LEVITTOWN, Pennsylvania — Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said his decision to deliver remarks at a town hall here in Bucks County was to get Democratic voters reconnected with the party and for his party to reconnect with the voters, especially the ones who felt left behind in arguably one of the most important states in the country.
The freshman Democratic senator said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that his talk reflected what happened in the last cycle and what Democrats should do going forward.
“No. 1, it is not wise for us to have this kind of ‘I told you so’ attitude to Republicans that are regretting their votes,” he said.
“I think this is an opportunity to try to bring some of those swing voters back into our fold and into our tent,” he said. “I think that we have to have a big tent attitude about our party in general. We have to be able to accept some people in our tent that we may not have 100% agreement with.”
Gallego said Democrats need a little more wisdom and a lot more punch. “We need to fight smartly but aggressively when it comes to things that we know are popular,” he said, pointing to his positions on due process, Medicaid, and veterans’ affairs.
“All these things that we should be fighting for. Doing that will help us win the day,” he said.
On Saturday, Gallego came to a once-reliable county for Democrats in statewide election cycles, having delivered the state for former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
President Donald Trump lost this county in 2016 and 2020 but won it narrowly last November. Not only did Trump break the Republican losing streak here, but the GOP overtook Democrats in voter registration days before Election Day.
For perspective, in 2008, when Obama won this county, there were 11,000 more Democrats than Republicans. But by the end of last year, Republicans had 5,800 more registered voters than Democrats. As of last week, that advantage climbed to over 10,000.
Gallego arrived at a critical time. Democratic voters are not happy about the future of their party, with the latest Associated Press poll finding only one-third of Democrats are “very optimistic” or even “somewhat optimistic” about their party’s future. The same poll last July showed 6-in-10 Democrats saying they had a positive outlook.
So it made sense for the Democratic National Committee to send Gallego here to talk to voters in one of the most important swing counties in the state, which is drifting right. It’s in places like Bucks where Democrats must revamp their message to appeal to the very voters they have lost to the conservative populist movement behind Trump.
“What we need to do is really bring people back into our fold by talking about what we’re actually going to do for them to make their lives better,” Gallego, 45, who won his Senate race against a flawed candidate in a state that nonetheless voted for Trump on that same ticket, said.
Gallego said he had more success than other Democrats running in last year’s cycle because he tied his message to his personal bio of achieving the American dream.
“When Democrats are not talking to voters about bettering their future, I think it’s going to turn them off because then you’re not really giving them a reason to fight or to vote for you,” he said.
Gallego’s event included fielding questions from the attendees and was hosted by the state Democratic Party as part of their “People’s Town Halls” series being held in battleground states across the country.
Gallego, a former House member from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the town hall here in Bucks was the first one he agreed to do, mainly because the location was convenient for him. He intended to spend time with his family on Mother’s Day weekend.
“Bucks County does remind me a lot about Maricopa County, very centrist voters that really do care about, I would say, good governance, security, and just commonsense legislation,” he said of the county.
Gallego, a Marine veteran who attended Harvard, said he understands that part of what voters want to see is more across-the-aisle efforts. He pointed to votes to confirm several of Trump’s Cabinet nominees and his decision to join Republicans in passing the Laken Riley Act that mandates detentions and possible deportations of illegal immigrants accused of certain crimes.
“I even worked with Dave McCormick, the Republican senator from here. We’ve actually introduced two housing affordability bills,” he said.
One of the issues voters expressed their frustration with Democrats over was the border. Gallego, who comes from a border state, said he gets that.
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“Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me because they’re right. We as Democrats failed to secure their border for three years,” he said, adding he saw firsthand the chaos that was the result of ignoring the problem.
“I’m a border-state Democrat. I saw this at the border. This is not me making things up. It shouldn’t be the case that hundreds of thousands of people can be showing up and asking for asylum and causing chaos at the border,” he said. “So the president has succeeded. We should be figuring out how to make what he’s doing sustainable. We should hire as many border security, as many custom ports, security guards as we can to make this a lasting success.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
