Bananas, Lobsters, and Blue Dogs’ Bipartisan, Pragmatic Governing

Two words get invoked so often in American politics that they have nearly lost their meaning: bipartisan and pragmatic. You’ll find them in press releases, cable hits, and campaign mailers. Politicians reach for them because they reflect something real, and what most Americans actually want from their government. But for the most part, it’s not what they’re getting.

Genuine bipartisanship and pragmatism require discipline. In today’s politics, that means putting constituents above party, and dropping the performance to tell the truth and focus on the hard work of legislating to actually change something, for someone or some place.

The Blue Dog Coalition was founded on that discipline. In an era when the dominant logic of American politics rewards outrage and punishes compromise, Blue Dogs have shown, often against considerable pressure from their own party, that the measure of a legislator is not the purity of their positions, but the results of what they can get done for the people they represent.

And recently, three Blue Dog members have shown what that looks like in practice. Rep. Adam Gray passed three bipartisan bills related to healthcare access, energy costs, and wildfire emissions through the House. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez passed her bipartisan bill to cut red tape for childcare providers through the House. And Rep. Jared Golden secured the Trump White House’s formal support on a bill to protect Maine’s lobster industry.

Common Ground For The Central Valley

Rep. Adam Gray represents California’s 13th District, the heart of the California Central Valley, an agricultural powerhouse that produces 25 percent of the nation’s food and 40 percent of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and table foods. Recently, he passed three bipartisan bills on the House floor. Each bill was introduced with a Republican colleague. Each bill passed with support from both parties. And each bill addresses a real issue for working-class families.

The first bill reauthorizes funding for a telehealth grant program through 2030, helping to ensure that working families in communities like the Central Valley can access medical care remotely. The second protects states from being penalized under environmental rules for wildfire smoke and emissions they cannot control, while preserving broader environmental standards. The third streamlines geothermal energy development to lower energy costs.

In announcing these accomplishments, Rep. Gray laid out his values plainly:

“I came to Congress to get things done for the Central Valley. This shows that despite partisan gridlock and politics as usual in Washington, it is possible to find common ground on issues and deliver meaningful legislation that will expand access to telehealth in rural communities, address wildfire-related air quality challenges, and lower energy costs. I will work with anyone to deliver results and find solutions to the issues facing the Valley.”

Those are Blue Dog values. Rep. Gray didn’t say he’ll work with anyone who agrees with him. Just that he’ll work with anyone on behalf of his constituents in the Central Valley. Rep. Gray demonstrated that bipartisanship and pragmatism are not talking points. They are, in a Republican-controlled Congress, the only viable path to legislating. The alternative is a governing coalition that passes nothing, serves no one, and mistakes moral clarity for political relevance.

Sensible Food Prep Guidelines for Daycares

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who represents Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, is one of the most independent voices in the House. Before coming to Congress, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez co-owned an auto repair and machine shop with her husband. She campaigns and governs from a place of practical knowledge about what working people want. Her bipartisan bill, the Cutting Red Tape on Child Care Providers Act, passed the House earlier this month, and it is almost comically illustrative of what regulatory overreach can look like when it escapes accountability.

The problem is simple. In states across the country, a daycare worker can open a bag of chips for a toddler with no regulatory consequence, but peeling a banana, a healthy snack, can trigger food preparation rules that require additional sink installations. The regulatory structure, designed to protect children’s health, had evolved to treat a banana as a greater liability than processed junk food.

Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez’s bill creates a separate category for foods that pose a low risk for foodborne illness, like peeled fruits and vegetables, so childcare providers are not subject to overburdensome regulation to serve them. The legislation was passed with Republican support. In a video announcing the win, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez said:

“When we have policies that wittingly or unwittingly make Cheetos more accessible to a toddler than fresh fruit, we have a crisis brewing.”

Her framing is important. This is a story about what happens when regulatory systems accumulate without anyone asking whether each layer is still doing what it was meant to do. The banana rule wasn’t designed to harm children. It just did, in practice, by discouraging the people responsible for those children from making the sensible choice. Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez saw the absurdity, worked across the aisle, and passed her bill on the House floor, taking a significant step towards fixing the problem.

That, too, is what pragmatism looks like. Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez is not anti-regulation, but is insistent that standards actually achieve their stated purpose.

No Party On The Water

If you’ve spent any time listening to Rep. Jared Golden, you’ve heard him talk about the lobster industry. He represents Maine’s 2nd District, a vast stretch of forests, mill towns, and coastline where the lobster industry is an economic lifeline. Recently, he secured the Trump White House’s formal support for his legislation to extend a moratorium on new federal regulations affecting lobstermen through 2035.

Rep. Golden had originally won a version of this moratorium in 2022, working with Maine’s bipartisan congressional delegation under the Biden administration. That freeze was set to expire in 2028. The new bill would extend it to 2035.

The Trump administration’s formal support for the bill is, on its face, a striking piece of political alignment. A Democrat from Maine, working with a Republican White House, to protect a working-class industry from regulations its practitioners say are based on flawed modeling rather than conditions on the water. But it shouldn’t be striking. It’s the result of Rep. Golden’s longstanding commitment to putting his constituents above his party. Rep. Golden has been willing to work with this administration on issues where he agrees with their direction. He has also been willing to oppose it. The through-line is not party loyalty but constituent loyalty and loyalty to place. In announcing the win, Rep. Golden plainly stated:

“The need to protect Maine’s iconic lobster industry knows no party. I’m grateful for the President’s support for Maine’s lobstermen and hopeful that my colleagues in the House will join me in quickly passing this bill into law.”

His message deserves to be taken seriously. It is an acknowledgment that when people’s livelihoods are at play, party isn’t. A legislator who can hold that truth, who can cross lines of party identification to serve the people who sent them, is doing something harder and more important than the hollow resistance that many are pursuing instead.

Bipartisan, Pragmatic Governing Is The Only Way

What connects these three stories is not just that Democrats worked with Republicans, or that they passed or received support for commonsense legislation. What connects them is something more structural. Each of these Blue Dogs looked at a specific community facing a specific problem, identified the path most likely to produce relief, and took it, regardless of whether it mapped neatly onto a partisan script.

That is the Blue Dog argument. It is not always a popular argument. In a political environment that rewards purity and punishes deviation, the case for bipartisan, pragmatic governing can be difficult. When Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez introduced her banana bill, people came out against her, launching bad-faith attacks and questioning her motives. In reality, she’s working to fix a rule that was hurting small business owners and making children’s diets worse.

The instinct to read bad faith into every bipartisan bill, to treat every act of governing as an ideological concession, is strong. It has a constituency, and it generates clicks in online echo chambers. It also produces nothing for the daycare worker who can’t afford a second sink.

Telehealth in the Central Valley. A banana in a Washington daycare. A lobster boat still on the water in coastal Maine. These aren’t the kinds of policy priorities that trend. They don’t have an easy villain, they don’t map onto a larger culture war narrative, and they won’t generate the kind of outrage that keeps people glued to their feeds. They’re just things that Blue Dogs are pushing to make life better for working people.

That’s what governing actually looks like.