Ruben Gallego's ready for a fight -- even if the Democratic Party isn't

[brooklynite]

Vox

PHOENIX, Arizona — Rep. Ruben Gallego picked up a steak knife, twisted his left wrist, and began stabbing the air in front of him. He’d been ranting about why he hates Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing, and, an hour into dinner, he was clearly getting flustered. “Politics is dark and hard. It’s not a bunch of people trying to do their best. It’s who can shank each other in a smarter way,” he said.

It was the Monday night before primary day in Arizona, and we were at an overheated Sonoran-style Mexican restaurant in South Phoenix with Gallego’s wife and a couple of staffers. One of them reminded Gallego we were in public, and he put down the knife. After some laughter cleared the air (“first of all, this isn’t even hard enough to stab you”), he continued. “Too many young Democrats grew up watching West Wing thinking that’s what politics is.”

To Gallego, the 42-year-old Congress member from Arizona’s Seventh District and potential 2024 Senate candidate, politics should be treated like more of an existential fight. Republicans, inspired by Donald Trump, definitely are. The next day, a slate of election-denying Trump loyalists would sweep the primaries for Arizona’s statewide elected offices; a second GOP member of Congress who voted to impeach Trump would lose his race in Michigan; and a third was on track to lose in Washington state.

Gallego has plenty of reasons to say that. Going to (and getting temporarily kicked out of) Harvard as a poor Latino kid from the South Side of Chicago wasn’t easy, but it led him to enlist with the Marine Corps a year before 9/11, and then to Iraq, where he fought as part of the infantry unit that suffered the worst casualties of the war. Around the turn of the decade, he demonstrated for immigrant and Latino rights in the heat of Jan Brewer and Joe Arpaio’s ruby-red Arizona. A decade later, after efforts to overturn his state’s electoral votes culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack, he told me he was prepared to stab his way out of the floor of the House of Representatives with a pen if it came to it.

[Tetrachloride]

1. his wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Gallego

[lees1975]

2. He's been "encouraged" to run against Sinema in 2024

and I hope he does. He'd beat her and any GOP challenger.

From what I can understand from friends and family who still live in Arizona (I grew up there), Latino voter registration still lags behind the rest of the population and there is still a lot of fear and intimidation preventing it. They did manage to organize and rid the state of the Arpaio plague, and they're on the verge of gaining control of the state government for the first time in decades.

If you're looking for an effective place to send campaign contributions, the state Democratic party in Arizona would be a good place to go.

[in2herbs]

3. I'd vote for him in 2024. I would have even voted for him last time, not bc I dislike

Sinema with a vengance, but bc Gallego is much better, hands down. I hope he runs cuz any D who runs against Sinema in 2024 primaries will win.