What does it mean to be a Blue Dog in the year 2026?

Blue Dog Action co-founder and senior advisor Phil Gardner joins Blue Dog Radio for a conversation about a country exhausted by its politics, the revival of the Blue Dog movement, and what it takes to build a Democratic Party that is more connected to the places it represents.

Phil talks about managing Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s 2022 upset, helping rebuild the Blue Dog project alongside members like Jared Golden, what he looks for when evaluating congressional candidates, and why being deeply rooted in a community matters more than fitting neatly into a national political box.

We also look ahead to what the 2026 election might teach us, how newly elected Blue Dogs can avoid repeating the mistakes of past Democratic majorities, and why faith remains that we live in a country of builders, problem-solvers and people capable of changing course.

Four races in four very different corners of America and one Congress hanging in the balance.

In this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we take a trip through four of the country’s most closely watched congressional races.

We start in Southwest Washington with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, then head to California’s Central Valley with Adam Gray, Northern California with Mike Thompson, and South Texas with Vicente Gonzalez.

Along the way, we look at the records they’re running on, the challengers trying to unseat them, and what these races say about the places that may help shape what comes next.

From mill towns and farm country to wildfire recovery, water, health care, border security and local infrastructure, this is a hyper-focused look at what representation means when the work is rooted in a place called home.

For more than 30 years, Bobby Pulido has been one of the defining voices of Tejano music. Now the Edinburg native, small-business owner and father of four is a Blue Dog endorsed candidate for Congress in Texas’s 15th District.

For this episode of Blue Dog Radio, we spent three days with Pulido in the Rio Grande Valley. Our time was spent riding through Edinburg with his father, Tejano legend Roberto “El Primo” Pulido, visiting local businesses, weddings, rallies, a Friday-night football game, and sitting down with Bobby at the beginning and end of the trip.

Pulido talks about growing up in one of South Texas’s most famous musical families, building a career that has lasted three decades, fatherhood, immigration and the border economy, affordability, fiscal responsibility, faith, and why a comfortable life in music eventually stopped feeling like enough.

He explains politics through a language he knows best.

If you write a song and people don’t like it, you don’t blame the audience.

You write a better song.