‘The Interview’: Senator Ruben Gallego on the Democrats’ Problem

There has been an onslaught of political news over the past few weeks as President Trump and his billionaire backer Elon Musk try to remake America’s government. From dismantling federal agencies to firing federal workers, they have been testing the legal system and the Constitution. They have also been testing Democrats, who are struggling to figure out how to respond.

It’s a real moment of soul searching for the Democratic Party, to say the least. It must not only devise a strategy to oppose Trump’s agenda, but also win back the voters who moved toward him in the election. Over the next month, I’ll be having a series of conversations with influential Democrats to understand their internal debates about the way forward. My first is with Arizona’s junior senator, Ruben Gallego. Gallego’s win over Kari Lake was one of the few bright spots for Democrats in November. A former member of the House, Gallego won in a tight race by outperforming Kamala Harris among key demographics that Democrats have struggled with, especially men and Latinos.

Gallego is the son of parents who immigrated from Colombia and Mexico and was raised by his single mother. He grew up poor, went to Harvard, became a Marine, fought in Iraq and ultimately ended up in politics, where, he says, his story of overcoming adversity and class transition helped him connect with voters. He has a lot of advice and criticism for Democrats right now, as I discovered when I sat down with him earlier this week in Washington.

I almost don’t know where to start, because so much has happened in such a short amount of time. You’re a first-term senator, but you were in the House during the first Trump administration. Does this time feel different? It does. A lot of what you see Trump doing now is what he tried the first time around. But this time, we don’t have Republican allies. We’re basically fighting on our own.

Do you see a shift in how seriously the party is taking this moment? I do think that the party, 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? What I’m seeing is a lot of people that are just kind of frozen. It’s something that happens when situations come out of the norm. People want to make something that’s not normal, normal, because if you actually have to accept the reality, it gets very, very scary.

The big question for Democrats is what it means to be an effective opposition party, and I think there are two issues here. One is what Democrats should actually do to counter Trump’s actions. And the other is how you communicate what you’re doing. On the first, there is talk of using government spending, which has to be negotiated by March 14, as leverage. The risk is that if there is a government shutdown, the Democrats will be blamed for that at a moment when the party is trying to reach voters, rebuild itself and communicate that it is a party worth voting for. Is the risk too high? The risk is always there. We can’t be afraid of failing. I think that’s the biggest mistake I’ve seen Democrats make. We’re always afraid of failing, so we don’t take risks. It’s OK for us to recognize that that is a potential fallback. But we could also be working to mitigate it. What does that look like? Making sure that we meet the moment where the American public is. Making sure that we’re showing them that we’re the ones that are trying to, No. 1, protect the Constitution. No. 2, fighting for you. Because all this BS that’s happening right now? Prices are still high. The cost of eggs is still high. People can’t buy homes. We need to figure out how to pivot back, because that’s where the Republicans are the weakest. They own this economy now, and they’re not doing … stuff for everyday Americans.

I could see you in your brain changing the word. My wife warned me before I left for work today not to swear. [Laughs.] The problem is we have to separate what we’re hearing from the D.C. crowd from what we’re hearing in the streets. I go back to Arizona — they’re actually not talking about USAID. 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 real world, because sometimes when we have that disconnect, we miss really, really badly. And unfortunately, now we know, we can’t miss. The stuff that’s happening right now is because we entirely missed where the American public was during the 2024 election.

You outperformed Harris in your state, meaning that you won over some Trump voters. Why do you think that happened? Because I understand that not all Trump voters are actual straight-down-the-line Trump voters. I think there are 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. We went to some of the hardest places in the state. We sat down with Trump supporters. We weren’t afraid to talk to them.

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. In a state like Arizona, there are 300,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats. I had no choice. It was either do it, or you’re not going to make it.

Why do you think Democrats are afraid to talk to Trump voters? I don’t know. Why aren’t they going into the reddest areas of the country? Donald Trump goes to Harlem. Do we go to the equivalent of Harlem for the red voter? No, we don’t.

I want to talk through some demographic groups that Democrats really need to win back if they want to be competitive. Everybody?

