Must Read: Chicago Trib on Gallego’s Rise from Poverty to Harvard and U.S. Congress… to U.S. Senate!

In a front-page article, the Chicago Tribune published an inspiring profile of US Senate Candidate Ruben Gallego, “From Evergreen Park to Ariz. Senate candidate, Ruben Gallego rises from ‘hard time’ growing up to seek higher office.“

The Trib has a total readership of 1.7 million people. Here are the highlights:

Gallego slept on the floor and grew up in poverty in Evergreen Park, IL, on Chicago’s South Side near South Kedzie Avenue and E. 95th in the 1990s.

Evergreen Park is an Irish, Polish and German area. “There were the taunts and bullying he endured as a kid from one of the first Latino families to move into the community. There was the juggling act of taking his younger siblings to school and back while his mother, Elisa, worked as a secretary, and the odd jobs he held to help the family make ends meet.”

In Evergreen Park back then, the arrival of a Latino family “was a cultural change for a lot of people here. I did encounter some racism from other students and some parents,” he said.

Gallego said, “You do notice things as you grow older. Your schools aren’t the best schools. You work hard, and sometimes that check doesn’t go that far. One of the good things I talk about on the trail is that of the many people in the Senate, I would probably be one of the few that still remembers working minimum-wage jobs,” he said. I’ve been working legally since I was 14. Before that, I was working on job sites doing day labor.”

His mom immigrated from Columbia, and his father from Mexico. His father was in construction but turned to dealing drugs and left the family. When Gallego was in seventh grade, he, his mother and three sisters moved into a small, two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a nondescript tan-brick three-flat in Evergreen Park.

“But also, I’m not sure I would be the person I am without this place because there were so many people who took care of me,” he said, recalling teachers who gave him rides home when the weather was bad, friends’ parents who let him use a computer, neighbors who paid him $20 to shovel their walkways and driveways.

He realized he had to push himself and got into Harvard University, graduating in 2004. As an added incentive, his Uncle Al got him a job at a meat packing plant on the 5 a.m. shift. “He joked that he did it to make sure I finished college.”

Harvard was a miserable experience, with entitled, rich prep-school grads making it hard to make friends.

Semper Fi

He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and was shipped off to Iraq. Assigned to Lima Company, he conducted sweeps to seize weapons and eliminate supporters of dictator Saddam Hussein. Lima lost 48 men, the hardest-hit battalion in Iraq. It was the largest death count of any Marine unit since a 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon that killed 220.

Among the unit’s casualties was his close friend Lance Cpl. Jonathan Grant who was killed when an improvised explosive device struck his amphibious assault vehicle.

When Gallego returned home, he suffered from post-traumatic stress. But a complete failure by the US Department of Veterans Affairs to provide any support drove him into politics. I was so mad at politicians. They left us to die. S——y armor. S——y command,” he said. “I had a lot of friends who were already politically involved. They were calling politicians, saying, ‘Hey, my friend’s unit has no armor. They’re getting blown up. Do something.’ And nothing. Nothing. We just kept going and dying.”

After his military service, Gallego moved to Arizona to join his future wife, Kate Midland, a New Mexico native he met at Harvard who had moved to Phoenix to work on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. They divorced and Kate Gallego is now the mayor of Phoenix.

Marketing career to Congress

His first post-military career move was in marketing and public relations. He ran the campaign for a severely underfunded Phoenix City Council candidate who ended up winning by 11 percentage points. That led to jobs as the councilman’s chief of staff and vice chair of the Arizona Democratic Party. A successful 2010 run for the Arizona House followed, and he rose to become assistant Democratic leader in the GOP-run chamber.

In 2019, Gallego launched a run for Congress in a heavily Democratic district around Phoenix to replace retiring 12-term Congressman Ed Pastor. He effectively won the seat by getting almost 50% of the vote in a four-way primary. The first Iraq War veteran to go to Congress from Arizona, Gallego coasted to victory in each of his reelection contests.

He was a member of the Arizona House of Representatives, representing District 27 from 2011 to 2014. Gallego served as the assistant minority leader in his second term. Today, he is a member of the U.S. House, representing Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District.

He is running for the US Senate in Arizona. His MAGA opponent is Kari Lake, a whiny, loser election-denier. The other candidate might be incumbent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who quit the Democratic party to become a narcissistic corporate shill.

In October, the National Republican Senatorial Committee revealed an internal poll showing Gallego leading the Senate race with 41%, followed by Lake with 37% and widely-despised Sinema with 17%. The poll findings found Sinema was taking support away from Lake.

“For all intents and purposes, Kari Lake should be doing significantly better. She just ran a fairly close gubernatorial campaign. She has statewide name appeal being on TV forever. And yet, she’s less popular now than the last day she was campaigning for governor. And why is that? Because she continues with election denialism,” Gallego said.

As for Sinema, he says, “And to have someone use her time, her effort, her power for the already powerful after I had helped her? She screws us over,” Gallego said. “But I knew, one, Kyrsten was not going to be helpful anymore to working-class people and two, that we’re going to be able to win despite whatever Republican ran,” he said.

Words from the heart

At the end of the day, when people know me, know my family, know our story, know what we’re going to do, we’re going to win. I think that’s what scares them.”

“There’s nothing that I’ve ever gained in life that didn’t come with some kind of struggle,” he said.