John Avlon, the CNN anchor and senior political analyst, intends to run for Congress this year as a Democrat in New York’s 1st congressional district, according to two sources with knowledge of his plans.

On Thursday, Avlon told colleagues he would be leaving CNN to “embark on a new chapter and pursue an opportunity that felt too purposeful to pass up,” but offered no further specifics. Avlon has not yet filed to run and has made no final decision. He declined to comment, but sources assured me that he is strongly considering the bid and that it was the reason for his departure from the network.

Avlon and his wife, Margaret Hoover, the host of PBS’s Firing Line and a fellow CNN commentator, have a home in Sag Harbor. The bid would test the extent of his appeal there: New York’s 1st encompasses the Hamptons, sure, but many residents of East Hampton, Sagaponack, and Montauk have their primary residence in Manhattan. The district also covers more blue-collar parts of Suffolk County and has been red since 2015—first under four-term Republican congressman Lee Zeldin and, since last year, Republican Rep. Nick LaLota. Trump won the district handily in the last two cycles.

Avlon, who started his career as a speechwriter for Mayor Rudy Giuliani before pursuing journalism and becoming editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast from 2013 to 2018, has long been an advocate for centrism: He was a co-founder of the nonpartisan No Labels movement and has written books promoting a rational centrist politics and criticizing the “lunatic” fringes. At CNN, he has also been a vocal Trump critic. In his final column for the network this week, he called on citizens to become more civically engaged and resist “sleepwalking” into dictatorship. “We cannot simply wait for someone to come save us,” he wrote. “Democracy is our responsibility.”