Men, for example. Yep.

You’ve been described to me as a bro. And not in a bad way. [Laughs.]

You won Latino men by 30 points in an election in which Trump dominated that group. I know men are a very broad group, but what do you think Democrats have misunderstood about them? That we could be working to make the status of men better without diminishing the status of women. 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 lives of men better, working to make sure that they have wages so they can support their families. I also think some of this is purely psychological — like we just can’t put our finger on it. 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 — they wanted to hear that someone understood that need. And a lot of times we are so afraid of communicating that to men, because we think somehow we’re going to also diminish the status of women. That’s going to end up being a problem. The fact that we don’t talk this way to them makes them think we don’t really care about them, when in fact the Democrats on par are actually very good about the status of working-class men. It was a joke, but I said a lot when I was talking to Latino men: “I’m going to make sure you get out of your mom’s house, get your troquita.” For English speakers, that means your truck. Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck, which, nothing wrong with that. “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?” These are the conversations that we should be having. We’re afraid of saying, like, “Hey, let’s help you get a job so you can become rich.” We use terms like “bring more economic stability.” These guys don’t want that. They don’t want “economic stability.” They want to really live the American dream.

One of the difficulties for Democrats is that what you’re describing are more traditional values. But people vote on values!

Are you saying that Democrats should recognize that people want more traditional gender roles? Be less afraid of that? No, I think Democrats should recognize that people want to understand that they matter. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to say the single mom is less important than the father. That’s not what we’re saying. But just saying, “Yes, you matter too.” Because as Democrats, we’re supposed to be fighting for everybody.

After the midterms in 2022, when Democrats did better than expected, many Democrats, you included, seemed to take away that there wasn’t this rightward shift among the Latino community. In fact, you said, and I’m quoting here, “There’s no effing realignment.” You said “effing.”

I said “effing.” That’s not the word you used. Why did you get it wrong? 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 — the personal recession, not necessarily the government’s recession — continuing on more and more and with housing prices 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 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, buying a home is part of the American dream. And now it has gotten 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.

What else is the difference is that the way 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 U.F.C. fights. He’s at all these things where they actually see him being a real quote unquote man. I also warned Democrats about that. We needed to get out there. I had a lot of recommendations that weren’t listened to. I wanted President Biden to go to the Copa America game and sit next to some Latino celebrity. I love boxing. I’m like: “Let’s go to some boxing matches, right? Let’s take some Democrats to boxing matches where a lot of Latinos are.” We need to figure out how to get into that world.

I was shocked to learn that President Trump was the first sitting president to go to a Super Bowl game. That seems to me like a gimme for any president to go and do that. Yeah, and he’ll do everything. And why are we not doing it? I’ll tell you why, because I have heard this before. I’m not gonna tell you which politician was worried about this, but their staff told me, “I don’t want my guy getting booed.” So you don’t expose yourself to anybody. But then you also don’t expose yourself to anybody! And again, this is not just the president. This is everybody really running last year.

I interviewed JD Vance before the election, and it struck me that even though your politics are obviously very different, your backgrounds share some similar traits. Working class, raised by single mothers, military service in Iraq, went to the Ivy League. And that story of class transition does seem to resonate with voters. I think most voters want to believe and do believe in the American dream. I think when they see examples of that being true, that gives them some hope. And sometimes people miss that. I remember during my campaign, some of my advisers said, “You can’t talk about Harvard.” I’m like, “Why not?” “Well, you want working-class people to like you. If you tell them you went to Harvard, you’re going to remind them that you’re not part of that.” I’m like: “No, you’re not getting it. Working-class people appreciate kids going to college, especially kids that came from poverty going to college, because that’s part of the American dream. You need that kind of hope to hang on to, to get through those hard days, knowing that things will get better.” This is psychologically what people missed about this campaign: when people started feeling like it’s not going to get better. That should have been a big tell that things were going to go south.

Something I really struggle to reconcile is: On the one hand, you have voters saying that the economy and inflation are their top issues, and they feel the pain of price increases, which is completely understandable. On the other hand, under Trump, we now have the richest cabinet in modern history. The world’s richest person is gutting the federal government. Yet polls show the president starting his second term with higher approval ratings than when he began his first term. It sends this confusing message about what the electorate actually wants. I don’t think so.

