The memorable image of Dads Caucus founder Rep. Jimmy Gomez bringing his baby to the House floor in a baby carrier last year may seem far removed from the manosphere and “bro” culture surrounding newly elected President Donald Trump and his significant gains among male voters. especially Latino men.
But Gomez, a California Democrat, thinks his and his fellow Dads Caucus members’ focus is on voters, especially the working class.
“People are starting to recognize the value of the Dads Caucus – of having men who are fathers, men who are now raising children, who are involved in policy discussions,” Gomez said.
The caucus, which currently consists of 39 Democratic lawmakers — but is also open to Republicans — favors family policies such as family leave, affordable child care and the child tax credit.
“We saw how inflation and the increase in food prices hurt families because we saw it impacting our own families,” he said. much more expensive, and I’ve even seen my own savings go down as food goes up, my savings kept going down. And no matter what, you can’t earn enough.
The caucus members, Gomez said, provide a kind of “example and access” to American families across the country.
Gomez’s California district is diverse in income, race and ethnicity. It includes downtown Los Angeles, Latino-majority Boyle Heights and Koreatown. Gomez won reelection this month against fellow Democrat David Kim, a progressive immigration attorney.
Trump won a larger share of Latino voters this presidential election, and that shift was more pronounced among men. According to NBC News exit polls in ten key states, 55% of Latino men voted for Trump.
But Gomez said he has seen the shift to the right among Latino voters happening for more than a decade, even in California, a reliably blue state. During the last election cycle, Americans, including Latinos, expressed deep concerns about the economy in polls.
Gomez with his son in Washington in March 2023.
“What happened in this election is that the economy was terrible for working people. No matter how much you work, you will fall behind because the prices kept going higher and higher,” said Gomez.
He drew a comparison with his upbringing. His parents worked four to five jobs a week to make ends meet, but they were able to own their own home, even if that meant someone had to sleep in the garage.
But now, Gomez says, housing and childcare alone can take up to 60% of a person’s pre-tax income, “so there’s really nothing left. You can’t really save to start a small business, buy a house, do anything. I think we need to do more to talk about these issues, especially housing, and especially child care. What are we going to do to help them?”
Gomez said that men have a certain pressure to provide for the family and that if they can’t, they are open to listening to “anything anyone says.” He said that when his sister ran away and returned with her husband, the only question their father had for him was, “Do you have a job?”
On the post-election debates and controversy surrounding whether misogyny played a role in Trump’s gains among male voters — especially Latino men — Gomez said: “Don’t blame, learn. Learn from their experiences. Learn from their pain. … Is part of that? Of course it’s there, but does it explain the whole reason? I don’t think so. And if you only blame that on that, you will never change the way you govern.”
He emphasized that the shift toward Republican candidates has happened over time, as he has seen in California, and that this has also been the case among male Democratic voters.
The Dads Caucus has 39 members of the House of Representatives and three elected to the U.S. Senate (Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Andy Kim, D-N.J., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.), making them a be a bicameral caucus. . All members are Democrats, but Gomez said a Republican expressed interest in joining before the election. “I’ll have that conversation with him again to see if he’s still willing to participate — we’re open to Republicans,” Gomez said.
He said the caucus is pragmatic and supported the House GOP package that expanded the child tax credit earlier this year.
“When they negotiated with the Democrats in the Senate to expand the child tax credit, it was a victory, but it was not what we as Democrats would have written. We supported it because we knew that just putting something in the workers’ pockets right away would help,” said Gomez.
The Dads Caucus is expanding the areas in which they work. Gomez said they recently discussed research about how social media has a greater negative impact on young men than on young women because young women “disengage from it in a way that young men don’t.” T. … It stuck with a lot of us – we all thought they were doing well,” he said, referring to young men. “And what we’re seeing is a lot of that alienation, that isolation that comes as a lot of social media use continues, and they never retreat from that trend.”
Gomez said the caucus is looking for ways to deal with this through policies or programs specifically aimed at helping young men.
For Gomez, the caucus is not just about co-sponsoring legislation, but also about leading the discussion and fighting for the bills.
“The hard part of politics is one, you have to get Republicans and Democrats to agree that there is a problem, or see the problem the same way, and two, you have to get legislation where both parties agree. agree on, and I think that’s creating a consensus on a number of issues,” Gomez said, adding that he is working on a bipartisan bill to convert commercial and real estate buildings for residential use. “Housing is one of them.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
