Gallego gives Democrats blunt advice in New Hampshire, fueling 2028 talk

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Sen. Ruben Gallego , D-Ariz ., brought up his party’s “national brand problem” early in his visit here this week and said some of its politicians were “lying to themselves that things were getting better” economically during the last election. He capped his day with a pitch for winning voters who backed President Donald Trump.

“A lot of them that actually supported Donald Trump now realize what they got was not what they were hoping,” he told reporters Friday before a town hall meeting in this longtime early presidential nominating state. “They really need us to step up.”

The 2028 presidential election is more than three years away, but just seven months after being sworn into the U.S. Senate, Gallego is aggressively making the rounds on the traditional early presidential circuit. In May, he took questions from voters in a battleground area of Pennsylvania, a perennial swing state. In early August, he was flipping pork burgers on the grill at the Iowa State Fair. On Friday, he whipped through New Hampshire for a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast, a doughnut drop-off to union shipyard workers, and a town hall, among other stops.

As he has traveled the country, Gallego, a onetime liberal firebrand who has, in key ways, tacked to the middle in recent years, has been especially outspoken about why he thinks his party fell short in 2024. He has suggested that Democrats continued losing the trust of the working-class because they failed to effectively acknowledge concerns about high costs and alienated voters worried about immigration, because many in the party have not championed border security measures alongside other proposed overhauls when they talk about the issue.

Although Gallego, 45, has at times played down the possibility that he will run for president – “I don’t know where my future goes. I don’t see it happening,” he said here Friday – in a party with no clear leader and a wide-open competition for 2028, his pitch and his travel plans are increasingly attracting attention.

The senator voiced concerns about the direction Trump and Republicans are going, “but he didn’t do it without recognizing that the Democratic Party has its share of problems, too,” said Jim Demers, a former New Hampshire state lawmaker who has advised Democratic presidential campaigns. “I thought it was refreshing.”

Wearing rolled-up shirtsleeves and dark-wash jeans at a breakfast for the sports-coat crowd, Gallego mentioned just as many Republicans by name in a positive context – Sens. Bernie Moreno (Ohio) and Jim Banks (Indiana) – as Democrats.

He called Trump a bully and accused the administration of taking actions that he argued would make the country “sicker and poorer.” But he also emphasized a need for compromise.

“The president wants some of his nominees through. I think there’s some that we could work on,” Gallego said, later pointing out that he voted to confirm Doug Burgum as interior secretary.

Gallego won a border state Trump carried in 2024, becoming the first Latino senator from Arizona. He said Friday that he sensed the economic frustrations many people were experiencing during the campaign, which suggested the country was “failing working-class people.” But he felt others in his party were portraying things differently.

“What we saw was not the happy news that I think people wanted us to believe,” Gallego said. He added: “I knew that the politicians were wrong, and the Democratic politicians were certainly lying to themselves that things were getting better.” Gallego didn’t blame any politicians by name.

Then-President Joe Biden repeatedly sought to remind Americans that he steered the country out of a pandemic-driven economic tailspin and led a robust recovery, often acknowledging that there was still more left to do to address Americans’ continued financial hardships and inflation. After the 2024 election, senior advisers to Kamala Harris contended that her defeat was driven, in large part, by voters’ continued discontent over inflation and the economy.

Gallego argued that those economic concerns opened the door for Trump to do well with working-class voters, including voters of color.

“I worked with a lot of really, really bad bosses that used to call me some horrible, derogatory words and names,” Gallego said. “But I would still go back to work every day because I needed that money.

“Do you think that Latino men wouldn’t (choose) somebody that’s going to give them security, even if they know how bad this guy is going to be in some areas?” He asked. Gallego said that these Latino men who voted for Trump are now facing “buyer’s remorse” over his immigration policies and because they feel economically worse off compared to when Biden was president.

Former New Hampshire GOP chairman Chris Ager said after Friday’s breakfast that he wanted more specifics from Gallego and pushed back on some of his criticisms of Trump. “The normal sound bites are good, but what are the policy issues that you can address to fix those things?” He said.

Gallego is not a household name nationally, posing a challenge as he tries to raise his profile. Those who attended his Friday events described them as an introduction to an unknown political brand.

Gallego’s swing through New Hampshire also included a town hall alongside Democratic Rep. Maggie Goodlander, who, like the senator, voted in support of the Laken Riley Act, the first bill Trump signed into law in his second term. The law mandates detentions and potential deportations of undocumented individuals accused of certain crimes.

Immigration was not a dominant topic during Gallego’s speaking events on Friday, but he tried to connect the issue with an economic concern for some at the town hall – the solvency of Social Security.

“We don’t have as many workers as we used to. And certainly our current immigration policy is not going to help that, either. That’s one way we should try to fix this – is to have more workers here, legally working,” Gallego said.

A Pew Research Center analysis of census data released this week shows that between January and June, the United States’ foreign-born population declined by nearly 1.5 million, marking the first decline since the 1960s. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible to collect Social Security, and those who pay into Social Security give billions annually.

Attendees at his town hall mostly voiced concerns about tariffs, the economy, the social safety net and care for veterans. When asked if he supports transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports, an issue that Democrats have struggled to navigate politically in recent years, Gallego offered a careful response, saying, “We have to understand and be supportive of all parents – both the parents of trans kids as well as the parents of non-trans kids.” Such matters should be decided at the local level, not federally, he said.

Beth Scaer, a Republican who asked Gallego the question about transgender athletes, said after the town hall that she was “happy to hear a shift in what people are saying” about the issue.

But when asked if a response like Gallego’s would sway her to vote for a Democrat, Scaer said, “That’s not likely.”

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Dylan Wells and Sabrina Rodriguez contributed to this report.