Many of us in 2026 have been stunned into inaction. However politically vibrant we may have been in decades past — perhaps we marched noisily with drums and signs to halt the proliferation of nuclear warheads, or held living-room gatherings in support of women’s reproductive rights, or even dumped tea into Three Mile Harbor in the name of the Tea Party revolt — we have for a couple of years now been flopping around, confused and overwhelmed, like so many cold-stunned sea turtles, washed up on our backs.
We’re two administrations into the dismantling of American democracy, and things have gotten both radical and weird. Who had “Lake America” or testosterone testing for the military on their bingo card? Raise your hand if you remember “tariffs on penguins,” or the fiasco of Four Seasons Total Landscaping? Who said what, now, about buying Greenland from Denmark?
Further inspiring, well, non-inspiration — the entropy whispering in our ear that we should sit this one out — is the evident boringness of this particular midterm election cycle. Governor Hochul versus Bruce Blakeman? Yawn. It’s not exactly a nail-biter. Here in East Hampton Town, we don’t even have a supervisor’s race on the ballot to get us up off the couch.
But do not be deceived: Perhaps never before has a midterm election been so important. That’s not hyperbole. Voters in C.D. 1 need to get up off their keisters on Nov. 3 and vote for Christopher Gallant.
First and foremost, patriotic Americans on both sides of the political aisle — those who believe in our system of government — need to shake themselves awake and cast their vote in support of the basic concept of checks and balances. Since President Trump took office for the second time, Congress has flat-out abdicated its role as one of the three equal branches of government, acquiescing to the executive branch and kowtowing to the White House. Our current representative in the House, Nick LaLota, is a Republican Party man who will never assert Congress’s independence or vote against the mad king. Vote for Mr. Gallant.
Next is the independence of the judicial branch. Second verse, same as the first: Both the Justice Department and the Supreme Court have become politicized, radicalized, and subservient to the executive branch. It’s the Senate that votes on Supreme Court nominees, not the House, but the House does have power in controlling and checking the judiciary. Congress, as a whole, could for example change the number of justices who sit on the Supreme Court; Congress, too, can challenge any law resulting from a Supreme Court ruling. Vote for Mr. Gallant.
And Congress holds the purse strings. Shocked by the needless, anti-intellectual self-inflicted wound of the Trump administration’s defunding of scientific research? Vote for Mr. Gallant. Displeased with wild schemes to allow the pillaging of our glorious and pristine national parks for private businesses’ profit? Vote for Mr. Gallant.
The elephant in the room isn’t just the G.O.P. pachyderm, of course, it’s the less-than-thrilling profile of Mr. Gallant as a candidate. Newsday went wishy-washy on Tuesday and declined to endorse either Representative LaLota or Mr. Gallant, writing that the latter is “unprepared for Congress” and “knows little about how the legislative process works.” We at The Star were less than impressed that Mr. Gallant refused invitations to debate his opponent. So, no, he may not be the best challenger we’ve ever seen (that would be the estimable John Avlon) or the best conceivable person for the job, but he’s what we’ve got and this is no time to waffle. This is an emergency. It’s not an exaggeration that if this midterm goes south, we may not get another chance again to steer the country back from the brink of authoritarianism.