Nate Blouin is urging other Democrats in Utah’s 1st Congressional District field to consolidate their support behind one liberal candidate who can stop front-runner Ben McAdams.

To narrow the field, Blouin is conducting a poll of Democratic primary voters and is proposing an agreement between the two other self-described progressive candidates — Liban Mohamed and Michael Farrell — where two of the three would drop out and support the leader in the poll, creating a head-to-head primary against McAdams, who the three say is too much of a centrist.

“This is bigger than any one of us. Ben McAdams wins this primary if progressives stay split, and he loses if we don’t,” Blouin said in a news release, wherein he promises to drop out of the race if he is not the leader among the three progressives.

Blouin, who is a state senator, said he tried to broker a deal with the other two campaigns privately, but decided to publicly make the pledge himself, citing foot-dragging from the other campaigns.

“If they share my belief that beating McAdams matters more than any one of our campaigns, this should be an easy yes,” Blouin said. “Progressives have a clear path to winning this seat. We just have to be willing to act on it.”

Mohamed, who won the majority of support from Democratic delegates at the party’s nominating convention last month, said he would welcome consolidation of the progressive movement “behind the only campaign that has defeated Ben McAdams in a district-wide, representative contest.” Namely: his campaign.

Farrell said in response that Blouin had been “bullying” Mohamed and himself for weeks to take the pledge, but Farrell said he wanted to have the discussion after the four candidates meet in a televised debate Wednesday.

“Nate continues to think he is the best candidate in this race, but he has proven time and again that is not the case,” Farrell said in a statement. “People aren’t looking for someone who couldn’t pass a single bill after four years in office, whose colleagues loathe him … and who spent his 20s (and I’d bet good money well into his 30s) posting online like a petulant child.”

Mohamed said Blouin is pushing for the potential poll and consolidation of the field just ahead of the debate “because Nate fears the trajectory of his candidacy once voters see us side-by-side, just as the delegates did at convention.”

The race for the new 1st District has largely centered around which of the progressives in the field can take on McAdams, a former U.S. Representative and Salt Lake County mayor who was a member of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and had one of the most conservative voting records among U.S. House Democrats during his term.

Blouin had been running in second, according to a poll his campaign released early in the race, but he has struggled with some Democrats after Punchbowl News first reported that he’d made a series of demeaning and offensive posts in online forums, some of them up to 15 years ago, targeting women, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and people with disabilities.

The district came into being under an order from a state court that adopted the Salt Lake County seat after ruling that Republican lawmakers had unlawfully gerrymandered the previous maps. The seat gives Democrats a sizable advantage of up to 17 percentage points, meaning the winner of the June 23 primary is likely to win in November.

McAdams holds a massive fundraising advantage. On Tuesday, McAdams launched an ad highlighting his 2019 vote in Congress to impeach President Donald Trump, even though, he said, he knew it would likely cost him reelection — as it did. McAdams says in the ad he would do it again, because Utahns need someone to stand up to the president.

“Today, Donald Trump isn’t just threatening our democracy, he’s dismantling it, enriching himself, while we pay more,” McAdams says in the ad.

Blouin’s first ad, which launched last week, takes McAdams to task for votes against abortion rights, in support of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for taking donations from corporations and pro-Israel groups.

The four candidates square off Wednesday evening in a televised debate that will air at 6 p.m. on PBS Utah.