Why don’t you think it’s a confusing message? Because people that are working class, poor, don’t necessarily look at the ultrarich as their competitors. They want to be rich someday. And so they don’t necessarily fault the rich for being rich. Where they do fault them is when it starts affecting them. So they’re going to give Elon and his little weirdos the benefit of the doubt, and they’re going to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt until it proves that it’s actually affecting them personally. The thing that finally started moving Donald Trump’s numbers away, before the 2018 elections, was when he gave a massive tax cut to the rich. So, I think that’s what’s going to end up happening. I think this administration is going to give a massive tax cut to the rich, and they’re going to do it by cutting Medicaid and other programs for the poor, and that’s when you’re going to see people saying, “No, no, no, that’s not what I want.”

So the message among some Democrats of “Eat the rich” — That’s not going to work. These people want to be rich. They want to be rich! And there’s nothing wrong with that. Our job is to expose when there are abuses by the rich, the wealthy, the powerful. That’s how we get those people that 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. We just had an election that proved that.

Why? They actually understand the consumer. They are engaged every day, one way or the other, in trying to talk to the consumer, and in this case it’s the voter.

They’re salesmen. Yeah, exactly. The client is the voter. He knows where the voter is, and he’ll get there however he can get there.

I want to ask you specifically about immigration, which was one of the central issues of the election and one that really hurt Democrats. Your first vote as a senator was for the Laken Riley Act. You were one of two Democratic co-sponsors of the bill — the other one being John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Many in the immigrant-advocacy community were unhappy with that position. They have criticized the law. They say it raises due-process concerns for immigrants. Another big concern is that it will give states more control over immigration policy, essentially gutting federal authority. What was your thinking behind voting for it? Well, my thinking behind voting for it the second time, because I voted for it also in the House of Representatives, is that talking to voters — they wanted more immigration control and reform. What happened to Laken Riley was horrible. And look: These immigration groups have some very valid points in some areas. But where they’re moving is not necessarily in line with where the majority of voters or even the immigrant community are. I heard from them a lot, and the one thing I heard from them is: “This is not what Latinos want. They don’t want this bill.” I’m like, “That’s actually not true. I go home, and there is a lot of support for bills like this.” There’s a mismatch right now. The immigration groups have moved to a point where they say that they represent the voice of Latinos, and they don’t. They’re not even close. One of the things I’ve been telling senators is: Listen to the immigration groups, because they have good legal advice. Do not listen to immigration groups if they tell you that this is a representation of where Latinos are, because they are totally off.

This bill, though, does seem to want to change the nature of how immigration is done in this country. And the architect of this administration’s immigration policy is Stephen Miller, who in the past has promoted hard-line views by citing the work of white-nationalist websites, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. There does seem to be a strain in this administration that wants to change the makeup of this country. Without a doubt.

Do you worry that voters’ legitimate concerns about our immigration system are being weaponized for ideological ends? Absolutely. But this isn’t new.

Was it hard for you to cast that vote knowing that context? No, because this has been happening for the last 20 years. The context that I worry about is how do we get the trust of people back to the point where we can actually bring the immigration conversation to a more normal frame. When the Democrats basically dropped the ball on the chaos on the border for many years, we essentially lost the debate on immigration reform for years, because the everyday voter doesn’t trust us. For years they saw that chaos on the border, and we did nothing. The Biden administration finally moved, but by then it had been so long and the damage had been done. And by the way, for those of us that care about immigration reform, and we truly do — I want to see undocumented families come out of the shadows; I want Dreamers to become citizens — we’ve been set back for years because we hesitated on asylum seekers when we knew in our guts that what was happening there was an abuse of the system, was unpopular with Democrats, but somehow we decided that we were going to essentially just give the issue to the Republicans. We could have had a very sane position on this.

