Sen. Ruben Gallego waits backstage before speaking at a town hall in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on May 10. Photo by Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Freshman Sen. Ruben Gallego(D-Ariz.) is already making moves to appeal to moderates and boost his national profile with an eye toward a possible 2028 presidential run.
Why it matters: Gallego's 50% Arizona approval rating in May is higher than President Trump's and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs', according to new polling by Noble Predictive Insights, a Phoenix-based nonpartisan polling firm.
Gallego kept his Arizona seat in Democrats' column last November despite Trump's victory there.
Zoom in: Gallego criticized the Democratic Party last month for "kicking people out of the tent" ahead of the 2024 election.
"What happened the last election is that we got so pure, and we kept so pure that we started kicking people out of the tent," he said at a town hall in a Philadelphia-area swing district that Trump narrowly flipped.
"It ends up there aren't enough people in the tent to win elections," he added.
🏦 Gallego also had one of the best-ever fundraising debuts for a Senate Democrat, pulling in more than $1 million in his first quarter.
And he's released an immigration overhaul plan that pairs liberal priorities such as pathways to citizenship with conservative principles like increased border security funding.
