Whether Mr. Gallego can peel off some of the 1.6 million voters who went for Mr. Trump in 2020 may not be as crucial as the appeal to the independent-minded within the flow of recent arrivals. Mr. Gallego has the kind of personal qualities that map well onto the ambitions of both the white and the Latino working class: impoverished background, hard work, defiant attitude, military, first-generation college.
“Lying on the floor of our apartment one night, hungry and tired because I worked after school earning money to help my mother pay for things, I told myself this was not who I was,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I was not going to be poor trash the rest of my life. I was going to college, no matter what it took.”
Mr. Gallego’s future most likely involves that most Arizona of maneuvers: yet another reinvention. He will have to distance himself from a previously liberal record in the Congress, probably say at least a few unkind words about Joe Biden and ease up on the hot-tempered and progressive persona that characterized his first years in elective office. He made a point of sounding hawkish in his support for the now-scuttled bill to toughen border security.
Beyond his pro-choice position in a state where many voters of both parties were left terrified by the draconian 1864 abortion ban, Mr. Gallego is also likely to emphasize lunch-bucket issues like prescription drug costs, affordable housing and further investments in semiconductor production, which have already brought a mammoth manufacturing plant to the north edge of Phoenix. He must steer between the extremes, stay reasonable-looking and eschew labels.
“The way you win a statewide race is to disavow most things that Democrats do nationally,” Stan Barnes, a Republican consultant, said. “That’s how Sinema and Kelly did it. You don’t talk about Democratic themes. You talk about Arizona themes.”
If Mr. Gallego succeeds not only in winning the seat against Ms. Lake but also in dealing a convincing blow to the MAGA minority she represents, it would be one indication that Arizona — while retaining its unpredictable independent edge — is moving more in the direction of California than of Texas.
Tom Zoellner is a journalist and the author of “Rim to River: Looking Into the Heart of Arizona.”
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