Luxury travel, shopping, six-figure income: Battleground Dems ripped for 'phony' working-class narrative
Several battleground Democrats running in competitive House races have leaned on working-class, blue-collar biographies to connect with voters’ economic anxieties, but financial records and other materials reviewed by Fox News Digital complicate the images they have presented on the campaign trail.
In New Jersey, for example, Democratic Party candidate Rebecca Bennett has pitched herself as a parent with firsthand understanding of the "rising costs and economic uncertainty" facing American families, but financial records show she collected a combined salary of nearly $250,000 in 2024 and holds an extensive investment portfolio with assets potentially worth nearly $1.8 million and no reportable liabilities.
In New Mexico, Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M., has said he "never had the luxury of financial wealth," argued voters are drawn to candidates who do not "come from wealth," and described his mother as working long hours in Mexico’s "maquiladora industry" to make ends meet. But records reviewed by Fox News Digital show his mother held corporate finance roles at GE, including as a finance manager and comptroller in Mexico and later as a senior finance analyst in Indiana, while social media screenshots shared with Fox News Digital show repeated European travel, luxury shopping and other upscale family photos.
Meanwhile, in Washington State, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., has built part of her blue-collar image around her time working in an auto shop and her Reed College history, saying she worked three jobs and paid for the private liberal arts school "by the credit hour" after her parents stopped paying tuition. But financial disclosures reviewed by Fox News Digital did not list reportable student-loan debt, while critics familiar with her time at Reed College have questioned whether jobs Gluesenkamp Perez cited, including as a nanny, campus barista and at an "iPhone case factory," could have plausibly covered the school’s cost.
"Voters can see through the phony double-talk easier than politicians ever realize. It’s far better to be who you are and offer a compelling vision to make voters’ lives better than contort your own biography and background into something it’s not," Republican strategist Colin Reed told Fox News Digital. "Under normal circumstances, financial success and upward mobility would be attributes to lean into as selling points on the campaign trail. But with socialism ascendant and the demonization of wealth not far behind, these are far from normal times."
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Bennett, who is running in New Jersey’s competitive 7th Congressional District, disclosed dozens of investments, retirement accounts and other assets in an amended candidate financial disclosure filed with the House on May 15 and reviewed by Fox News Digital. Based on the value ranges listed in the disclosure, her reported assets could be worth as much as roughly $1.8 million. The filing listed no reportable liabilities.
Among the holdings were three valued between $50,001 and $100,000 apiece and 17 more valued between $15,001 and $50,000. Because the disclosure reports assets in broad value ranges rather than exact amounts, Bennett’s reported holdings total roughly $447,000 at the low end and nearly $1.8 million at the high end. Using the midpoint of each disclosed range puts their estimated value at roughly $1.12 million.
The disclosure also showed that Bennett received nearly $200,000 in salary from Noom in 2024 and nearly $46,000 from Oshi Health that year, for more than $242,000 combined.
The financial picture contrasts with the economic message Bennett has emphasized on the campaign trail, where she has repeatedly invoked her own family's finances and experience as a mother of two. In a June 18 campaign post titled "My 2010 Honda Accord," Bennett said she and her husband still drove the 16-year-old car because "it’s what we can afford," arguing Washington needs more "regular people" who understand families’ financial pressures firsthand.
In the post, Bennett specifically pointed to childcare, writing, "I know what it’s like to worry about childcare costs," while also citing rising grocery bills and difficult financial decisions because there is not "an unlimited amount of money sitting in the bank account." Months earlier, she similarly said she was, "like so many of you," navigating the "astronomical" costs of food, education, childcare and healthcare.
Those comments also come as FEC records show Bennett’s campaign has paid $21,250 since June 2025 to cover her childcare expenses. Federal election rules permit campaign funds to cover a candidate’s childcare expenses when they are incurred as a direct result of campaign activity.
"After serving our country for 15 years as a Navy helicopter pilot, Rebecca swapped her MH-60 Seahawk for the 2010 Honda Accord she uses to drop off her two young children at daycare and public school. Rebecca knows firsthand how much childcare costs, and it’s critical that we have people in Congress that understand the challenges New Jersey families are facing," campaign spokesperson Carly Jones told Fox News Digital. "While Tom Kean Jr. plays the stock market in Congress, Rebecca is going to fight to lower costs and end Washington corruption."
Meanwhile, Vasquez has also been explicit in casting his background in working-class and blue-collar terms. In his first House floor speech in March 2023, the New Mexico Democrat said, "I’ve never had the luxury of financial wealth," and during his 2022 campaign argued that voters were drawn to a candidate who "doesn’t come from wealth" or money.
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Vasquez has also repeatedly pointed to his mother’s work in Mexico’s "maquiladora industry" as part of his family’s working-class story. In an October 2025 La Opinión op-ed, he wrote that his mother, Hortencia Banuelos, "worked long hours in the maquiladora industry working to make ends meet," describing her story as one of "sacrifice, resilience, and hope." In a 2023 interview, Vasquez similarly said his parents worked in the maquiladora industry, including assembling aerospace parts and building sensors for refrigerators and washing machines in Ciudad Juárez.
But Banuelos’ own professional profile and other publicly available records reviewed by Fox News Digital show she held senior finance roles at GE during much of Vasquez’s childhood. Her LinkedIn profile lists her as a "Finance Manager/Comptroller" for GE in Mexico from December 1985 to March 1994, overseeing accounting, finance, payroll, accounts payable, IT and customs. She was promoted in 1994 to senior finance analyst at a GE operation in Bloomington, Indiana, where the profile says she analyzed a manufacturing plant with $800 million in revenue and 3,000 employees.
