Democrat Nate Blouin said he is the “only candidate” in the upcoming 1st Congressional District primary “with a chance to beat” former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams, and reiterated his call for two other progressive candidates — Liban Mohamed and Mike Farrell — to drop out and support him.

Blouin’s own poll shows McAdams out in front of the field with 37% of the support among Democratic voters. Blouin trails McAdams by 10 percentage points, but could close the gap if he piles up votes from backers of Mohamed, who has 13% of the support and Farrell, who is at 7%.

Blouin said he hoped to avoid what happened in an Illinois primary in March, where progressive candidates split the vote and allowed a more moderate candidate to win. But if Mohamed and Farrell stay in the race, Blouin said he still is the only candidate who can catch McAdams.

“I think this frankly shows that we can win regardless of whether it’s a two-way race or a four-way race,” Blouin said at a news conference Monday, the day before ballots for the June 23 primary are sent to voters. “It would be easier, I think, if there were a two-way race, but at this point in the campaign, we’re going to run the race that we need to run to win.”

Near the end of Blouin’s news conference, Mohamed stood and listened but did not comment afterward.

Blouin first floated the idea last week of having the two progressive candidates with the lowest level of support drop out of the four-man race to consolidate support behind a liberal who can beat McAdams, who is viewed by his opponents as too conservative to represent the Democratic district.

But his opponents weren’t having it.

Following the only broadcast debate between the four candidates last week, Farrell said it was “giving desperation.”

“I’m not surprised that Nate came out second in a poll funded by and with questions drafted by Nate,” Farrell said Monday. “I am surprised that this latest poll shows Nate gained essentially no support since the previous poll he funded in March. People know Nate and his support is capped around 25-27%.”

Mohamed, who is the son of Somali immigrants, said Blouin’s effort to push out a minority candidate who won the support of the party’s delegates at the April Democratic nominating convention demonstrated “white privilege.”

“Unity is not a principle you embrace only when you pay for a different outcome. It must be rooted in the will of the community,” Mohamed said in a statement Monday. “I will not abandon the thousands of people who organized, participated and earned that [convention] victory. Doing so would undermine not only the movement we have built together, but the very democratic process that brought us here.”

The district was created last year when a judge ruled the previous map drawn by the Legislature creating four safe Republican districts was an unlawful gerrymander and deprived Democratic voters of fair representation. The new district favors Democrats by up to 17 percentage points and gives the party a rare opportunity to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

McAdams has been the front-runner throughout the race, but has been assailed by his progressive opponents for his voting record while he was in Congress, which was, according to some measurements, the most conservative among the Democratic caucus.

Blouin’s campaign paid Upswing Research & Strategy, a Democratic polling firm, to survey 402 likely 1st District primary voters from May 27-29. The results, according to the poll, have a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.

According to the polling memo from Blouin’s campaign, 80% of the sample said they are white, but an analysis by Dave’s Redistricting shows that, based on Census figures, two-thirds of the entire district is white.

Because this is a new congressional district, there is no previous election data on how the whole district has voted in a past congressional race.

Blouin said the sample was based on turnout in recent Democratic primary elections and stands by its accuracy. “Hopefully,” Blouin said, “we can turn out as many people across the district of all backgrounds as possible.”

Also on Monday, the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund announced it was endorsing McAdams in the primary. Last week, Blouin landed the endorsement of the Sierra Club.

Note to readers, June 2, 10 a.m. • This story has been updated with additional context about the new district’s demographic data.