Dads Caucus founder Rep. A memorable photo of Jimmy Gomez brings her baby to the floor of the House in a carrier last year may seem far away the manosphere and surrounding “bro” culture US President-elect Donald Trump and his significant gains with male voters, especially Latino men.
But Gomez, a Democrat from California, thinks it’s his and hers comrade fatheretc Commission members‘ focused on the electorate, especially the working class.
“People are starting to understand the value of the Dads Caucus — bringing men who are fathers, men who are currently raising children, into the policy debate,” Gomez said.
The caucus, which currently consists of 39 Democratic lawmakers but is open to Republicans, supports family policies such as family leave, affordable child care and the child tax credit.
“We’ve seen how inflation and rising food prices hurt families because we’ve seen it affect our own families,” he said. it’s more expensive, and I’ve even seen my own savings dwindle, dwindle, dwindle, and whatever, can’t make enough as the food goes up.
Caucus members, Gomez said, provide a kind of “example and access” to American families across the country.
Gomez’s California region is diverse in terms of income, race and ethnicity. This includes downtown Los Angeles, the Latino-majority Boyle Heights, and Koreatown. Gomez won re-election this month against Democrat David Kim, a progressive immigration advocate.
Trump won a larger share of Latino voters in this presidential election, and the shift was more pronounced among men. according to NBC News exit polls 55% of Latinos from 10 key states voted for Trump.
But Gomez said he has seen Latino voters shift to the right for more than a decade, even in California, a reliably blue state. Over the past election cycle, Americans, including Latinos, expressed deep concern about the economy in questionnaires.
“What’s happening in this election is that the economy is terrible for working people. No matter how hard you worked, you were left behind because the prices kept going up and up,” Gomez said.
He compared it with his upbringing. His parents worked four or five jobs a week to make ends meet, but they were able to own their own home, even if someone had to sleep in the garage.
But now, Gomez said, housing and childcare alone can take up 60% of someone’s pretax income, “so there’s really nothing left. You can’t really save to start a small business, buy a house, do anything — I I think we need to do more to talk about these issues, especially housing, especially child care. What are we going to do to help them?”
Men have a certain pressure to provide for the family, Gomez said, and are open to listening to “what someone says” when they can’t. She said that when her sister ran away and returned with her husband, the only question their father asked her was: “Do you have a job?”
About post-election debates and The debate around whether misogyny Male voters, particularly Latino men, played a role in Trump’s win — Gomez said: “Don’t blame, learn. Learn from their experiences. Learn from their pain. … Is there a part of it? Of course there is, but does it explain the whole reason? I don’t think so. And if you only blame it, then you will never change the way you manage.”
He insisted that the shift toward Republican candidates happened over time, as seen in California, and that it also happened among Democratic male voters.
The Dads Caucus has 39 House members and three elected to the U.S. Senate (Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Andy Kim, D-N.J., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.). . All the members are Democrats, but Gomez said one Republican expressed interest in joining before the election. “I’m going to talk to him again to see if he’s still willing to join — we’re open to Republicans,” Gomez said.
He said the caucus is pragmatic and supports the House GOP package expanded the child tax credit earlier this year.
“When we negotiated with Senate Democrats that expanded the child tax credit, it was a victory, but not something we Democrats would write about. We supported it because we knew that even getting something in the workers’ pockets immediately would help,” Gomez said.
Dads Caucus is expanding its scope of work. Gomez said they recently discussed research showing that social media has a greater negative impact on young men than young women because young women “get away from it in the same way that young men think.” t. … It stuck with a lot of us — we all thought they were good,” he said, referring to the youth. “And a lot of the alienation we’re seeing is the isolation that occurs when a lot of social media use continues, and they never break the trend.”
Gomez said the caucus is looking for ways to deal with that through policies or programs specifically to help young people.
For Gomez, caucus isn’t just about co-sponsoring legislation, it’s about leading debate and fighting for bills.
“The hard part of politics is one, you have to get Republicans and Democrats to agree that there’s a problem or look at the problem the same way, and then two, you have to get legislation that both sides agree on, and I think there’s a consensus emerging on a lot of issues,” Gomez said, adding that commercial and is working on a bipartisan bill to convert real estate buildings to residential.