East Hampton Star: "Avlon: A Man for the Moment"

Please read and share [John Avlon for Congress]( {NAME}, If you’re looking for something that sums up this entire campaign, everything we’re working for, and what casting a vote for John Avlon really means, [give this editorial from the East Hampton Star a read.]( Then, please forward this email to someone in the district who needs to read it >>   It’s been a long, long time since we actually were amped about a candidate for political office, but we are very much amped for John Avlon as a stellar candidate here in the First Congressional District. Have you seen this guy? Go over to YouTube and have a look at his interview with Marcia Kramer on CBS’s “The Point,” or call up Molly Jong-Fast’s “Fast Politics” podcast episode from Feb. 28. Our enthusiasm for the former CNN anchor, who lives in Sag Harbor, isn’t just because we’re journalists and he comes to public service from the journalism world. (He was editor in chief of The Daily Beast and co-edited an anthology of great newspaper columns, of all things!) It isn’t even based on the fact that he’s a historian, having written books on both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and we’re history nerds over here in the Star office. We believe you — common-sense voters, whether Republican, Democrat, or independent — will choose to vote for Mr. Avlon because he’s very smart, he’s charismatic, yes, but, more to the point, he has spent decades thinking about the best ways to combat political polarization. You may not agree with Mr. Avlon on every single policy point, and neither do we. But we 100 percent agree with him on the critically urgent issues of today. First and foremost, we need to break the fever dream of conspiracy-think or we will sleepwalk into a dictatorship. Second, we need to redress the divides that have riven America in the last few years — economically, the polarization between the haves and have-nots, and, politically, the polarization between rationality and radicalization in Washington. Mr. Avlon draws a connection between what he calls “the hollowing out of our political center” and the hollowing out of the American middle class. His message about “the revolt of the reasonable” is powerful and, having done his homework, he is genuinely passionate in his embrace of bipartisanship. He literally wrote the book: “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America,” published back in 2010, was mighty prescient. Mr. Avlon’s opponent, the incumbent Nick LaLota, is no bridge-builder. Representative LaLota doesn’t believe in bipartisanship. We know this as a fact not just because he is, to use Mr. Avlon’s phrase, “a Trump-hugger,” but because of his behavior around the bipartisan border security bill. Representative LaLota put party loyalty before actually fixing the border problem. Mr. Avlon was an independent before becoming a Democrat and worked for Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s as a speechwriter and, in other years and in other Americas, those facts may have been disqualifying to some Democrats. But if the civic trauma of the last few years has taught us anything, it’s that our republic is far more fragile than we knew. We need elected representatives who are willing to step away from the brink and work together. In this moment, we need to be adults in the voting booth. All voters with common sense, all those who are turned off by the radical and wacky reality-television-esque direction politics has taken over the last 10 years, should vote for Mr. Avlon on Nov. 5. Don’t forget, CD-1 was blue not that long ago. Tim Bishop of Southampton held the seat for six terms. Flip it, John Avlon, flip it. Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. This is our fight, and in November, we’re going to send Nick LaLota packing. That’s the goal. [Help us get there by forwarding this to a friend >>]( -Avlon for Congress PAID FOR BY JOHN AVLON FOR CONGRESS John Avlon for Congress PO Box 1200 Sag Harbor, NY 11963 United States If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please [unsubscribe](.