John Avlon, a former longtime editor and CNN commentator, has recently found himself in an unfamiliar role as he sits for interviews to discuss his new campaign to flip a Republican-held swing seat on Long Island.

The moderate Democrat, who jumped into the primary in New York’s 1st Congressional District last week, has long been involved in politics, albeit mostly behind the scenes. Early in his career, he served as a speechwriter for then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and more recently helped to launch the centrist group No Labels, with which he is no longer affiliated.

But even as Avlon acknowledges that there is “a natural tension between journalism and politics,” the first-time candidate says that he has “always believed they should be complementary,” citing Teddy Roosevelt’s work as a columnist for The Outlook magazine after he served as president.

“That’s a great tradition that I don’t mind helping to rekindle,” Avlon, 51, said in an interview with Jewish Insider this week. “You should be involved in both because you care about the country, you care about your community, you want to engage in the civic conversation, you want to make it smarter — and you want to offer solutions.”

In his quest to unseat Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY), a vulnerable freshman Republican in Suffolk County whose district covers a large swath of eastern Long Island, Avlon claims the incumbent is “too far” and “too right,” while accusing him of embracing former President Donald Trump and rejecting bipartisan legislation “because he’s not interested in solving problems.”

“The core of my message is that we need to build the broadest possible coalition to defeat Donald Trump, defend our democracy and win back the House from his MAGA minions,” said Avlon, who has long been an outspoken critic of Trump. “The border security bill with attached funding for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan is a perfect example of that,” he added, calling GOP efforts to block the aid “a total dereliction of duty.”

Avlon, a self-described policy “wonk,” was eager to delve into what he described as “common-sense” Democratic proposals, such as restoring state and local tax deductions, expanding child tax credits and mitigating climate change, among other things. “My rule when I was a columnist,” said Avlon, who helped revive The Daily Beast before joining CNN in 2018 as an anchor and political analyst, “was I didn’t want to criticize unless I had a solution.”

In conversations with voters, he said he has also learned that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is a “top area of concern,” an issue he approaches with characteristic pragmatism. “We need to focus on the underlying principles so that we can depolarize this issue while being true to our values and any sense of perspective,” he said, calling himself “very strongly pro-Israel.”

“I’m strongly pro-Israel for a lot of reasons having to do with democracy, the fact that they’re one of America’s closest allies in the world, and there’s an enormous number of connections between our two countries and particularly our communities here in New York and on eastern Long Island,” Avlon said. 

But having lived through Sept. 11 “up close,” he clarified, “when you see a community and a country as viciously attacked by such a horrific and barbaric act of terrorism as Oct. 7 was, there’s no room for neutrality.”

“The fact that there was an impulse to blame the victims, that we saw antisemitism seeping out in college campuses and protests, it’s something that should concern us and it should be a wake-up call,” said Avlon, who has raised concerns about rising antisemitism in his CNN commentary. “You don’t blame the victim in the wake of a terrorist attack. You help the people who’ve been attacked.”

Speaking with JI a day before some Democratic voters in Michigan cast their ballots for “uncommitted” to protest President Joe Biden’s support for Israel, Avlon, who saw the effort as ultimately misguided, lamented that Israel had not always been “as polarizing as it is today.” 

The former journalist credited that shift, in part, to critics of Israel who “forget that being pro-Israel is not synonymous with supporting” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies. “That’s made it a more partisan, polarizing issue than it should be or has to be or has historically been,” he said. 

A longtime observer of Israeli politics who counts Yitzhak Rabin as one of his “great heroes,” Avlon describes himself as a “Benny Gantz-Yair Lapid kind of guy,” invoking two prominent Israeli leaders on the center-left. “Those are my politics,” Avlon said, noting that he was “inspired by” mass protests in Israel opposing Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul that took place before Hamas’ attacks.

Despite his reservations with Netanyahu and his far-right government, however, Avlon insisted that “now is the time to rally around Israel and around democracy,” arguing that “there is absolutely no scenario we’ve seen where the Palestinian people are well-served by a Hamas-led government, which is supporting terrorism and itself as a proxy force.”

Even as Democratic lawmakers have increasingly grown divided over the war, Avlon said his own models for approaching the conflict are Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), two leading progressives who have unequivocally backed Israel as the war has continued. “I really think that Fetterman and Torres have set exactly the right tone,” he said. “It’s just enormously important to keep your moral compass clear.”

“That’s the way we need to shake up our politics,” he said, proposing a centrist framework for confronting what he characterized as rising illiberalism on the left and right. “I think you need to be consistent with your principles and that itself is clarifying. If know who you are, if you know what you believe and if you have a record to show it, if you’re rooted in American history, which is one of my loves as an author and historian, I think that provides a lot of clarity in otherwise chaotic and confusing times — and that’s what I’ll draw on.”

Before he can challenge LaLota in November, Avlon must first advance past the primary, where his top rival, Nancy Goroff, a Jewish Democrat backed by the left-leaning Israel advocacy group J Street, had been seen as a front-runner, having raised just over $600,000 last quarter. 

The primary field narrowed on Wednesday, when former state Sen. Jim Gaughran announced he was dropping out of the race and endorsed Avlon, whom he called “the only Democrat” capable of building a “winning coalition of Long Island families from the heart of Huntington to the tip of Montauk.”

Still, Avlon is likely to face attacks from opponents in both parties over his past ties to Republicans as well as his relatively limited history in the district. In 2017, he purchased a home in Sag Harbor with his wife, Margaret Hoover, a conservative talk show host. 

The day he announced his campaign last week, Republicans were ready to pounce, calling Avlon a “Manhattan elitist” and a “smug liberal hack,” among other jabs. 

To Avlon, however, such taunts have been validating. “I think they’re scared because they hadn’t expected that they’d have a competitive race on their hands,” he told JI. “But they know if I work hard enough and I’m lucky enough to win the nomination, that they’ll have a real race on their hands, and they weren’t betting that.”

While Avlon is a familiar face to some voters in the district, thanks to his frequent TV appearances and long career in media, he said there is growing energy behind his campaign because his message is resonating.   

“Some people know me from Bill Maher, they know me from CNN, maybe they’ve read my books,” he said. “I’d like to think that’s a part of it. But I think they’re excited about the prospect, and that in turn invigorates me.”