NH Journal: Gallego Tough on Dems’ National Brand, Soft on FITN During NH Visit
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, a first-term Democrat whose rise from poverty to the U.S. Senate has made him one of his party’s most closely watched newcomers, came to New Hampshire on Friday with a blunt message for his party.
Democrats must rebuild their brand with working-class voters or face further decline. “Democrats have a national brand problem,” he said. “We need to get back to the simple answer: We are the party of the working class.”
But the 45-year-old prospective presidential candidate was less clear about his position on whether the Granite State should remain his party’s First-in-the-Nation presidential primary.
Gallego began his day at the Politics and Eggs breakfast at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, a traditional stop for national presidential hopefuls. The breakfast is hosted by the New England Council, and the Democratic Party chairmen from both Massachusetts and New Hampshire were in the audience.U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is questioned by New England Council president Jim Brett during a Politics and Eggs breakfast on August 22, 2025.
Born in Chicago in 1979 to a Colombian mother and Mexican father, Gallego grew up in poverty, working odd jobs before earning a scholarship to Harvard. After college, he joined the Marine Corps and served as an infantryman in Iraq.
He entered politics in the Arizona legislature in 2011 and went on to serve nearly a decade in Congress as a Phoenix-area House member. In 2024, he narrowly won election to the U.S. Senate, becoming Arizona’s first Latino senator. He took office in January 2025 and now serves on committees including Banking, Energy, Homeland Security, and Veterans’ Affairs.Casually dressed in a wrinkled white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and jeans on Friday, Gallego cast himself as a regular guy whose working-class background as a Hispanic American helped him understand voters — in particular, voters his party is losing.
“This is the message I want every Democrat to understand, because this is how we win. We win when we fight for the people who decide how lucky they are by how many hours they work. When we lose our moral compass in that regard, that’s when we start losing elections.”
Gallego argued that Democrats have lost ground with men in general — and minority working-class men in particular — who feel abandoned. “What I was hearing from Latino men was a real sense of despair. They felt defeated. And these are prideful men. They love being good family men, taking care of their families, providing for the family, and they felt that they were letting their family down.”
Still, he suggested Republicans’ hold on those voters is fragile. “They’re not yet swinging back towards Democrats, but they are very mad about Donald Trump,” he said. “They now feel that they’re worse off than they were during the Biden administration.” He predicted the 2026 midterms could provide Democrats with an opening to win these voters back.
While Gallego didn’t take questions from the audience or the press, New England Council President Jim Brett asked him about political issues currently in the news. Among them: President Trump’s recent summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
“It was a horrible foreign policy blunder for the president to meet on U.S. soil with a terrorist like Putin,” Gallego said. “It validated Putin in the eyes of the world and in Russia, because you have the full power of the presidency meeting with you, essentially showing you respect.
“And what has come out of it? Nothing. As a matter of fact, yesterday, the Russian Air Force purposely bombed the U.S. electronics company in deep, deep Ukraine. So they purposely knew what they were doing. Putin is making this president look like a fool.”
On Israel and the Middle East, Gallego conceded that support for the Jewish state is declining among Democrats, but he blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.“It is my contention that he’s also purposely trying to make the U.S.-Israel relationship a purely partisan thing, because what you’re seeing right now in the Democratic Party is a rift where, if you are a supporter of Israel — and I do believe that Israel should be a free and sovereign state — that is now a position within the Democratic Party that is becoming a smaller and smaller contingent.”
Perhaps the most controversial stance Gallego took was calling for increasing Social Security taxes in order to shore up the entitlement program. Currently, the Social Security tax rate for 2025 is 6.2 percent for both employees and employers, for a total of 12.4 percent. Self-employed people pay the entire 12.4 percent. But that tax is capped at the first $176,100 of income.
Gallego wants to remove the cap so the 12.4 percent tax rate applies to all income, which would be a massive income tax increase but, according to Gallego, would stabilize the program’s finances for “a good 50 years.”
What Gallego did not discuss at the Politics and Eggs event is New Hampshire’s prized First-in-the-Nation presidential primary. He continues to avoid giving a direct answer to the question of whether he supports the Granite State going first.
In 2021, Gallego posted online that South Carolina and Nevada should replace Iowa and New Hampshire as the opening contests. Earlier this month, he told the Iowa Capital Dispatch the remark was “dumb,” but he also deferred to the Democratic National Committee on the calendar issues.
At a town hall event with U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander later in the day, Gallego reportedly said that New Hampshire’s ability to reveal the views of independent voters makes it valuable early in the primary process.
“The politics of it have changed [since 2021]. We need to make sure we’re attracting independents, and this is a new environment that we have to respond to.”
Gallego’s comments echo what he told WGIR radio in an interview earlier this month.
“The fact that [New Hampshire] is so heavily independent, it actually should be [the first state] or close, definitely as close as possible,” Gallego said. “Because it’s a very good weather vane about where independents are in the upcoming election.”Does this mean Gallego is running for president in 2028? It appears the answer is no — for now.
“So I’ll be here, but I’ll be here to support Chris Pappas, Maggie Goodlander, Democrats in general,” said Gallego. “I don’t know where my future goes. I don’t see it happening, largely because I have three kids, including a new one.”