A former member of Congress, who pulled off a rare win for a Democrat in Utah, is drawing early support from an influential national political action committee as new political boundaries offer an unexpected chance to pick up a seat in the deep-red state.

Former Rep. Ben McAdams is being touted by Welcome PAC, which backs more moderate candidates over progressives, for what is expected to be a newly created district, according to an email obtained by Blue Light News.

“Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. But it’s usually the best clue we’ve got,” says the fundraising email, which was expected to be distributed to Democrats nationwide on Friday. “Ben McAdams is a superstar.”

The email offers the early contours of a race that could help Democrats as they try to retake the House in the midterms — an effort that has been complicated by a nationwide redistricting war set in motion by President Donald Trump’s push to have Texas draw new congressional boundaries.

Democrats could pick up one or two seats under newly drawn lines in Utah under a redistricting fight that was underway before Trump pressured Texas and set off a wave of gerrymandering in states led by Republicans and Democrats, including Indiana and California.

The court-ordered map in Utah would provide Democrats with a somewhat improved chance of victory in the state: A Salt Lake Tribune analysis pegs the most competitive redrawn districts at R +6 and R+11, well below the 23+ point margins Democrats faced in federal races in 2024.

In 2018, McAdams unseated the late Rep. Mia Love, who won her previous election in the district by 12 points. In 2020, he lost by 1 percentage point to Republican Burgess Owens.

McAdams has not launched a campaign, but filed a statement of candidacy earlier this month with the FEC, allowing him to begin raising money. He is expected to announce a bid once a map is finalized, according to two people with direct knowledge of his thinking. The former lawmaker declined to comment.

“He’s clearly the strongest candidate Dems have had anywhere in nearly a decade,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of Welcome PAC. “We want to take this bigger platform we have and clearly say that he should run — and that people who are listening to our view of the party should show that encouragement by contributing to his campaign account.”

McAdams isn’t the only name in the mix. The slate of potential primary candidates includes 2024 Senate candidate Caroline Gleich, state Sens. Kathleen Riebe and Nate Blouin, and 2022 Senate candidate Kael Weston. None have formally entered the race.

Welcome PAC has been making waves in center-left politics since Trump’s reelection. Their WelcomeFest conference in June featured swing state and district Democrats like Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Maine Rep. Jared Golden. Earlier this week, they issued an expansive report on how Democrats can rebuild after their 2024 failures.

“People read the report and are like, ‘What should we do?’ And it’s like ‘well, shit, here’s a clear example,’” Kerr told Blue Light News, about supporting McAdams.

As a member of Congress, McAdams was part of the Blue Dogs — the PAC and coalition now helmed by Golden and Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, both Democrats serving in districts Trump won — and the New Democrats caucus. Before Congress, he was mayor of Salt Lake County.

Utah’s new congressional map is not yet final. In August, a district judge ruled the current map — which divides blue Salt Lake County between four districts — ignored the intention of a 2018 ballot initiative calling for an independent commission to draw the boundaries. The GOP-controlled state legislature drew a new map that favors Republicans — but still gives Democrats a better shot than the current map.

A district judge has until Nov. 10 to approve the new map for it to be in place for 2026.

“Right now, Democrats are focused on winning,” said a Utah Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak openly. “We realize this is a huge opportunity to get serious.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ripped the Heritage Foundation on Friday, as conservatives clash over the organization’s continued embrace of Tucker Carlson in the wake of his friendly interview this week with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

“Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” McConnell, the former Republican Senate majority leader, wrote in a post on X. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is…”

In the interview, Carlson said Republican supporters of Israel have been “seized by this brain virus.” And Fuentes told Carlson that “organized Jewry” poses the main obstacle to keeping the country together.

But Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation’s president, defended Carlson in a video posted to X Thursday, and even spoke out against deplatforming Fuentes while adding he disagrees with and abhors “things that Nick Fuentes says.”

The real enemy force, Roberts contended, is “the vile ideas of the left.”

McConnell, who has spent the past several months sinceleaving leadership working to safeguard his foreign policy and ideological worldviews within the Republican Party, panned the conservative think tank’s stance.

“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends,” he said.

The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But McConnell isn’t the only Republican senator taking aim at Carlson for his interview.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also went after the former Fox News host while speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit Thursday in Las Vegas. Cruz has long clashed with Carlson over Israel, including on an episode of Carlson’s podcast in July.

“If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil,” said Cruz.

The finance director for Graham Platner’s Senate campaign announced his resignation on Friday, the latest in a series of personnel departures for the Maine hopeful’s high-profile bid that has been marred by controversies over old social media posts and his tattoo with Nazi connotations.

Ronald Holmes, who had served as Platner’s national finance director since August, announced in a post on LinkedIn that he’s leaving the operation. He follows campaign manager Kevin Brown, who stepped down after less than a week on the job citing family reasons, and political director Genevieve McDonald, who resigned in a fiery fashion earlier this month, saying she could not look past some of Platner’s previous Reddit posts, where he self-identified as a communist and downplayed sexual assault in the military.

“I joined this campaign because I believed in building something different — a campaign of fresh energy, integrity, and reform-minded thinking in a political system that often resists exactly those things,” said Holmes in his post on Friday. “Somewhere along the way, I began to feel that my professional standards as a campaign professional no longer fully aligned with those of the campaign.”

Holmes did not immediately respond to messages Friday morning. His previous work included the campaigns of Michigan Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Chris Swanson and Rep. Josh Riley.

Platner’s campaign was off to a hot fundraising start, raising more than $3.2 million in his first six weeks as a candidate, largely from small-dollar donors.

In a statement, a campaign spokesperson pointed to the campaign’s focus on those small donors and said fundraising efforts will continue.

“Ron helped the campaign reach out to big dollar donors, and we appreciated his efforts. But the reality is our campaign’s fundraising success has come largely from small dollar donors,” said the spokesperson. “Nearly 90 percent of what we’ve raised has come from small dollar donations and online donors, which has been and [continues] to be run by our digital fundraising director.”

Platner, who went from an unknown oysterman to a high-profile Senate candidate endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in just a few weeks, apologized for his controversial Reddit posts and covered up his tattoo, saying he only learned after launching his campaign that it could be a Nazi symbol.

He has continued to campaign in recent weeks despite the controversies, holding town halls across the state. His campaign launched an ad this week urging voters to reject a voter-identification measure on Maine’s ballot this November.

Recent polls, though wildly different from one another, have shown Platner as a strong candidate in the Democratic primary that also includes Gov. Janet Mills — who is national Democrats’ preferred candidate in the race — along with a handful of other contenders including former congressional staffer Jordan Wood.