Senator-elect Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Democrats tend to “surround ourselves with people that will affirm what we already believe.”
Host Jake Tapper said, “Let’s talk about obviously that’s a where that’s a place that you did well. It’s you know Donald Trump didn’t win the Latino vote, but he did better than any Republican presidential candidate in history. According to CNN’s exit poll, 55% of Latino men voted for him. That’s a 19-point swing from four years ago. You say that Democrats need to ‘Go touch grass and meet real Latinos.’ What do you mean by that?”
Gallego said, “I think Democrats, a lot of times, surround ourselves with people that will affirm what we already believe, or people from our same backgrounds, right? And so you have a lot of Ivy League candidates that hire Ivy League Latinos that don’t actually come from a working class background. Most Latinos are actually working class and sometimes we don’t want to hear what they’re saying.”
He added, “I had the benefit of growing up, you know, in a working-class family. My mom was a secretary, and my father was a carpenter. I grew up, you know, still, even in my whole family working class, I actually have a big Latino family, too. So I actually have a really good, you know, pulse on what’s happening there. We don’t want to hear the bad news. I think a lot of times, you know, we knew that something was bad with the Latino community when it comes to their opinion of the economy because I’m very much connected to it. I think a lot of politicians didn’t want to hear what was actually happening out there.”
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN