 If I were Kirsten Sinema, I would be absolutely horrified right now because on Monday, not only did her challenger, Ruben Gallego, announce that he's running for the U.S. Senate, but in a little more than 24 hours, he managed to accomplish something that would make any incumbent horrified. So as Julia Connolly of Common Dreams explains, just over 24 hours after announcing his 2024 U.S. Senate candidacy for Senator Kirsten Sinema's seat in Arizona, Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego set multiple fundraising records and made clear the vast difference between his approach to public service and that of his opponent, Gallego announced he has already raised more than $1 million, bringing in more than 27,000 donations since launching his campaign on Monday morning. The congressman broke Senator Mark Kelly's previous 24-hour fundraising record in the state, doing so in just eight hours, and distinguished his relationship with small donors from Sinema's reliance on Wall Street and corporate PACs for contributions. The individual donations Gallego has already received in just one day surpassed the amount that Senator Kirsten Sinema has received in the last three years set his campaign. So, yeah, near this to say, wait, do you smell that? Stinks, doesn't it? That's the smell of Kirsten Sinema shitting her pants. You could smell it from all the way across the country. There's no way she did not see that and scream multiple four-letter words. That is really bad news for Kirsten Sinema. I love it so much. And I don't think that it's just about hate for Kirsten Sinema, because the Democratic Party in Arizona is absolutely just done with her. I also think that the message that Gallego is running on, it struck a chord with people in Arizona. Let's watch just the small portion of his ad. The rich and the powerful, they don't need more advocates. It's the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that needs a fighter for them. There is no lobbyist for working bans. We could argue different ways about how to do it, but at the core, if you're more likely to be meeting with the powerful than the powerless, you're doing this job incorrectly. I'm sorry that politicians have let you down, but I'm going to change it. I'm Ruben Gallego. I'm running to be the senator of Arizona because you deserve somebody fighting for you and fighting with you every day to make sure you have the same chance out of Swinio and Medicana. The rich and powerful don't need any more advocates. There's no lobbyist for working families. This is basically the antithesis of Kirsten Sinema, where she is exclusively there to represent the rich and the powerful. Ruben Gallego is saying I'm going to be somebody who's different. I'm actually going to represent working families and not my donors on Wall Street, and I'm going to prove that I represent them because I'm raising money from them, 27,000 donations. That is just truly remarkable. Now, it really seems like he's giving a lot of indications about what his campaign is going to be about and how he's going to run his campaign. And I don't know that he's released his policy platform yet, but he's given us a lot of indications that this is going to be a very populist, worker-centric campaign. So let's listen to what he had to say on MSNBC, where he kind of differentiates himself from Kirsten Sinema. And I feel like the difference is they're already pretty evident, but nonetheless, let's listen. What changes in the Senate in a change from Senator Sinema to Senator Gallego? Well, the first change is that the people of Arizona are actually going to have a fighter for them. I want to say a fighter for them, fighting for the people that are working every day, the people that actually decide how much they make per year by hour, not by their income taxes at the end of the year, the people that have to decide between paying their utilities or paying their rents, figuring out how to make ends meet, whether they're going to get generic food this year or they're going to actually be able to afford maybe a little more brand name. I'm fighting for those people. Senator Sinema is no longer fighting for those people and she long ago abandoned them. And so that's the first change is going to be that every day there's going to be some of the action that's going to care about working families in Arizona. Let's go to one of the big procedural questions in the Senate that Senator Sinema has been very outspoken on. She really worships the 60 vote rule in the Senate. Every time the 60 vote threshold is imposed, she's completely in favor of it. Most Democrats, almost all the Democrats want to get rid of it and they want the Senate to run as a majority run institution. 51 votes you win. What's your position on that? My position is that filibuster has to get reformed. It's not a tool of compromise. It's a tool of obstruction. Look what happened after Sandy Hook. Dozens of children are killed and there is no compromise. There is no comprehensive gun legislation that passes. We have been trying to work for years and years to deal with immigration reform. We passed bills out of the house that die in the Senate. At the end of the day, this is actually really used to stop real movement and actual laws that are going to help people in this country. And she talks about the filibuster as if it's some kind of great cause. When she was in Davos, high-fiving Joe Manchin about killing the Void and Rights Act, she did it on MLK weekend. And the John Lewis Void and Rights Act, someone that she claims was her mentor and her best friend. So she's lost absolute trust with everybody in Arizona. And I think in general, I think she's going to have problems winning any races because it's not about the filibuster, it's not about any particular bills. It's the fact that she doesn't communicate and doesn't really connect anymore with the people of Arizona. Yeah. So I'm impressed. And I think that if this were a normal Democratic Party primary, without question, he would beat her. But he's probably going to win the nomination. The question is, can he win in the general? Because as you all know, Kirsten Sonamal recently announced that she is going to be running as an independent. She's leaving the Democratic Party. I think that there's potential here that she could play spoiler, because these elections between the Democrat and Republican have been pretty close. And we'll look at that in a moment here. So if you have this independent with a lot of name recognition, even if that name is Kirsten Sonamal, can that lead to a Republican winning? I'm not sure. But let's look at the results from 2022. So Mark Kelly won 51.4 to Masters 46.5. And in 2018, it was even closer with cinema winning by 50%. So the question here is, can Kirsten Sonamal peel off enough voters to essentially spoil the election for Ruben Gallego and lead to a Republican winning? And it's an open question. It's certainly something that Democrats should be considering. But I think that if Ruben Gallego is able to mobilize enough grassroots support and galvanize enough young people by specifically introducing policies or running on policies, I should say, that are going to excite them, then he can make up make up that difference. Now, Kirsten Sonamal is hated by the Democratic Party, but all she needs is enough people to peel off votes from Ruben and the Republican wins. So the one thing that worries me is that her playing spoiler, but we'll just have to wait and see either way. I love the fact that he raised so much money from small dollar donors because Kirsten Sonamal probably didn't expect that. And you know that the second she saw the headline, she called up her Wall Street donors and was probably begging for a bailout. So I love this story. And I think it's it's so good because I'm just envisioning her face, that smug look on her face. You know, she's worried, but she's trying to play it off. But deep down, we know that she's shitting bullets right now. And you just, you'll love to see it.