Who Cracked the Latino Working Class Code: Mamdani or Gallego?

The way to win Latino voters isn't left, right, or center—it's bottom vs. top, outsider vs. insider, and have-not vs. have.

A Democratic Socialist and a Centrist Democrat have proven that Latino working-class voters are driven by anti-establishment pocketbook populist sentiment, not ideology. Both Ruben Gallego and Zohran Mamdani focused on working-class struggles when making their case to Latino voters, and both adopted very different policies.

But guess what…? Both worked.

The lesson here is that Latinos have been looking for politicians and the parties to talk about affordability and the cost of living. Democrats have struggled with that. While activists remain hell bent on convincing themselves and others that they’re right and Latino voters just aren’t smart enough to understand how good the economy is, both progressive and centrist candidates are making adjustments that are paying off.

Gallego and Mamdani are talking to working-class Latinos where they’re at - I don’t just mean in their neighborhoods, though that’s true - but in their wallets, which is more important. Notice, Mamdani wasn’t talking about ICE raids in New York City despite the crackdowns going on? You’d think that would be central to a far left candidates platform, but no, they’re figuring it out.

It’s the economy, stupid.

That’s what got Democrats back in the game in 1992 when Republicans successfully branded them as culturally extreme, and that recipe for success appears to be working again. Republicans have overplayed their hand in both immigration and the economy, and working-class voters are rejecting them.

Arizona's 2024 election results revealed a political puzzle that should reshape how Democrats think about Latino outreach. While Donald Trump carried Arizona by 5.5 points, Democrat Ruben Gallego won the Senate race by 2.4 points, a stunning 8-point gap that Noble Predictive Insights attributed to massive ticket-splitting among Republican and Independent voters. Mike Noble's polling found that "2 to 1 Republicans were defecting against Lake compared to Trump," with a crucial "small group of Independents willing to vote for Trump and Gallego."

Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away in New York City, Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani pulled off an even more shocking upset, winning the Democratic mayoral primary by building a multiracial coalition anchored by working-class Latino voters in Queens and Brooklyn. The 33-year-old assemblyman's victory came through the exact opposite playbook of Gallego's, unapologetic progressivism instead of calculated centrism.

So should Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) be shifting Left, Right, or Center to win the fast-growing Latino vote?

The answer is: That’s the wrong way to look at it. They should be focusing on the bottom vs. the top. Outsiders vs insiders and fighting for the have-nots against the haves.

These contrasting victories offer a masterclass in the diversity of successful Democratic approaches to Latino voters, demolishing the myth that any single strategy can capture this complex, growing electorate.

Gallego's approach represented a calculated pivot toward the political center, breaking with Democratic orthodoxy on the issue many assumed would alienate Latino voters: immigration enforcement. His first Spanish-language TV ad focused entirely on border security, with Gallego declaring that Latino communities "wanted border security," and supporting building walls "where necessary," a stark departure from his previous progressive positions but much more in line with battleground-state Arizona.

The strategy required authentic cultural credibility, one that Gallego was uniquely qualified to provide. Gallego deployed sophisticated cultural messaging, creating lotería cards featuring opponent Kari Lake as "la mentirosa" (the liar) and investing $1.7 million in Spanish-language advertising. His campaign organized boxing watch parties during Mexican fights, hosted carne asadas with live banda music, and brought food to construction workers after their shifts. He brought on Latino Democratic consultant Chuck Rocha, whose Latino working-class roots give him a unique edge in the Democratic consulting world, and empowered him to lead efforts with Latinos.

Perhaps most importantly, he addressed affordability and cost-of-living issues, meeting Latino families where they were and acknowledging the stress they felt while other Democrats pointed to the S&P 500 and told Latinos they didn't know how good they had it.

The results spoke volumes: Gallego won Latino voters by 22 points compared to Harris's 10-point margin and captured Latino men by a crushing 30 points (64% vs. 34%) while Trump won Latino men nationally by 12 points. His success came from understanding that working-class Latino voters prioritized economic security and border stability over progressive immigration rhetoric.

Gallego's narrative provided the foundation for this centrist positioning. As a first-generation college graduate whose Colombian mother raised four children on a secretary's salary, and a Marine combat veteran who served in Iraq, he embodied the economic anxiety and cultural values resonating with Latino families struggling with inflation and community safety.

Mamdani took the opposite approach, doubling down on progressive economic policies while building authentic relationships with Latino immigrant communities. His platform included a $30-per-hour minimum wage, universal childcare, and rent freezes, policies that centrist Democrats typically run from as politically risky.

The 33-year-old Uganda-born assemblyman won decisively in Latino neighborhoods like Ridgewood, Queens (80% to 11% over Andrew Cuomo) and Bushwick, Brooklyn, by focusing relentlessly on kitchen-table economics. His campaign materials, translated into Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, and Haitian Creole, emphasized immediate cost-of-living relief rather than cultural identity politics.