Do you blame President Biden for that? I blame President Biden, but I also blame a lot of the people that were advising President Biden. A lot of these groups. You’re only as good as the advice that’s given to you. These immigration groups that I think are looking out for people ended up making the situation a lot worse.

Just to understand where you stand on specific issues: Should local law enforcement be helping ICE carry out deportations? No, because if you talk to local law enforcement, and especially in Arizona, talking to sheriffs and talking to the police, they don’t have the bandwidth. They don’t want to do this. They want to keep the community relationships. And police are there to actually enforce local laws.

Should migrants be sent to Guantánamo or to prisons in El Salvador? Not migrants that have their due process, and especially not ones that aren’t dangerous, but certainly ones that are severely dangerous, like people that have committed crimes but we can’t legally hold them here. I think there’s something to be said about that.

I’m surprised. For gang members? Criminals? Why would we want to keep gang members and criminals that don’t even have a legal right to be here and Venezuela won’t take them back?

I think there is a concern that people that get put into these systems — it’s sort of like a black hole. It’s a legal limbo. I mean, we’ve been having legal limbo for the immigrant community forever. Guantánamo has been used for refugees and asylum seekers prior to this.

But not ones that have been in the United States. They’re people who have been caught at sea — I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Look, at the same time, if there is a hard-core criminal that has gone through our judicial system but we can’t actually deport, what are we going to do? I’m not saying we do this for everybody, but there has to be some logical security that we should be thinking about, because they’re going to end up being criminals again, especially in these very, very vulnerable communities.

How have you seen the deportations working in the weeks since Trump has taken over? Talking to people in Arizona, talking to ICE agents, it’s caused a lot of fear. Some of the ICE agents are very frustrated, because they feel that they’re put on to make an artificial quota. That they first were sent to go after hard-core criminals, and now they’re being pushed to just grab anybody. So, for example, in Arizona, they have a quota of 75 people per day. The frustration, I think, is also in the fact that there just isn’t really any coordination of need. So, for example, they’re bringing investigators off A.T.F., D.E.A. and H.S.I., who are actually going after real criminals, both U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens, and they’re just being thrown in here to essentially do a show of force.

You think it’s ineffective? I think if Donald Trump actually wanted to get rid of these hard-core criminals, there is a way to do this, where you would have a lot of these undocumented families — the ones I’ve told you that have been here forever, the ones that have kids that are here — that will likely help you. But when you are trying to cast a wide net, you’re going to have everyone hide. And you’re going to end up probably making a lot of these criminals that are here illegally be able to get away with it.

Do you take Donald Trump and his administration at face value that what they’re interested in doing is deporting criminals as opposed to deporting immigrants? No, I don’t. What can we do to actually make them focus on these hard-core criminals is going to be the next really big fight.

As we’ve discussed, there are concerns about Democrats being too deferential to the more liberal parts of the party — yes, on immigration, but also gender, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, D.E.I., whatever it is. These are all things the right has been hammering Democrats on for a while, and it seems to be working. So how do Democrats stand for what they believe in without being seen by voters as outside the mainstream? It’s easier for us to be hit as being extremists if we’re not also known for something, if we’re not fighting to make someone’s life better, to bring down the cost of living, raise wages. If we’re not actively fighting for that, it’s going to be easier for people to take the most extreme positions and say, “Well, that’s actually what the Democrats are.” I think most Americans are very much pro-L.G.B.T. I think they are pro-women’s rights. I think they’re more aligned with Democrats than with where Republicans are. But when we aren’t identified as doing something for the grander America, they’re just going to be able to say, “They’re just so focused on these small little niche groups instead of you.” And that resonated.

I know someone’s going to say: “Well, the G.D.P. under Biden was the highest. And we had the lowest unemployment ever. Ruben Gallego is wrong.” Yes, that was all true. But people were not feeling it. People were just not feeling it. If we want to lie to ourselves and say, “Well, things were really good, the economy was really good” when people were telling us it was not, we’re going to continue having this problem. It’s going to be easier for people to take away some of these basic rights if we allow the middle of America to continue to suffer economically.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Listen to and follow “The Interview” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or the New York Times Audio app.

Director of photography (video): Tre Cassetta