Ruben Gallego challenges Kyrsten Sinema for Arizona Senate in 2024

Ruben Gallego, the Democratic representative for Arizona’s 3rd congressional district, is uneasy about how much work he thinks Kyrsten Sinema has done as a senator from his state, even before he left the Democratic Party to become an independent in the state. December. While in the past he refused to challenge Sinema, today he made it clear: He wants a Senate seat and will be the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2024.

As Democrats head into the 2024 campaign cycle looking at an unlikely chance of holding onto a Senate majority, Gallego’s race will become part of a larger debate about how the Democratic Party is moving forward. However, Gallego is not a typical progressive candidate, and he must define a new political identity that does not compromise his beliefs and can win races in historic Republican strongholds.

Gallego made the announcement via video shot in his home district of Phoenix in both English and Spanish. “You are the first group to hear this besides my family. I will challenge Kyrsten Sinema for the United States Senate, and I need all your support,” he said in the clip while speaking to military veterans at the American Legion post in the predominantly Latino and Native town of Guadalupe. American.

Gallego’s news is not surprising. He has long been considered the main challenger Sinema will face if he decides to run for re-election as a Democrat. He is the star of the Democratic Party and the future of the party as a vocal young Latino politician from the Southwest, and he has long acted like a desirable candidate for higher office, including in August, when I profiled him for Vox.

Since changing Sinema’s party, his posture has increased. He and his allies began releasing internal polls that showed a three-way race between him, Sinema, and Republicans like the failed gubernatorial candidate and Kari Lake’s election rejection, and began building a team of strategists, pollsters, and consultants. to help them build their campaign operations.

And when his biggest rival for the Democratic nomination, fellow Phoenix-area representative and former mayor Greg Stanton, bowed out of the contest this month, the field was clear for Gallego to open.

Sinema has not yet made a decision about running, although he has filed preliminary documents with the Federal Election Commission to run. However, they have only provided more fodder for Gallego since December. Last week, when Sinema was in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of company leaders, economists and teachers, Gallego criticized him on Twitter, said“Kyrsten Sinema has not held a town hall in Arizona for years. Instead, she flew to Switzerland for a town hall with the rich and powerful,” and “Guess that’s why we missed him at all the MLK events in Arizona this week.”

He has long voiced the same criticisms of his position: not being accessible or transparent, supporting corporate interests, betraying the hopes of the progressives who worked to elect him in the first place, and playing a role in the economy and his former party. social agenda in Congress. And he referred to the list in the video: “The rich and powerful, they don’t need another lawyer. The people who are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities who need fighters for them.

Being a fighter was the theme that defined many of the conversations with Gallego during mid-2022, and will define his campaign for the next two years. He has long worried that elected Democrats are too quiet, too disinterested, or too anxious to take credit for accomplishments, to present a vision for America, and to exercise the power and mandate their voters have given them. “People are not excited for the Democrats because they don’t know what they are going to get,” he told me in August. “We get power and we are afraid to use that power. We get into this vicious cycle where we sometimes only win because other people are bad, when we have to show that we win, this is what you get: you get a middle-class lifestyle. You can living the American dream.

That theme is reflected in his announcement. But he faces challenges in Arizona to explain his vision beyond the third of Arizonans who are registered Democrats. The country is split almost a third between the two major parties and registered independents, and candidates who can appeal to the political center have tended to do better in statewide races. It helps Gallego not look like he has to survive a bruising primary campaign against Stanton or Sinema and can spend the next year defining himself as a pragmatic progressive who understands progressive politics, but knows when to compromise and when to fight. .

And the senate race may be a proxy battle for the future of the Democratic Party. Sinema is the first Democratic senator elected in Arizona since the 1980s, and he ran the race positioning himself as an independent and relying on progressive groups to build the Democratic base. Some political strategists wonder whether Gallego might be too far ahead to win the general election, despite the state’s Democratic trend since the Trump years. This election will be an opportunity for the liberal wing of the party to show that radical centrism is not necessary to win across the country – and Gallego’s own identity as the son of a Marin veteran from a working-class Latino family can send an influential message to the blue-collar Latino population of developing countries.

Republicans also don’t have a clear frontrunner. Kari Lake, the most well-known Republican in the country, is still litigating her election loss to Governor Katie Hobbs, and seems to promise to reveal groundbreaking revelations every week as she tries to keep election denialism and distrust in the state’s election process. He reportedly wants to run for the Senate, but the state Republican Party continues to suffer an existential crisis as the MAGA movement splinters, but Republicans have yet to regain influence. With Trump on the ballot in 2024, this election may be confirmation that MAGA Republicanism is toxic in the country.

Now, the 2024 senate race has started. Gallego took the mantle of champion for the working class. What challenge is expected from the Republic and Cinema is now an open question.