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Rep. Chris Deluzio, a 40-year-old Iraq war veteran and father of four, has represented Pittsburgh’s northwest suburbs since 2023. Pegged as one of the most vulnerable incumbents in a quintessential swing state last year, Deluzio defied a red wave that swept out fellow House Democrats and outran Kamala Harris across his district. Part of a new generation of frontline Democrats, Deluzio talked to TIME about where his party went wrong with his voters and how to win them back.
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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Why did Democrats do so badly last year, and what needs to change?
I think there’s a tendency for Democrats to always want this ‘win-win’ framing. But sometimes there’s a villain, and you got to take them on. I think a lot of the Democrats who over-performed and won in tough places like the Rust Belt, we know how to take on a fight. We know how to take on a bad guy.
I also think that you’ve got to be principally seen and spend your time worrying about jobs and people’s pay and health care, economic issues. And I think folks see too many Democrats as not caring principally about the economy. And that’s a mistake. I want our party to be fighting like hell for people’s economic dignity, for jobs, for housing, for health care, for cost of living. That’s got to be front and center for us.
My version of that in Western Pennsylvania is I want to make more stuff in America. I want to have solid union jobs. I’m not a guy who’s afraid to say, sometimes tariffs make sense. Sometimes they’re crazy, the way the President has approached tariffs. Tariffs have to be part of a broader industrial policy, but let’s make stuff in America. Let’s have solid union jobs in the mill towns that I represent. All of that goes into an economic populism that should be grounded in patriotism, and that’s where the party ought to go.
I want to focus on a word you just used: “principally.” Because Harris was talking a lot about economic policy, particularly in Pennsylvania. And it didn’t seem to land with people. People did not seem to see her candidacy as principally about that. So how can Democrats execute on this, when they’re talking about the economy but voters don’t seem to be hearing them?
It’s got to be front and center to what we’re doing. And it is not to say that we should be selling out people to defend their dignity and civil rights. Absolutely not. But we have to be principally seen as fighting on those economic issues, and it comes to repetition. What bills are we pushing? What are you hearing from us? What are you seeing us talk about when we’re in our districts, at home and we’re in Washington? What kinds of messaging fights are we taking on? It is a choice to say you prioritize the concerns of people who work hard, whether they’re at a hospital, a school, a steel mill, or a coffee shop. It is a choice to say that work has dignity. And so I just think it’s an emphasis. A lot of Democrats in places like the Rust Belt get this and have done this, but we got to have a cohesive party. I think it’s got to be front and center.
So what policies should Democrats unite around to put these economic issues front and center?
I’ll give you the PRO Act as an example, which is maybe the top priority of organized labor. And I think nearly every House Democrat co-sponsors it, but that should be front and center for us, right? And yes, the PRO Act matters, but so does an industrial policy is going to bring jobs back home. Part of that is trade enforcement. Part of that is tariffs. Part of that is incentivizing companies to make stuff in America. So Senator Fetterman and I have this Make Stuff Here agenda that is a mix of all those things.
I talk to people in my district. They’d like a tax cut. They’d like our government to not betray the promises of Medicare and Social Security. They don’t think Medicaid should get slashed to funnel money to robber barons and huge corporations. That’s all very popular, and by the way, it’s good policy. And you also layer in anti-monopoly work. Our main streets should have small businesses that are people in our community who aren’t getting crushed by big corporate monopolies. All of those are pieces of a far more — you can call it populist if you want— economic program that is about workers, that’s about communities, about small business, and would be better for growth.
Why did so many voters you represent vote for you and Trump?
I turned 40 over the summer. My generation and people younger than us have essentially lived in America where the idea that you’d be better off than your parents isn’t backed up by evidence anymore. We’ve seen government—for decades, across both parties—fail in that regard, and there’s a distrust of institutions in government because of that. I talk about the American dream, because people who are younger than me have a hard time thinking that that’s just going to happen for them. And the evidence suggests that it might not, it probably won’t, and that’s a problem.
I think you [need to have] candidates who you see as saying that’s a problem, but also being willing to talk about who the bad guys are. For me, it’s the Wall Street-driven corporate mindset that outsourced our jobs, that push for bad trade deals, that gouges people, that crushes unions, that kills small businesses. That’s a big villain that I talk about all the time. President Trump has his other villains. I don’t agree with him most of the time. But people saw him as [being willing] to shake things up. He’s shaking things up in a dangerous way, as I think we’re seeing right now. But it doesn’t surprise me that some people who see our government having failed across decades to deliver on the basic bargain of the American Dream are willing to look at candidates who will shake things up.
Why is it that Republicans have become the party of the working class when they’re also the party that’s more hostile to organized labor, more cozy with big donors, and pushes tax cuts for billionaires?
I think the coziness in both parties with corporate America and Wall Street is a very real problem, and I think on the Democratic side led to an unwillingness to call out the kind of trickle-down economics and outsourcing and anti-worker, anti-small business stuff that so much of the traditional Republican Party has been defined by. If you don’t call out the villain there, then you’re not seen as fighting against that.
I’m in western Pennsylvania and steel country, and we certainly saw a lot of manufacturing and steel jobs go away because of lousy trade deals. People hear tariffs and they think, correctly, ‘Hey, it’s a tool that we should use to stand up for American workers and industry.’ Yet I hear so many in my party reflexively, because Donald Trump is talking about tariffs, then say, ‘Oh, it must be bad,’ and I think that’s a mistake. Using tariffs in a strategic way as part of industrial policy and as part of trade enforcement absolutely can be patriotic.
What’s one big policy idea that isn’t at the center of the Democratic agenda right now but should be?
Corruption. I have not been so animated about Elon Musk as a person. I don’t care that he’s a rich guy. I care that he’s a walking conflict of interest to his massive contracts with the federal government. I think that’s corrupt. I think members of Congress trading stocks when we have access to unbelievably sensitive information is corrupt. I think there’s a lot of distrust from our government that comes from corruption. I think battling corruption should be a pretty central part of what we do, and I think it ties into that point I led with, that we have to be fighters. It’s not fighting in the abstract. It’s fighting for our people, against those who are going to hurt them.
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