Tag: CIVPAC Endorsement

CIVPAC Endorses Bridget Brink and Callie Barr in Michigan

Stylized outline of Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas over a lakeshore landscape with trees and water.

CIVPAC has endorsed two Democratic congressional candidates in Michigan: Bridget Brink in the 7th Congressional District and Callie Barr in the 1st Congressional District.

The districts are different, and neither candidate should be treated as a generic national Democrat. Both bring experience particularly relevant to the people they seek to represent.

Bridget Brink — Michigan’s 7th District

Bridget Brink is a career diplomat and former United States ambassador to Ukraine. She served under presidents of both parties and represented the United States in Kyiv during Russia’s invasion. She resigned from government after concluding that the Trump administration was placing pressure on Ukraine while accommodating Russia.

Brink brings seriousness, integrity and extensive national-security experience to a competitive central Michigan district. At a time when American alliances and democratic values are under pressure, Congress needs members who understand both the human consequences of aggression and the strategic importance of resisting it.

Her career also demonstrates that public service need not begin with partisan ambition. She spent decades representing the United States before seeking elective office.

Read CIVPAC’s full endorsement of Bridget Brink.

Callie Barr — Michigan’s 1st District

Callie Barr is a military spouse, veteran advocate, teacher and attorney seeking to represent northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Her campaign emphasizes affordability, health care, housing, energy costs and the practical needs of families who often feel overlooked by Washington.

Barr’s understanding of military families is particularly relevant in a region with a strong tradition of service. She also offers Democrats an opportunity to compete in a difficult district with a candidate whose biography and priorities are grounded in the community rather than in national ideological politics.

An endorsement is not merely a prediction about who is most likely to win. Sometimes it is also a statement that a serious candidate is making the right kind of argument in a place where that argument needs to be heard.

Read CIVPAC’s full endorsement of Callie Barr.

Brink and Barr represent two important forms of public service: international leadership in defense of American interests and practical advocacy for families at home. CIVPAC is pleased to endorse both.

CIVPAC’s 2026 Virginia Endorsement: Elaine Luria for Congress

Stylized outline of Virginia with layered Blue Ridge–style mountains and trees in the background.

CIVPAC has endorsed former Representative Elaine Luria in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.

Luria brings an unusual combination of military experience, legislative experience and demonstrated commitment to constitutional government. Before entering Congress, she served for 20 years as a Navy officer. In the House, she developed a reputation for seriousness on national security and later served on the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. She is now seeking to reclaim the district she represented from 2019 through 2022.

CIVPAC does not expect to agree with Luria on every issue. We would, of course, prefer a true centrist, but she represents the kind of center-left leadership the country needs: pragmatic, experienced, internationally engaged and willing to place constitutional responsibility ahead of immediate political convenience.

Virginia’s 2nd District includes a large military and veteran population and deserves a representative who understands both national defense and the obligations that accompany public power. Elaine Luria has demonstrated that understanding.

Read CIVPAC’s full endorsement of Elaine Luria.

CIVPAC’s endorsements are not offered as kingmaking exercises. We recognize that we do not have that kind of influence. They are public markers: statements about the kind of politics we believe deserves support and the kind of politics we believe should be resisted.

CIVPAC Endorses Three Pragmatic Democrats in Washington

Stylized outline of Washington state with evergreen forests, mountains, and water in the background.

CIVPAC has endorsed three Democratic members of Congress in Washington state: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Adam Smith and Marilyn Strickland.

They represent different districts and different styles of leadership, but all three demonstrate that Democratic politics need not be dominated by its most ideological voices.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — Washington’s 3rd District

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez represents a politically difficult district in southwest Washington. A small-business owner with roots in the skilled trades, she has developed a reputation for independence, practical problem-solving and a willingness to depart from her party when she believes her district requires it. She won a Republican-leaning district in 2022 and expanded her margin in 2024.

CIVPAC does not endorse every departure from party leadership merely because it is independent. We endorse Gluesenkamp Perez because her independence generally reflects the interests of the people she represents.

