Two Dems launch bids to unseat Rep. Nick LaLota

Two Democrats have made early entries into the 2026 race to unseat Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) in New York’s First Congressional District.

Chris Gallant, a National Guardsman and former air traffic controller from Amity Harbor, and Lukas Ventouras, a law student from Northport, have both filed with the Federal Elections Commission to challenge LaLota next year. 

Gallant, 36, declared his candidacy earlier this week. He is an Army National Guardsman, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and a volunteer firefighter, he said. He recently resigned from his job as a Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controller to run for Congress, as federal employees are prohibited from running in partisan elections.

“I’m running for Congress because my life has always been sort of grounded in service — service not only in my community here, locally, but also to my country as a whole,” Gallant said in an interview Tuesday.

Ventouras, 24, declared his intent to run late last year, after former CNN host John Avlon lost to LaLota. He is a graduate of New York University and a law student at St. Johns University. He has served as an intern on several Democratic political campaigns and in Rep. Grace Meng’s (D-Queens) office, he said.

“I’m pretty familiar with with what goes on in Suffolk, and I really felt that there was an absence at the federal level of a candidate who was willing to go everywhere, was willing to go to places where they were less welcome, who was willing to maybe articulate the real issues facing people in Suffolk County,” Ventouras said in an interview Wednesday.

The First Congressional District has been held by Republicans since Lee Zeldin upset Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop in 2014. LaLota, a Navy veteran and former Suffolk elections commissioner, was first elected in 2022 and won reelection last year with more than 55% of the vote. 

Republicans currently have a slim majority in the House — 219 seats to Democrats’ 212 — with four seats vacant. Three of those vacancies, which will be filled by upcoming special elections, are in solidly Democratic districts; one is in a solidly Republican district. 

That House majority, as well as a 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate, has allowed President Donald Trump and his allies to enact many of his campaign promises, including the landmark One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law extended large cut taxes that primarily benefit the wealthy, created new tax deductions, cut Medicaid spending, expanded work requirements for food stamps, and increased funding for the military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the law will increase the country’s budget deficit by $3.4 trillion by 2034 and cause roughly 10.9 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage.

Texas lawmakers, at Trump’s request, are currently trying to redraw congressional district lines to give Republican challengers an advantage over incumbent Democrats in five house races next year. Democratic Party leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, have proposed redrawing their own states’ congressional districts to give Democratic challengers an advantage in Republican-held districts, if Texas is successful.

In a statement, LaLota spokesperson Mary O’Hara said the campaign is “confident” heading into 2026, “having worked with our party to secure the border and stood up to our party to quadruple” the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, from $10,000 to $40,000.

O’Hara noted that nonpartisan political analysts with the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections list LaLota’s seat as solidly Republican. The district represents the entire East End and stretches west across most of the northern half of Suffolk County, up to and including Melville.

“With $1.74 million cash on hand, more than double this point two years ago when we still won by 11 against a heavily funded opponent, the wind is at Congressman LaLota’s back,” O’Hara said.

Chris Gallant

Gallant was born in Smithtown. He joined the Army at 17, became an air traffic controller and was deployed to Kuwait in 2012, he said. Upon returning, he became an FAA air traffic controller, most recently guiding flights out of Kennedy Airport.

He joined the Army National Guard in 2019, became a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and was deployed again in 2022, he said. He currently serves in an assault helicopter battalion out of MacArthur Airport, where he has helped protect presidential candidates and respond to the wildfires in Westhampton earlier this year, he said.

While working for the FAA, he served as a local union leader. “Between my union leadership and my leadership in the military, I think that it makes me a really strong candidate,” he said.

“I just feel like overall Congress just isn’t working for the American people,” Galland said. “We need people to start trusting in our government again.”

Gallant said life on Long Island has “gotten completely unaffordable.” Before his last deployment in 2022, “I was able to fill a grocery cart with $150,” he said. Now, “I can’t even fill the grocery bag for $150.” 

“You get sticker shock from that,” he added.

