By Haley Talbot and Rebecca Shabad -
NBC News
WASHINGTON — Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, is expected to announce his candidacy Monday for the 2024 Senate seat to be vacated by Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic Party to join the Independent in December.
Gallego's plans — a first-generation Latino congressman, the son of a Colombian mother and a Mexican father — were revealed to NBC News by a source with knowledge of the matter.
Gallego, 43, with progressive leanings, is a Marine combat veteran who served in the Iraq War.
Before being elected to the House of Representatives in 2015, he had served as a member of the Arizona state House.
[Pitbull, Chente, Shakira and Juanga: ask to immortalize these songs in the Library of Congress]
Sinema's six years in the Senate will end in 2024. The Arizona congresswoman has not yet said whether she plans to run for re-election.
If she does, and Gallego wins the Democratic nomination, they would face each other in the general election.
Representative Ruben Gallego speaks during a 2020 House hearing. Greg Nash / AP
In December, after Sinema announced that she would change her political affiliation, Gallego told NBC News that she would likely run for Senate.
“I'm a good Marine, so
I've been preparing for this, bringing people in, meeting the right people
and, you know, making sure that we can do it, so that I can, you know, do it immediately [when] we make the decision. ", said.
[The wife of a dreamer, a Gen-Z or the first Peruvian: these are some of the new Latinos elected to Congress]
Gallego also said he believes that if Sinema runs again, it will "almost guarantee that the Senate seat will remain in Democratic hands," given the GOP's struggles to hold their coalition together.
However, there is no guarantee that this will happen.
A black and a Latino legislator make history by reaching the leadership of Congress for the first time
Dec 1, 202200:28
Meanwhile, several Arizona Republicans are considering running for Sinema's seat, including Kari Lake and Blake Masters, who lost the 2022 gubernatorial and senate races, respectively.
The list of possible contenders also includes Jim Lamon, a solar energy industry executive who lost the Republican primary to Masters last year.
