Newly elected Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego began his political career by opposing Arizona's infamous "show me your papers" bill that required proof of citizenship if law enforcement asked for it.
On Tuesday, he cast one of 12 Democratic votes on the Laken Riley Act. Gallego was the only Latino among Democrats to vote for the bill, and his vote carries a warning for his party that they ignore at their electoral peril.
“I’m bringing the perspective of working-class Latinos from Arizona,” he said. “And that perspective, I think, has been missing.”
Gallego pulls no punches in blaming the Democrat's 2024 spanking at the polls on their out-of-touch positions on illegal immigration and border security.
The son of Mexican and Colombian parents, Gallego says he has no intention of acting as a spoiler in the same way Sens. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema stood in the way of some of Joe Biden's overspending. But when it comes to immigration and the border, Gallegos wants to educate his Democratic colleagues on why they were so soundly beaten by Republicans.
“There has been this misunderstanding about where Latinos are when it comes to border and border security,” he said. “I’m here to bring some more real truth about what people are thinking … and so people here and senators here aren’t necessarily reliant on these immigration groups that are, I think, a lot of times, largely out of touch with where your average Latino is.”
Gallegos won his seat against Republican Kari Lake by a mere 2% when Donald Trump won Arizona by 6%.
He credits his win to understanding how Latino voters in his state — and broadly across the country — feel about border security and immigration. Now with Democrats doing some major soul-searching on what went wrong in 2024, he is explicitly arguing that his tough approach could help them find their way out of the political wilderness.
“I think that [the Trump campaign was] just closer to where people were,” he said. “Our campaign, I think the reason why we did as well as we did is because we nailed it exactly where we wanted.”
That’s music to the ears of Republicans. Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), the Laken Riley Act’s lead sponsor, said she was “thrilled” to have Gallego on board with the bill she led through the Senate.
Donald Trump won 37% of the Latino vote in 2024. Given that Democrats were used to winning 70% or more of the vote, the loss of Hispanic support by the Democrats was the biggest threat to the viability of their party in the last 50 years.
The Democrats lost the working-class vote. Their overwhelming majority of black and Hispanic voters have been severely slashed. This impacts their ability to win a national election. For the foreseeable future, they may struggle to capture the presidency.
Gallego believes that unless Democrats change their tune on illegal immigration, they will wander in the wilderness indefinitely.
“The position that some Democrats have taken in the past... is that there shouldn’t be limits on people crossing the border, that there shouldn’t be deportations, that there shouldn’t be restrictions for people that are causing problems, like the monster that killed Laken Riley,” he said.
He says his constituents disagree.
“They want more Border Patrol, they want more border investments and enforcement … and they also want immigration reform,” Gallego said.
Immigration "reform" is not on the agenda of some Republicans. Streamlining the process to get a green card, reforming the H-1B visa process, and other immigration issues are extremely contentious and not likely to come to a vote.
And it's important to note that Hispanics are not a solid bloc of voters. Puerto Ricans vote differently than Mexicans. A majority of Cubans vote Republican. Central Americans are more likely to vote Democratic than South Americans. Subtle variations within Hispanic communities show up on individual issues like immigration and border security.
Gallego is a harbinger of the future for the Democrats. Unless they become more realistic and attuned to their constituents on illegal immigration and border security, they will continue to lose elections.
