The John Avlon Endorsement

Avlon has been fighting extremism throughout his career and will bring commonsense governance to Congress.

During the 2022 cycle, Welcome identified the top Democratic overperformers when we supported Will Rollins and Adam Frisch. Since then, we’ve worked to perfect a formula for how Democrats can take on and beat MAGA incumbents in districts that the party’s formal machinery doesn’t deem competitive, in an effort to build out an expanded “Red to Blue” target list. Give or take a few elements, we’ve found that this formula boils down to three critical components: a center-right district, a villainous extremist Republican, and a dynamic moderate Democratic challenger who elevates all that is wrong with MAGA – and right with Democrats.

John Avlon in New York’s First Congressional District is such a candidate. Avlon, a journalist who has covered the rise of extremism in America as well as the hope centrists offer to our nation’s democracy, never planned to be a candidate. But when he saw a district Trump only narrowly won in 2020 be only lightly contested in the 2022 midterm election, he decided to take action and bring Nick LaLota real competition in this purple eastern Long Island district. We’re proud to add him to this year’s Win The Middle slate as he works to practice democracy in New York. 

Avlon has authored multiple books, including two whose titles make Welcome hearts sing: Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. At the start of his career, he was a speechwriter for Mayor Rudy Giuliani at a time when Rudy was “America’s Mayor.” Avlon also helped found No Labels back in 2010 when the group was intended to navigate the tricky business of centrist problem-solving instead of the chaos-enhancing effort it has evolved into.

This is a Welcome candidate.

At first glance, NY-01 appears to be just outside of the range of districts Democrats can successfully contest, as Trump won the district as redrawn under the post-2020 Census redistricting by 1.8 points. But by offering the Welcome brand of Democrat in a competitive district, Avlon can send Republican freshman Congressman Nick LaLota back home. 

Welcome Track Record of Picking Overperformers And Our Process

Welcome has an excellent track record of finding the races that pundits and race-raters miss. In 2022, we targeted two races, Colorado’s 3rd and California’s 41st — districts that pundits and race-raters said were “safe” Republican seats. We recognized that the incumbents, Lauren Boebert and Ken Calvert, are embracing the politics of the extremist right, which don’t represent the interests or sentiments of their constituents. 

Adam Frisch and Will Rollins are two moderate, pragmatic Democrats committed to welcoming people into the Democratic coalition – not to turning voters away with purity-test politics. With strong candidates like them, these districts became tightly contested battlegrounds. Frisch’s strong performance led Boebert to seek employment elsewhere in a more reliably Republican district, while CA-41 has become one of the most closely contested races in the country.  

This year, we put together a group of advisers from the center-left and right. We solicited input from dozens of practitioners and analysts. We pored over national data and talked to on-the-ground experts to deepen our analysis of the races. We followed local media to determine which incumbents were getting out of touch with their districts. 

We look for those aforementioned criteria as we continue to build out our slate of endorsements for the 2024 cycle:

• Under-the-radar districts. It’s a fact: politicos understate the variance in politics. This leaves them vulnerable to missing districts that are outside of the traditional bounds of party competition, races like Boebert’s and Calvert’s as well as races like Alaska’s At-Large seat that Mary Peltola won, Jared Golden’s Maine district and Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez’s Washington seat.

• Non-traditional Democrats who welcome independents and moderates. The theory that you can “mobilize” your way to victory has been a proven failure everywhere it has been tried. The path to victory is distinguishing yourself from the national brand of the Democratic Party and welcoming moderate Republicans and independents into the anti-authoritarian coalition.

• Extremist incumbents. To pull moderate voters into the Democratic Party, we need a push in the form of extremist Republicans. That’s why we look for Republicans who are out of touch with their voters, pushing voters to consider moderate options. Rendering themselves even more beatable, extremists like Lauren Boebert have made the districts they represent ripe for disruption with their antics. 

New York’s First has every one of these crucial components.

Why John Avlon Can Win

Avlon has spent his career fighting extremism and polarization. He volunteered for Clinton in the 1990s and helped found No Labels in 2010, but left in 2013 to run The Daily Beast. He has raised concerns about the No Labels approach to centrism and is instead embracing the Welcome brand of moderation: building a faction within a party.

Avlon’s book, Wingnuts, is an in-depth exploration of how the polarizing extremes are destroying American politics, and his experience researching the Tea Party and 9/11 Truthers has prepared him better than most for the MAGA era. He’s committed to winning the middle, focused on public safety and a centrist approach to immigration. Avlon wrote speeches for Mayor Rudy Guilani before the former mayor’s more recent descent into the type of “wingut” politics Avlon has written on. Avlon has been inspired by Tom Suozzi, who won a solid victory running to the center on immigration:

Avlon thinks he’s in a position to mimic Suozzi’s playbook and run to the center — progressives be damned. “This is an area, where, because of my experience working for Rudy, I know crime policy, how to play off these issues,” said Avlon. “Quality of life matters, and public safety is a fundamental civil right. We shouldn’t forget that. Democrats need to share that. They’re tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. Remember who wrote the Crime Bill back in the 1990s. It was Joe Biden, passed under Bill Clinton, with some Republican support. It wasn’t perfect, but it was effective.”

This is the type of politician we need to see more in American politics. 

The District

The New York First knows how to swing. Biden won New York’s First Congressional District by 1.8 percent in 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul lost it by 16 in '22 but former Governor Andrew Cuomo won it by 1.8 points in '18. Schumer also won by 9.8 in '18, while Gillibrand lost by 11.4 in '22. It’s a swingy district that clearly cares about candidate quality. 

Avlon’s primary opponent was the Democratic nominee in 2020, losing by 10 points in a district that Biden only lost by 4 points on the same ballot, in the district’s previous boundaries.

This district needs a candidate who will win over swing voters, not lose them. It’s important to get involved early in this primary so we don’t repeat the primary problem mistakes of another prominent New York district.

Luckily, Democratic primary voters largely want the same thing swing voters want: pragmatic candidates who can clearly communicate shared values to win the middle.

The Incumbent

Nick LaLota, the current incumbent, doesn’t even live in the district, instead he is from Amityville. In 2020, he was disqualified from running for the state senate due to “obvious conflict of interest” because he was simultaneously the election commissioner tasked with overseeing the election. As a candidate, he advocated for “abolishing the Amityville Police Department” and cutting police wages to save money.

When Kevin McCarthy was ousted, LaLota and other Republican moderates had a golden opportunity to elect a moderate speaker, instead electing speaker Mike Johnson. 

New York’s first deserves a member committed to bipartisanship, and that’s John Avlon, not Nick LaLota. 

Join Us

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