Arizona’s newest Sen. Ruben Gallego has a history as a progressive firebrand. But, his first moves as a sitting senator have the progressive left up in arms.
He voted for and cosponsored the Laken Riley Act, which requires undocumented immigrants who are arrested for a theft or a violent crime to be held in jail until they go to trial. Immigrant activists have said it allows for the detention of people who haven’t been convicted of any crime. But Gallego says it’s about giving law enforcement the tools they need when undocumented immigrants break the law.
It’s what Elvia Diaz, editorial page editor of the Arizona Republic, calls disheartening as we’re entering the Trump era once again. Diaz joined The Show, along with columnist E.J. Montini, columnist at the Arizona Republic, to discuss.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Elvia, I want to start with you here and a little bit more about the argument you’re making in this recent column about Ruben Gallego. You wrote that he, of all people, should know better. Tell us why.
ELVIA DÍAZ: Well, because he is a son of an immigrant, and he campaigned on that. He comes from a single mom from Colombia, and he began his career in Phoenix at a very local level in a predominantly Hispanic district. And then he went on to become a U.S. representative — also from a very poor, mostly Hispanic district with a lot of undocumented immigrants.
So he rose to power with that. And it was not a total shock that he rallied behind this legislation. He did it before, so I do recognize that. When he was a member of Congress, he voted for this bill, which went nowhere.
This is different, though, because we have a new president. We have a new administration that has all his tools at his disposal to do whatever he wants with immigrants. And then it was just too quick, too fast to cave into Trump, who again is a new president.
And then there are parts of the bill that it seems that the senator didn’t even read. And that’s incredibly concerning.
GILGER: Okay. So Ed, let’s turn to you because you wrote a separate column about this and about some of that criticism that Gallego is getting from the left. And you say they should listen to his reasoning here and maybe learn something from it. Tell us why.
E.J. MONTINI: Well, I would say that voting for this bill, I put it in the category of like being morally wrong and politically right. I think what Gallego is saying in his own way — whether he’s actually saying it or just implying it — is that progressives, Democrats in general have been out of touch with the concerns of working-class people. Not just working-class Latinos, but working class people in general.
I think that he’s correctly pointing out that working class people are not as progressive as progressives would like them to be, and that’s why they’re losing so many of them to Republicans.
DÍAZ: And that’s what angers me the most there, because I think Ed is correct that Democrats have lost touch with the working class, including the working-class Latinos. But this is something else. And it bothers me that immigrants, the ones that can’t do anything about it, are the ones that everyone is going to be using for their political purposes.
I mean, here we go again, that we’re going to use the immigrants as political pawns again. Like, I’m going to throw you a bone. It just happens to be these people.

GILGER: So you agree on a certain point, though, that this might be a misunderstanding of where the Latino electorate is on immigration as an issue?
DÍAZ: Well no, it’s divided there. Clearly there are a lot of Latinos that voted Republican, voted for Trump, and also Latinos that believe they should be border security. There is no question about that.
But Gallego did not campaign on that, at least not yet, not aggressively. And then it’s just too fast, again. Trump doesn’t need him right now. Gallego talks about bipartisanship and immigration, but for goodness sake. I mean, it was the first week of that presidency and of Congress. And that’s really is anyone really looking at Trump as a guy that is seeking compromise? Oh, give me a break.
GILGER: Ed, let me ask you about that, and that idea of where the Latino electorate is in particular. Because, as Elvia pointed out, we saw a lot of Latinos vote for Trump this time around. Surprised a lot of people, especially on the left. Do you think that we need to rethink what it is that the “Latino vote” means?
MONTINI: I do. I also think you need to broaden that out. Like I pointed out in the thing that I wrote, when I was growing up in a really heavily ethnic area — these are European ethnics, though, like immigrants — the second-generation immigrants were often very suspicious of first-generation immigrants, not thinking that they were as dedicated or as well-prepared or whatever as they were.
And I think that there is an element of that that exists today as well. So I think that if you’re a Democrat, if you’re progressive, you really do have to get back to some of the basic Democratic, progressive points of view, which is that working-class people are your primary focus. And you’re going to have to give up on some of the issues.
Let’s take one of the most controversial, for instance, like transgender people. Yes, you really want to protect the rights of transgender people. But you might have to give a little on the notion of the transgender athletics thing, because there are some legitimate arguments in that. So you don’t want to, but that element of a compromise may have to come up.
You may have to take a few steps backwards in order to take a few steps forward, meaning actually win an election once in a while. Because I do think that there’s been a turn in a lot of regular, working-class people.
I spent a lot of my young life between going to college and working in a steel mill near my hometown. And all my old steel mill buddies — almost all of them who were hardcore Democratic voters, their parents were, their grandparents were, they were — are now Trump guys. And I think that is part of it. They feel abandoned by Democrats.
They’re not concentrating on what those people care about most, which is making a decent living, living in a secure place, having their kids educated — very basic, meat-and-potatoes kind of issues.
GILGER: Sounds like this is, echoing the debate that is going on within the Democratic Party, I’m sure. Elvia, let me ask you about that point that Ed brings up there, which is this idea of how Democrats are going to win in the future, how they’re going to speak to these populations that used to be solidly Democratic voters, Latino or not.
How do you balance that? If you’re upset that immigrants are going to be the scapegoats here again, maybe for both sides now, what do you want this to look like going forward for Democrats?
DÍAZ: Well, it is true that if you don’t win, you’re not going to solve issues. Because you’re not going to be in power. And we’re seeing that with the Democrats right now too. We’re talking about back a year ago. And in the new Congress and Senate races specifically, he has six years. This is the beginning of a six-year term.
Trump took over exactly a week ago. And it feels like an eternity already because of the tsunami of actions that he threw at us. So people are going to forget. When he goes back to voters, it’s going to be six years. We’re not going to be talking about this specific bill, but the consequences are going to be vast, and we’re already seeing those.