Retiring Democratic Rep. Jared Golden just endorsed Republican Rep. Mike Lawler for re-election — and the Beltway will call it bipartisanship, but working Americans should see it for what it is: the ruling class circling the wagons.
Golden, a Maine Democrat who announced last year he's walking away from Congress, penned an op-ed in The Journal News calling Lawler a "true partner" and urging New Yorkers to send him back to Washington. "Wherever you live, find the members who pass laws with the other party, and keep them," Golden wrote. Translation: keep the dealmakers. Keep the people who make the machinery run for the people who own it.
The centerpiece of this bipartisan friendship? The Northeast Lobsterman Protection Act, which delays new federal fishing regulations meant to protect right whales until 2035. Golden credits Lawler with leading the bill alongside him — even though, as Golden himself noted, "there is not a single lobster boat" in Lawler's Hudson Valley district. According to Breitbart, Golden wrote that federal regulators "piled rules onto Maine's lobstermen" based on "worst-case assumptions instead of real data," and that a federal appeals court unanimously vacated those restrictions. Fair enough — but notice what binds these two men isn't principle, it's a shared constituency of interests that cuts across party labels.
Golden also bragged about breaking with his own party to vote for a GOP procedural rule that kept the House in session before recess. And he praised Lawler for backing a bill restoring collective bargaining rights to federal employees after the Trump administration revoked them. "Lawler didn't even take convincing," Golden wrote. Of course he didn't — government worker unions write checks to anyone who'll keep the gravy train running.
Lawler, for his part, has his own history of bucking GOP leadership. The New York Post reported he clashed with President Trump to secure a larger SALT deduction cap in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — a move that primarily benefits high-tax-state residents, not the working-class Americans Trump was elected to fight for.
Lawler holds one of just three Republican seats in districts Kamala Harris carried in 2024, and he's running neck-and-neck against Democrat Cait Conley in New York's 17th. Conley's campaign didn't respond to a request for comment, according to the Post.
Lawler posted on X that he was "honored to have earned" Golden's support and called him a "servant leader" who "fought tirelessly for his district."
Here's what the press won't tell you: Golden is retiring. He never has to face voters again. Lawler needs moderate cover in a Harris district. This endorsement is a transaction, not a profile in courage. When establishment figures cross party lines, it's never to help you — it's to help each other.
The question isn't why a Democrat endorsed a Republican. The question is what they're building together — and who's paying for it.