Mamdani's 29,000-volunteer operation knocked on 750,000 doors, with 800 Spanish-speaking volunteers leading community engagement. His credibility came from direct-action solidarity, including a 15-day hunger strike with predominantly Latino and South Asian taxi drivers that secured $450 million in debt relief. This physical commitment to working-class struggles gave him authentic progressive credentials that resonated with immigrant communities.

His messaging focused on corporate accountability and economic justice, framing policies like city-owned grocery stores and free buses as practical solutions to economic pressure rather than ideological positions.

These contrasting victories reveal working-class Latino voters' sophistication in evaluating candidates based on authenticity, economic substance, and cultural competence rather than ideological purity. The centrality of economic concerns to Latino voters cannot be overstated. Even UnidosUS's poll with a strong leftward skew showed that the 2024 Pre-Election Poll of 3,000 Latino voters found that the top five priorities were dominated by cost-of-living issues, inflation, wages, housing, and health care costs, with immigration and gun violence tied at number five. Notably, housing first reached the top five in 2023 and is now a top issue across all states.

Both politicians succeeded by addressing these dominant economic anxieties, but through dramatically different policy frameworks.

Gallego's success came from acknowledging Latino voters' complex views on immigration enforcement. Noble Predictive Insights found that 51% of Arizona voters supported Trump's deportation policies, including significant Latino support. His economic messaging proved particularly effective: the UnidosUS poll showed that more than a quarter of Latino voters (28%) don't clearly see either party as a champion of their concerns, saying "neither, both, or don't know" which party would be better at addressing their priority issues. Gallego's direct engagement with economic anxiety through construction worker outreach and affordability messaging helped bridge this trust gap.

Mamdani succeeded by channeling economic frustration into progressive policy solutions that promised immediate relief from rising costs, particularly housing, which had become a top-five concern for Latino voters for the first time in 2023.

Yes, it's true that crucial common elements included sustained community engagement, multilingual outreach, and authentic personal connections to working-class experiences. It's also true that both politicians invested heavily in year-round community presence rather than election-cycle pandering, spoke voters' languages literally and culturally, and demonstrated genuine understanding of economic pressures facing Latino families.

But it wouldn't be an honest analysis without acknowledging that both candidates benefited from facing deeply unpopular opponents. Kari Lake's election denialism and extremist rhetoric alienated moderate voters, while Andrew Cuomo's corruption scandals and authoritarian pandemic policies made him toxic to progressives. Weak opposition certainly helped both victories.

But the deeper lesson reveals something more profound about Latino political behavior: both the centrist Gallego and Democratic socialist Mamdani succeeded precisely because they were willing to challenge their own parties' narratives and power structures.

Gallego broke with Democratic orthodoxy on border security and immigration enforcement, risking progressive backlash to address Latino voters' actual concerns about community safety and economic competition. Mamdani challenged the Democratic establishment's corporate-friendly approach, running explicitly against machine politics and wealthy donors that have dominated New York for decades.

Whether challenging Democrats from the right on immigration or from the left on economic inequality, Latino voters respond to politicians willing to buck party leadership and speak uncomfortable truths about failed policies. This anti-establishment positioning is, at its heart, a form of populism, and Latino populism has consistently proven to be non-ideological, serving as a reaction to failing institutions that are unresponsive to community needs.

The pattern extends across party lines and generations. Republican maverick John McCain earned significant Latino support throughout his career by bucking GOP orthodoxy on immigration reform, even as his party moved toward harder-line positions. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders remains one of the most popular politicians among younger Latinos, not because of his ideology per se, but because of his "the system is rigged" rhetoric that directly challenges Democratic Party establishments.

This populism resonates with Latino voters who have watched both parties' power structures fail their communities for generations. Latino families have endured decades of promises from Democratic machines that delivered little beyond symbolic representation, while Republican establishments offered only cultural appeals without economic substance. The result is a discerning and sophisticated electorate that rewards independence over party loyalty.

As Latino voters become America's largest minority voting bloc, growing from 32.3 million to 36.2 million eligible voters, their preference for independent voices over party loyalty will force both parties to reckon with decades of taking these communities for granted. The 2024 election data underscores this shift: Kamala Harris's 3-point lead among Latino voters was the narrowest margin for a Democratic candidate in at least the past four elections, while Pew came out showing Trump got 48% just a few days ago. Hard data, not exit polls. This erosion of Democratic dominance stems largely from economic dissatisfaction; 46% of voters said their family's financial situation was worse than four years ago, compared with 20% who said the same in 2020.

The future belongs to politicians brave enough to challenge their own tribes rather than those who offer safe, focus-grouped platitudes.

Gallego and Mamdani prove that authenticity trumps ideology, but only when that authenticity includes the courage to confront your own side's failures. In this way, simply having an economic agenda that addresses Democratic failures is anti-establishment and populist in and of itself. There's no such thing as left-wing populism or right-wing populism. Populism isn't ideological. You can't be a party of the working-class if you refuse to acknowledge their struggle and economic plight.

The future of Latino politics isn't Left, Right, or Center; it's fighting for the outsider, the bottom rung, and the have-nots in a system where both parties have offered plenty of platitudes and virtually no results.