A sitting Democratic congressman has done something almost unheard of in today’s Congress: he publicly endorsed a Republican for reelection, and did it in writing, under his own name, in a local newspaper.
Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, a centrist Democrat who announced last November that he would not seek another term, published an op-ed in Lohud on Monday endorsing Rep. Mike Lawler, the Republican who holds one of the most competitive House seats in the country. Golden called Lawler a “true partner” and said he “strongly” backs the New York congressman’s reelection bid.
The endorsement landed in a political environment where a single seat could determine which party controls the House. And it drew an immediate, sharp response from Democratic leadership.
Golden framed the endorsement as a parting statement about what Congress can look like when members stop performing for cameras and start legislating. In the op-ed, he wrote:
“When I announced last fall that I would not seek reelection, I wrote about the incivility and plain nastiness that are now common in our politics, and about a Congress that too often rewards ego and division over patience and determination. I stand by all of it. But there is another side to the story, and before I leave office I want to tell it.”
The story he wanted to tell centered on the Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act, a bill Golden and Lawler co-led. For decades, federal regulators stacked rules on Maine’s lobster fleet in the name of protecting the North Atlantic right whale. Golden wrote that the state’s fishermen “did their part and then some.” Then in 2021, the federal government issued a new round of restrictions that Golden described as “built on worst-case assumptions instead of real data.”
A federal appeals court unanimously vacated those restrictions. Congress followed with a six-year pause on new regulations and funding for better science. But that pause expires at the end of 2028, and Golden said the research it paid for “still has not been fully worked into the government’s models.”
The Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act would extend the regulatory pause until 2035. It passed the House Natural Resources Committee in July and recently cleared the full House floor with bipartisan support. The New York Post reported the bill protects an estimated 18,000 fishing jobs.
What made the collaboration notable, Golden stressed, is that there is “not a single lobster boat” in Lawler’s New York district. Lawler had no parochial reason to help. He did it anyway.
Golden made clear this was not a single-issue gesture. He cited at least two additional instances of bipartisan work with Lawler over the past two years. One involved collective bargaining rights for federal employees. After the Trump Administration removed those rights, Golden introduced a bill to restore them. Lawler signed on without hesitation.
Golden put a fine point on it in the op-ed:
“That is how Congress is supposed to work: members of different parties set aside their disagreements, find a problem that matters to the country and fix it. And it was not a one-off. Twice more in the past two years, when something needed doing and party lines stood in the way, I found Lawler across the aisle. When the Trump Administration took away collective bargaining for federal employees, I introduced a bill restoring their rights. Lawler didn’t even take convincing.”
That willingness to cross lines when the substance warranted it, from both men, is exactly the kind of conduct voters say they want and rarely get. Just The News reported that Golden described Lawler as someone who “would rather pass a bill with the other party than score a point against it.”
Lawler responded on X, thanking Golden and calling him “a servant leader, who has fought tirelessly for his district.” He added: “Time and again when we needed bipartisan compromise, Jared was always there ready to deliver. I’m honored to have earned his support.”
In a separate statement cited by the Washington Examiner, Lawler said the two men “share a firm belief that what’s best for the people should come before one’s party, and that if more members on both sides of the aisle took that approach more often, the country would be better off for it.”
Democratic leadership was not charmed. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dismissed Lawler as “an unadulterated phony who has never shown bipartisan courage when it matters.” The speed and force of Jeffries’s response tells you how much the endorsement stung. When a member of your own caucus, even a retiring one, tells voters in a battleground district to reelect the Republican, it undercuts the entire campaign narrative.
Lawler holds New York’s 17th District, one of only three Republican-held seats in the country that Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Democrats have targeted it as a must-win. Golden’s endorsement complicates that math in ways no outside spending can easily offset.
Cross-party endorsements between sitting House members are vanishingly rare. The modern incentive structure in Congress punishes them. Donors pull back. Leadership freezes you out of committee assignments. Social media mobs descend. Golden, freed from reelection pressure, had nothing left to lose, and chose to spend that freedom on an act of political honesty rather than a quiet exit.
That choice carries weight precisely because it cuts against the grain. In a chamber where razor-thin votes and party splits have become routine, the norm is to hold the line, not break it. Golden broke it publicly, in print, with his name on it.
It also highlights a broader pattern of fractures within the Democratic coalition. The party has struggled to hold its centrist wing as leadership pushes further left on regulatory and spending priorities. Golden’s departure from the House is itself a data point, a moderate Democrat who decided the institution wasn’t worth staying in.
He is not the only Democrat whose recent moves have unsettled the party. Michigan Democrat Mallory McMorrow’s exit from her Senate race signaled similar internal tensions. And when Chuck Schumer folded during the government shutdown fight, handing Republicans a political win, it exposed a caucus that cannot always hold its own members in line when the pressure mounts.
Meanwhile, the willingness of members on both sides to occasionally cross the aisle, whether it’s House Republicans joining Democrats on an Iran war powers resolution or Golden backing Lawler, suggests that the appetite for bipartisan legislating hasn’t disappeared entirely. It has just been driven underground by leadership that punishes it.
Lost in the political drama is the substance of the bill that brought Golden and Lawler together. The Northeast Lobstermen Protection Act addresses a real problem: federal regulators imposing restrictions on a working industry based on what Golden called “worst-case assumptions” rather than sound science. A federal appeals court agreed, unanimously tossing the 2021 rules.
Congress responded with a temporary pause and research funding. But the research hasn’t been fully incorporated into the government’s models, and the pause runs out in 2028. Without the extension to 2035, Maine’s lobster fleet, and the 18,000 jobs tied to it, faces the prospect of new regulations built on the same flawed foundation the court already rejected.
Lawler’s involvement is the kind of thing that rarely makes national headlines but matters to the people who live with the consequences. A New York Republican with no lobster boats in his district helped pass a bill protecting Maine fishing families because it was the right thing to do. Golden noticed. And he said so.
Jeffries’s dismissal of Lawler as a “phony” who lacks “bipartisan courage” is worth examining against the record. Lawler co-led a bipartisan bill to protect a fishing industry outside his own district. He backed a Democratic colleague’s bill to restore collective bargaining rights. The bill passed the House with bipartisan support.
Jeffries offered a label. Golden offered a legislative record. Voters in New York’s 17th District can decide which one carries more weight.
The Democratic leader’s fury is understandable in tactical terms. Every competitive seat matters when margins are this thin. But the response itself, attacking a colleague’s endorsement rather than engaging on the substance, illustrates the very dynamic Golden described in his op-ed: a Congress that rewards ego and division over patience and determination.
Golden is leaving Congress. He has no campaign to run, no donors to please, no leadership ladder to climb. He used his remaining time to tell voters that a Republican across the aisle earned his respect through legislation, not posturing. That carries a credibility that no super PAC ad can buy.
Whether it moves votes in the 17th District remains to be seen. But the endorsement itself is a rebuke, not of any single party, but of a political culture that treats cooperation as betrayal and loyalty as the only virtue.
When a Democrat has to retire before he feels free to say a Republican did good work, the problem isn’t the endorsement. It’s the system that made it so rare.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.