A 2020 profile of Banuelos in Hispanic Executive separately reported that GE hired her in Mexico in the 1980s and selected her for a two-year training program geared almost exclusively toward Ivy League graduates before she later moved to Indiana.
The professional record is also accompanied by social media material showing a more affluent family lifestyle. Posts from Banuelos’ Facebook and Instagram accounts, screenshots of which were shared and reviewed by Fox News Digital, showed repeated European travel, including a three-month stay in France, while other posts showed Banuelos and Vasquez’s sister shopping at luxury brands. Several photos from upscale locations also included Vasquez himself, including one in which he posed with a Corvette.
Vasquez has faced scrutiny over a lavish 2018 ceremony he held with a former fiancée at Akiin Beach Tulum in Mexico as well. The Daily Mail reported in June that events at the beachfront wedding venue can cost between $30,000 and $90,000. Vasquez’s campaign told the outlet that the pair "participated in a private commitment ceremony but were never legally married and eventually separated."
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Asked about Vasquez’s characterization of his family background and his mother’s professional record, campaign manager Patricia Socarras Santiago defended Banuelos’ story.
"It’s pathetic that, as Americans face Trump’s disastrous economy, Republicans attack Gabe’s mom, who has worked incredibly hard, starting from the maquiladoras in Mexico, in pursuit of her American Dream," Socarras Santiago told Fox News Digital. "Gabe is incredibly proud of his mom and will work to ensure everyone can access the American Dream and reverse the impacts of Trump’s tanking economy."
Gluesenkamp Perez has similarly made her own financial struggles and experience in the trades central to her political biography. In a 2023 interview with Reed Magazine, her alma mater's alumni publication, she said her parents stopped paying her tuition after she stopped attending church.
"Afterwards, I worked three jobs and paid for Reed by the credit hour," Gluesenkamp Perez said, identifying the jobs as working as a nanny, a barista and "in an iPhone case factory."
Reed’s own historical records show tuition was $39,440 for the 2010-2011 academic year, with a per-credit tuition charge of $1,625, before rising to $40,940 and $1,750 per credit the following year.
Meanwhile, Gluesenkamp Perez’s latest House financial disclosure, filed May 15, lists two commercial-property notes and a mortgage on her residence but no reportable student-loan debt.
Additionally, some of Gluesenkamp Perez’s former Reed classmates have publicly questioned her account of paying for the private college through those jobs. On a Jan. 29 episode of the NOEXIST INC podcast titled "Absolutely Sweet Marie Gluesenkamp Perez," former roommate Isaac Eger said the "iPhone case factory" was actually Grove, now Grovemade, a small Portland company that made bamboo iPhone cases by hand, and recalled that Gluesenkamp Perez did not begin working there until around 2010 or 2011, late in her time at Reed. He also noted the factory was closer to a small handmade bamboo case business that made its products by hand.
Eger added on the podcast that Gluesenkamp Perez worked as a barista at Reed’s on-campus Paradox coffee shop and recalled that she did not begin that job until around her senior year. Another former roommate, identified during the episode as Sam and described by Eger as the person who hired Gluesenkamp Perez at the coffee shop, argued that the barista wages were nowhere near sufficient to cover Reed’s tuition, saying even the combined earnings of all the shop’s baristas during his four years at the school would not have paid for one student’s semester.
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Questions have also been raised about the hands-on mechanic image Gluesenkamp Perez has used throughout her political career. Her campaign continues to describe her as a "small business owner in the trades," and campaign materials have featured her working on cars and turning wrenches.
But the Washington Free Beacon reported in 2024 that an archived 2018 biography on Dean’s Car Care’s website described Gluesenkamp Perez as working "mostly behind the scenes managing the business side" of the shop, which was cited for multiple workplace-safety violations during a 2017 Oregon OSHA inspection.
Her campaign pushed back on the broader criticism of Gluesenkamp Perez’s working-class credentials.
"Marie is fighting every day for families in Southwest Washington. She and her husband built their small business from the ground up — not with family money but with grit and determination," campaign manager Tim Gowen told Fox News Digital. "She knows what it's like to fill out a phone book-sized SBA loan and what it takes to make payroll. She's working to address the affordability crisis affecting folks in her community by clawing back power and giving real economic agency to regular people: the right to repair what you own, homes young people can actually afford, and a family farm you can pass to your kids. She'll keep doing that work because that's what Southwest Washington needs, not another career politician controlled by corporate interests in Washington or Olympia."
The scrutiny over Democrats’ working-class branding has extended beyond those three battleground Democrats.
Fox News Digital reported last month that Montana Democratic House nominee Sam Forstag, who has campaigned as a blue-collar smokejumper who knows how to "swing a tool," previously spent years as a registered lobbyist for groups including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.
In May, ahead of the Democratic primary for the same seat, Fox News Digital reported that Forstag rival Ryan Busse also faced authenticity questions in the battleground district after he filmed a campaign ad about fighting for working people in what appeared to be a staffer’s modest townhome rather than his own four-acre property, which real estate websites valued at roughly $1.6 million.
Busse ultimately lost the primary to Forstag.
"Only a rich liberal can afford to be a socialist in this day and age," Matt Gorman, chief communications officer at Targeted Victory, a Republican communications firm, told Fox News Digital.
"These Democrats represent a trend of the downwardly mobile who make up the base of the Democratic Party. They have the highest percentage of secondary degrees, yet the lowest income. These candidates don't mind walking around with their hands out expecting more of your money, while they hoard their own."