Read CIVPAC’s full endorsement of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

Adam Smith — Washington’s 9th District

Adam Smith is an experienced legislator and one of the Democratic Party’s most knowledgeable voices on national security. He has represented Washington in Congress since 1997 and currently serves as the leading Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Smith combines a broadly center-left domestic outlook with a realistic understanding of alliances, military power and America’s international responsibilities. At a time when parts of both parties are tempted by isolationism or ideological simplification, that experience matters.

Read CIVPAC’s full endorsement of Adam Smith.

Marilyn Strickland — Washington’s 10th District

Marilyn Strickland brings executive experience, practical judgment and close attention to the military families, veterans, workers and businesses of Washington’s South Sound. She is seeking a fourth term in Congress.

Strickland is a pragmatic Democrat who understands that public programs must deliver visible results. Her attention to infrastructure, economic opportunity and the quality of life of servicemembers and their families makes her a strong fit for her district.

Read CIVPAC’s full endorsement of Marilyn Strickland.

These three endorsements do not suggest that the candidates are identical or that CIVPAC approves every vote they cast. They reflect our belief that the Democratic Party and the country need experienced national-security voices, pragmatic representatives of competitive districts and legislators focused on making government work.

Mamdani’s Congressional Slate and the Democratic Brand

Symbolic solar system illustration showing MAGA and “Blue MAGA” planets breaking away from their orbits.

AI-generated symbolic illustration of MAGA and “Blue MAGA” breaking political orbit.

CIVPAC has endorsed Representative Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District.

When CIVPAC began, we expected much of our work to involve supporting center-left and center-right candidates in primaries, with the hope of nudging both parties toward the political center. That task has changed. Increasingly, CIVPAC finds itself supporting conventional left-wing or right-wing candidates against more extreme alternatives that, not long ago, would have seemed unlikely to gain serious traction in American politics.

When this effort began, through CIVPAC’s predecessor organization, the New Independent Party, the national political world was still recognizable. The 2012 presidential race was Mitt Romney against Barack Obama. CIVPAC would have had criticisms of both candidates, but both were serious, constitutional, mainstream figures. The distance between that world and today’s politics explains why CIVPAC’s task has changed.

Espaillat is not a centrist Democrat. He is a mainstream progressive Democrat with a reliable party-line voting record. But the question in NY-13 is not whether voters should choose a centrist over a progressive. The question is whether Democratic primary voters should replace an experienced incumbent with Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic-socialist challenger backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

That race is part of a larger pattern. Mamdani has endorsed three congressional candidates in New York: Avila Chevalier in NY-13, Brad Lander in NY-10, and Claire Valdez in NY-7. CIVPAC is not making endorsements in all three races at this time. But the slate matters because it has become a national signal about the direction of the Democratic Party in its most heavily Democratic urban districts.

Deep-blue primaries are not politically isolated. New York City helps shape the Democratic Party’s national brand. When candidates running on democratic-socialist, movement-left politics become the face of the party in highly visible urban districts, voters outside New York notice. So do Republican media and campaign strategists.

If Democrats believe Mamdani’s strategy and the candidates he is backing are likely to succeed nationally, they should ask why Fox News is so eager to make that strategy visible to voters outside New York City.

CIVPAC does not object to new candidates merely because they are new. Parties need competition, new voices, and serious challenges to complacency. Nor does CIVPAC believe incumbents are entitled to renomination. But not every insurgency is an improvement.

This is one of those situations. The work now feels less like gently nudging the parties toward the center than trying to keep the planets from being flung out of the solar system.

Our concern is the road to “Blue MAGA.” We do not mean that left-wing populism and Trumpism are identical. They are not. But both can reward tribal certainty, ideological escalation, contempt for persuasion, and the belief that political intensity is a substitute for broad public appeal.

In NY-13, CIVPAC believes the better choice is clear. Representative Espaillat is not a CIVPAC ideal candidate, but he offers experience, institutional knowledge, and continuity. Replacing him with a movement-left challenger would strengthen the very tendency CIVPAC has warned about: the temptation to make deep-blue urban politics the face of the national Democratic Party.

That is bad politics for Democrats and bad politics for the country.

CIVPAC therefore endorses Representative Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary for the U.S. House in New York’s 13th Congressional District.