“Far too many people live on the dream of homeownership — even renting right now is out of reach,” Gallant said. “We fix it by cutting red tape, have new construction and expand tax breaks for first-time homebuyers, [and] getting private equity out of the home housing development industry — those are the vital things.”

He said his background in the military and as a volunteer firefighter helps him connect with Republican voters. 

“A lot of those environments are heavily Republican, and I’ve always been able to discuss policies and politics with them, and we’ve always been able to come to the table and come to an agreement,” he said. “And oftentimes a lot of those people have always backed me and I feel that I can do the same thing here in this district.”

Gallant also wants to make Long Island more resilient to extreme weather. “Sandy devastated us, and we’ve almost sort of never recovered,” he said.

He said expanding access to education — especially for in-demand jobs like nurses, teachers and air traffic controllers — would also be a goal, as would restoring recent cuts to Medicaid. 

“I really think that my focus here is to demonstrate to people what it is that I can do for them, because I think that’s what’s important,” Gallant said. “I don’t care that LaLota is a Republican. I care about the things that I can do and the things that I’m going to bring to the table.”

Gallant — like LaLota — lives outside of the First Congressional District. LaLota, who lives in Amityville, said during his first campaign that he would sell his house and would move into the district if elected, but never did, according to publicly available tax records.

Gallant, who lives in Amity Harbor with his fiance Mike, said he would not move into the district if elected. 

“I have built roots here, more particularly the fire department that I’m in — they’re my family, you know? And I always just kind of have been here for a long time now,” he said. “I’ve lived in this house since 2011.” 

“Long Island, and Suffolk County in general, is just like my community,” Gallant added. “I’m right there with thousands of Suffolk County families struggling under the policies of failed politicians. And frankly, Long Island was more concentrated — more concerned — with solving issues, rather than, like, where I live.”

Lukas Ventouras

Ventouras is the son of Greek immigrants and has lived in Suffolk County his entire life, he said. He aspires to be an immigration or civil rights lawyer and has worked for Long Island civil rights attorney Frederick Brewington, he said. While at NYU, he founded a chapter of Students Demand Action, a national organization that advocates for stricter gun laws. He also worked for Mediaite, a politics and media news website, 

At the core of his campaign, he said, is advocating for policies that will help “working people and middle-class families.” To him, that means supporting unions, expanding worker protections and raising wages. 

“Your job — the salary you make — is intrinsically tied to cost of living and your quality of life, especially for people my age and just people across Long Island as a whole,” Ventouras said. “It’s something that people really struggle with.”

Ventouras said he’s trying to represent a constituency that “have felt like they’ve been unheard” by the party. He criticized local Democrats for always running “a Republican-lite campaign” in the district. Running as a “true Democrat” and being more aggressive in messaging the party’s ideas will inspire turnout, he said.

“I think we have a lot of people in Suffolk that are frustrated with Democrats playing with an older playbook, and not realizing that we’re fighting against Republicans who have thrown out the playbook,” he said.

“We are not the radical ones, and we are not the scary ones,” he added. “We are the people who care about cost of living. We are the people who care about the cost of health care.”

Ventouras said he is working to win over small business owners, who typically vote Republican. 

“The promises [Republicans] make for Main Street are not in line with their actions, and the promises that Democrats make for Main Street are in line with our actions,” he said.

A major policy goal for Ventouras is restoring recent cuts made to Medicare by Republicans, as well as protecting and expanding Social Security benefits. He said he also wants to ban stock trading in Congress, fight to remove “dark money” from politics, and ban former politicians from becoming lobbyists.

“I think that we need to be bold, and I think that we need to have a good strategy. And we can’t just try and rest on the fact that Trump is self destructive, to try and hope and pray that it carries us to winning a seat,” he said. “We as Democrats need to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work and be humble. And that’s really what I want my campaign to embody.”

Gallant and Ventouras are the only two candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination so far. Avlon, who had not immediately ruled out a second challenge to LaLota, announced Friday that he would not run again.