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Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego allegedly had multiple consensual sexual relationships with at least two of his colleagues’ aides while he was in the House of Representatives, the New York Post reported on Thursday.
According to the Post, Gallego admitted to an unnamed source that he had two relationships with aides to Texas Democrats. A second unnamed source said they’d “recently learned of the romantic entanglements,” according to the story. A third source corroborated those two relationships.
The Post said the relationships were believed to have been consensual and occurred between his marriages to now-Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and the senator’s current wife, Sydney. One of the women was in her 20s at the time, while Gallego would have been in his mid-to-late 30s.
Gallego divorced Kate Gallego in 2017 and married Sydney Gallego in June 2021.
NBC News reporter Frank Thorp asked Gallego about the Post’s article, according to a Twitter post, to which Gallego repeated the phrase, “I’m not going to engage in gossip.” When Phoenix New Times reached out to Gallego’s office, spokesperson Jacques Petit shared that post.
Consensual relationships with staffers of Congressional colleagues are neither illegal nor against House rules, except in cases involving additional allegations such as harassment. It’s arguably an uncomfortable power imbalance, but it’s not unheard of in Congress and has even resulted in marriage. Last November, Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie married a former congressional staffer of fellow Kentucky Rep. Rand Paul. A decade prior, former Montana Senator Max Baucus married his former director of state offices. In 2005, former Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed married a Senate staffer who didn’t work for him.
However, recent scandals have lent momentum to efforts to ban them. One of those scandals involved Gallego’s best friend in Congress, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who came under fire for multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and resigned from both his seat and the race for California governor.
Gallego has faced heavy scrutiny since the Swalwell scandal broke. He has denied knowledge of Swalwell’s misdeeds and has insisted percolating rumors about him were nothing more than political attacks from Republicans. One of those attacks came from far-right Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who submitted a Senate ethics complaint against Gallego on behalf of an anonymous woman. Last month, the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed the complaint, which made campaign finance violations and sexual misconduct allegations that have not been made public.
Per the Post, the ethics committee did not examine the relationships revealed on Thursday. The same day the committee closed its investigation, the Department of Justice began investigating Gallego over campaign spending, some of which he used for lavish trips. Gallego has said the money was spent on campaign activities and claimed he was being targeted by the Trump DOJ for political reasons. He’s also been criticized for his endorsement of former Maine Senate candidate Graham Planter, which he yanked after a woman came forward with rape allegations against Platner.
This isn’t the first time Gallego’s personal life has bled into the news. During his 2024 race for Senate, challenger Kari Lake repeatedly pointed to Gallego’s 2016 divorce from Kate Gallego, who was nine months pregnant at the time. A conservative group successfully got the pair’s divorce records unsealed, though they were boilerplate and devoid of scandalous details. The now-divorced Gallegos have since traded endorsements and supported each other’s political ambitions.
