BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Democratic Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego reassured a crowd of left-wing voters at a Pennsylvania Democratic-party sponsored town hall Saturday afternoon that Senate Democrats are using the filibuster to block GOP legislation whenever possible.
Gallego, who is viewed as a rising star in the Democratic Party due to winning a competitive race in a state President Donald Trump won last November, traveled to another crucial battleground state with a message of broadening the party’s tent in order to win back power in Washington. He boasted about using the filibuster to block GOP legislation when asked by an attendee what Senate Democrats had in their toolkit to fight Trump and Congressional Republicans.
“Some of the things that are pissing you guys off the most aren’t even going through the Senate,” Gallego said regarding cuts by the president’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “Normally … DOGE would actually run their cuts through the Senate, through the House, and then we’d actually use procedures, like to stop that: voting procedures, holding procedures, filibusters. They’re literally going around all that because they know that we will do that. That’s the frustrating thing out of this.”
“What I have within my power are certain things like … I’m holding every political appointee from the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs],” Gallego said referring to Senate Democrats’ various holds on the president’s nominees. “We’ve used the filibuster whenever we can, but again they’re not running through this [the Senate].”
Gallego’s apparent embrace of the filibuster to block Trump-backed legislation is a stark departure for the Arizona Democrat who used his support for eliminating the Senate procedural tool as a wedge issue against his predecessor Democrat-turned-independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Gallego entered the Arizona 2024 Senate race to challenge Sinema on a platform to eliminate the filibuster.
“My position is that the filibuster has to get reformed,” Gallego told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell in January 2023 the day after he launched his bid. “It’s not a tool of compromise, it’s a tool of obstruction … At the end of the day, this [the filibuster] is actually really used to stop real moral movement and actual laws actually help people in this country.”
“Unlike Kyrsten Sinema, Ruben Gallego will vote to abolish the filibuster in order to be on the right side of the issues that matter,” Gallego’s personal campaign account X account posted in June 2023.
Sinema fiercely defended the filibuster during her single term in the Senate, calling the procedural requirement to get 60 votes to pass most legislation a “guardrail” for democracy. Her support for the upper chamber’s procedural rule made her ripe for criticism by Gallego and national Democrats and earned the former senator a censure by the state Democratic Party. She left the party and registered as an independent in 2022.
After Sinema decided not to seek reelection in 2024, Gallego narrowly won the race to replace her in the Senate, defeating Republican nominee Kari Lake by just over two percentage points. On the same ballot, Trump carried Arizona by 5.5 points over failed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Gallego’s campaign platform called for waiving the filibuster for Democratic Party-favored legislation, such as so-called “voting rights” bills.
He characterized the filibuster as “a relic of the Jim Crow era” primarily used to obstruct progress in a December 2021 tweet.
Senate Republicans have taken note of Gallego and other Senate Democrats’ apparent flip-flops on the filibuster since losing their majority and former President Joe Biden in the White House.
“I’m forgetting … the rules are different for Democrats,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on the Senate floor in February. “If you’re a Democrat, it’s perfectly fine – and not at all hypocritical – to plan to abolish the filibuster should you gain a majority in the Senate, but to use it regularly when you do not.”
Senate Democrats have filibustered four pieces of legislation since Republicans took control of the Senate in January.
Democrats led in part by Gallego killed a motion to proceed on bipartisan crypto legislation Thursday.
Less than two days later the Arizona senator defended the practice in a room full of anxious Democratic voters who implored him to fight harder against the GOP-controlled Congress.
“Be mad, stay mad, and we fight,” Gallego said to the town hall attendees. “How do we fight? We fight them in the courts, everywhere we can.”
One Arizona political observer predicted shortly after Gallego launched his Senate bid would “realize he loves the legislative filibuster” in a scenario where he would serve in the upper chamber’s minority. Democrats held a majority in the Senate at the time.
“[It] is not inconceivable that one day Ruben Gallego will end up defending what he called a ‘Jim Crow’ relic – the legislative filibuster — and that all those progressive Democrats who hate Kyrsten Sinema will tomorrow view her intransigence as her crowning virtue,” Arizona Republic editorial columnist Phil Boas wrote in April 2023 shortly after Gallego launched his Senate campaign. “We should know what Gallego would do if Republicans win the Senate. Was his opposition to the filibuster a matter of principle or merely a raw play for power?
Gallego’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Andi Shae Napier contributed to this report.
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