Building authentic connections with working-class voters can help Democrats find their way back to power in Washington, incoming Democratic Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego of Arizona said Friday.
Taking stock of election results that showed him doing significantly better than other Arizona Democrats, Gallego said he put a lot of work into telling his compelling life story and connecting with voters. As a result, Gallego said, even as voters grew skeptical of the Democrats, they believed him when he said he would look out for regular people.
"People got to know who I was and what my values were, and so that they got to know me as Ruben the Marine veteran, Ruben the dad, Ruben the working-class kid who has lived the American dream and wants you to live the American dream," Gallego told The Associated Press. "And I think when things started going bad we were able to resist the tide because people knew me and they had a perspective of me, they knew I was fighting for them."
Gallego defeated Republican Kari Lake by 2.4 percentage points, even as fellow Democrat Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump by 5.5 points in Arizona. That's a nearly 8-point swing for the Democrats from the top of the ticket to the Senate race.
Gallego overcame a hardscrabble childhood to become Arizona's first Latino senator. He was largely raised by a single mother after his father left the family and was imprisoned for dealing drugs, leaving Gallego to work multiple jobs to help with bills while in high school. He was accepted to Harvard University, joined the Marines and fought in Iraq with a unit that sustained heavy casualties.
