocking on people’s doors, after shift workers are exhausted and preparing for the next day, won’t work, he said.
“Talk to them. And talk to them as often as possible,” Gallego said. “And don’t expect you to be able to talk to them one way through TV.”
There are “millions and millions” of Latino men out there, Gallego said, and they’re not afraid to speak their mind.
Democrats on the national stage also missed the mark in how they spoke about immigration. Gallego’s first Spanish-language TV ad was about border security. Latinos in Arizona looked at the migration crisis at the border, with refugees pouring into the country, and called it “chaos,” Gallego said.
While campaigning, “We didn’t actually speak about immigration reform because we know that the Latino voter just doesn’t believe it anymore,” Gallego said, meaning, Latino voters don’t believe Washington will actually pass a massive immigration reform bill in the near future.
Instead, Congress needs to focus on fortifying U.S.-Mexico border security first to build trust, he said.
But that message, O’Keefe suggested, may be a hard pill to swallow for fellow Democrats.
“I’m a pharmacist about to give out very hard pills in the Senate,” Gallego said.
Gallego also hinted that Democrats missed the mark on addressing inflation. Born on the south side of Chicago to a Colombian mother and a Mexican father, with his mother raising four children alone, Gallego said he knows what it’s like to grow up struggling. He saw the flashing warning signs on inflation, not just in the polls, but as he talked with his working-class family members and constituents.
“Growing up working class, there’s nothing more hurtful than working hard and then not being able to provide for your family,” Gallego said. “And I instinctively knew that’s what these men were going through.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen men say I can’t do this,” Gallego said. “I can’t keep working, and it’s still not making a difference, and that’s when I realized it was really kind of a problem.”
Raised by his mother, Gallego became a U.S. Marine and served in the Iraq war. He moved to Arizona for a local political job, ran and won a seat in the state House before winning his first congressional race in 2014, representing most of Phoenix and Glendale.
He began on Capitol Hill with an outspoken progressive reputation and was among the Democrats calling on the U.S. Senate to abandon the filibuster. But Gallego has shifted his politics to the center in recent years, a reflection of the state’s roughly three-way voter registration split between Democrats, Republicans and independents.
He launched his Senate campaign nearly two years ago, focusing early advertising and outreach on his military service, a key credential in a state with a hefty military and veteran population and a history of electing military veterans, including the late Republican Sen. John McCain, to Congress. With nominal Democratic primary opposition and polls giving him an early lead, independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced in March she would not run for reelection, avoiding a three-way contest.
Until Sinema won her Senate race in 2018, a Democrat hadn’t been elected to the Senate in Arizona in three decades, though Sinema went on to leave the party. Then in 2020, Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, won a competitive Senate race to serve the remainder of McCain’s term after his death.
In his race, Gallego wasn’t about to give up on Trump voters — or any voters, he said.
A rising star in the party — a veteran and Latino who was victorious in a state Trump won — Gallego brushed off questions about a future bid for president.
“Can I rule out running? I can — I can rule out a lot of things,” Gallego said. “First thing I want to focus on is this U.S. Senate race.”
“That’s not a no,” O’Keefe pointed out.
“It’s not a yes, either,” Gallego said, adding a Spanish word for patience: “Cálmate.”
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