PHOENIX — TV advertising showing candidates touring the U.S.-Mexico border has become a staple of Republican political campaigns around the country. But this summer, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego got in on the action as his party tries to win voters’ trust in his battleground Arizona Senate race — and beyond.
“Ruben Gallego has stood side by side with me. The only member of Congress that has come regularly to my border,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway says in the ad. “He is fighting for solutions. Better technology. More manpower.”
It’s far from the only border security ad on Arizona’s airwaves. Gallego’s competitor, GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake, has been bashing him on the border, with one ad tying Gallego to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ border policies and featuring a 2017 clip of Gallego on the House floor referring to Donald “Trump’s stupid, dumb, border wall.”
The back and forth on the issue reflects the central role the border is playing in many voters’ calculations this year, as well as Democrats’ realization that voters did not see their rhetoric or policies as up to the task of handling a growing number of migrants in recent years. Gallego’s early efforts to prove himself to voters on border policy are now reflected in other Democratic campaigns. Harris made a border security spot one of the first TV ads she launched after taking over as Democrats’ presidential candidate, after the issue did not feature prominently in a year-plus of Biden’s broadcast TV advertising captured by AdImpact.
The issue also illustrates Gallego’s efforts to redefine himself — and his opponent’s efforts to highlight his progressive past — as he tries to move from a deep-blue House district to statewide office in one of the nation’s most tightly divided battlegrounds.
Gallego struck a different tone, though not an entirely different angle, when NBC News asked if he still believes Trump’s border wall initiative is “stupid” and “dumb” seven years after the comments Lake is highlighting in her advertising.
“I think border walls are necessary in certain areas,” Gallego said. “Putting border walls in areas that you don’t need only costs more money and then also costs manpower,” Gallego added, arguing a full-fledged southern border wall is a performative waste of taxpayer dollars.
Throughout the campaign, Gallego has picked up several endorsements from border-town mayors and local leaders, like Jorge Maldonado, the Democratic mayor of Nogales.
His proposed solutions include increased funding for border patrol, border technology, and more border agents while also “advocating for sane, comprehensive immigration reforms, things that would take care of our Dreamers” — shorthand for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as minors and see themselves as American.
“That’s where Arizonans are. They want border security, but they also want to fix our broken immigration system,” Gallego argued in an interview with NBC News.
Border security has long been one of Trump and the GOP’s top issues and a weakness for Biden and his party. It’s not yet clear how voters view Harris on the issue: A recent national Marquette University Law Scott poll conducted just after Biden dropped out showed 52% of likely voters saying they thought Trump would be better at handling immigration and the border, with only 39% saying Harris would be. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll a week later showed 53% of registered voters trusted Trump more on immigration compared to 47% for Harris.
Harris has faced a barrage of Republican attack ads on immigration, tying her to the record number of undocumented migrants entering the country during the Biden administration. At recent stops in Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, Harris touted her experience dealing with border issues while serving as California’s attorney general, while allies have played down her responsibility of tackling the root causes of migration as vice president.
Republican attacks on the border have been a refrain in Arizona, too, where Lake told supporters on primary night that Gallego “voted to give illegals that poured him into this country during the Biden invasion, not only asylum, but he wants them to be able to vote in this next election.”
It’s a misleading attack stemming from a pair of congressional votes. In 2023, Gallego voted against a bill that would prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in local elections in Washington, D.C. In a statement released after the vote, Gallego argued, “I believe voting is a fundamental right reserved for the citizens of the United States, and I will oppose any effort to erode that right in Arizona and on the federal level. But Washington, D.C. is not Arizona.”
Fifteen months later, Gallego flipped and joined 51 other Democrats and every House Republican on a similar bill to prohibit non-citizens from voting in D.C. elections. Lake launched an attack immediately. “Ruben thinks a few ‘moderate’ votes will sweep a decade of radicalism under the rug,” she posted on X following the vote.
In an interview with NBC News, Gallego argued they were “two separate bills” and used language shunned by many Democrats to discuss the issue: “I don’t believe illegal immigrants should have a right to vote. That was very clear, and that’s why I voted for it.”
How Gallego’s roots inform his campaign
Intertwined with Gallego’s border security and immigration stances are his own identity. The son of a Colombian father and a Mexican mother, Gallego’s heritage has always informed his political philosophy. On July 29, during the launch of his campaign’s Latino coalition, Gallego became emotional.
“In the darkest of times when things were rough, I always had this belief that this was the best country in the world,” Gallego said while surrounded by dozens of Latino lawmakers and local leaders.
The remarks didn’t mention border security or creating a pathway to citizenship, typical talking points of Gallego on the trail. Instead, Gallego reflected on his political journey. “I believed with my little Latino heart that if I worked hard, kept my nose clean, studied, that I would succeed and actually have the American dream,” Gallego said. “We Latinos can live the American dream, but we need to have somebody to actually fight for us to actually believe in us.”
If elected, Gallego would be the first Latino senator in a state where more than 30% of the population is Latino, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
In an interview after the launch of his Latino coalition, Gallego told NBC News it doesn’t surprise him that that milestone has yet to be reached.
“A lot of young men and women, you know, just have not had as much luck as I have,” said Gallego, who was raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Chicago and earned a scholarship to Harvard before joining the Marines and deploying to Iraq.
“It’s hard to raise a family, it’s hard to do a lot of things, so it doesn’t surprise me,” he said of the possibility that he could be Arizona’s first Latino senator. “I’ll gladly do what I can to make sure that I’m going to help pass the torch on once I’m done.”
