Damaged QR on Allez Elite

Welcome to Stack Exchange! I don’t mean to write a trivial answer, but unfortunately the answer is that you would just buy a new quick release. You can often buy just a front quick release. You could try asking on Facebook marketplace or your local Craigslist. Frequently, cyclists will have some spare QRs lying around. Naturally, your bike store can often help you, although the global supply chain has been disrupted due to the pandemic and they may be out of stock on some items.

Now that you are shopping, you might consider an internal cam or enclosed cam skewer. Sheldon Brown’s site has more detail. However, you had an external cam skewer. For the same amount of hand force, internal cam skewers generate much more clamping force. This means that an internal cam skewer that clamped your wheel as tight as your old one would be much easier to open. Furthermore, the cam mechanism is more protected from external contamination than with external cam skewers. As a side note, it’s possible that if your old skewer hadn’t been lubricated, it might just have been stuck due to contamination. Possibly, some WD40 would have removed the contamination from the mechanism, although I would normally recommend a different lubricant for actually lubricating the skewer cam.