Brittainy Newman; John Minchillo/AP Photo
Candidates Mazi Pilip, left, and former U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi are running to fill George Santos’s former seat in New York’s Third Congressional District.
While George Santos is busy building a post-politics career as an online influencer, voters in his former district in New York are preparing to wash the stain from the seat in a special election on Tuesday that is being treated as a bellwether for the 2024 campaign.
Democratic candidate and former congressman Tom Suozzi has returned to try to reclaim his old seat in the Third Congressional District. Suozzi faces a local Republican county official with little national recognition: Mazi Pilip, an Ethiopian immigrant who served in the Israel Defense Forces before coming to the U.S.
Immigration and abortion are listed as top concerns by voters and have dominated the sparring between candidates, including at the first and only debate of the race last Thursday night. The election will test whether the now dead-on-arrival border package legislation in Washington will backfire against Republicans, as national Democrats hope, and how much staying power abortion still has for voters in a blue state.
Even in a tough swing district, you’d expect the Democratic candidate to trounce the opponent after the scorched rubble left by Santos’s disastrous ten months in office. Yet despite vastly outspending his opponent nearly 3-to-1, Suozzi’s margins in recent polling are razor-thin, with some pollsters designating the race a toss-up. The most recent public poll from Emerson College has Suozzi up 50-47.
The special election will put the New York Democratic Party under scrutiny after underperforming the rest of the country with a series of defeats in the 2022 midterms. State party chair Jay Jacobs is a close ally of Suozzi and a longtime chair of the Nassau County Democratic Party, the home of the NY-03 district. Jacobs has fashioned a “Long Island strategy” that’s shifted the party in a more conservative direction to win contested seats across the state. So far, that strategy hasn’t borne out, and Jacobs has received criticism for not tapping into the party’s more grassroots base.
“This race should be the ultimate shoo-in,” said one progressive strategist in New York. “If Suozzi loses or really if it’s even a close race, that raises serious questions about the Democratic establishment in New York, especially for a race in Jay Jacobs’s backyard.”
THE NATIONAL STAKES FOR THE SPECIAL ELECTION are mixed.
For one, the winner will only hold office for roughly eight months before the contest is redecided this November in a redrawn district. The New York Supreme Court ruled last December that the New York independent redistricting commission will have to redraw the congressional map. The decision is expected to shift the seat in a direction more favorable for Democrats in November.
But until then, there could potentially be near-term implications, given the slim majority that Republicans currently hold in the House and constant tumult over the Speakership. Just this past week, Republicans failed to impeach the Biden administration’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, by the thinnest of margins, prompting Rep. Matt Gaetz to remark that he’d “never missed George Santos more.”
But primarily, the race is receiving national attention for a check of the national mood heading into the 2024 presidential year. To underscore just how dramatized this storyline has become, a recent Politico Magazine story put as its headline “Nassau County Is Replacing George Santos—and Maybe Picking the Next President.”
Some surrogates close to Suozzi’s campaign have downplayed this Beltway narrative somewhat, at least as a presidential indicator.
“It’s called a special election for a reason and the dynamics are different; we’re not picking the next president, but that’s not to say this isn’t highly important,” said Zak Malamed, who was one of the many Democratic candidates running in the primary to challenge Santos before the congressman’s expulsion.
In an unconventional procedure, national leadership in consultation with the state party got to select the candidate for the special election and cleared the way for Suozzi. Malamed endorsed Suozzi and has been supporting him in the race ever since.
The special election will put the New York Democratic Party under scrutiny after underperforming the rest of the country with a series of defeats in the 2022 midterms.
But the coronation of Suozzi was somewhat more contentious in other quarters. The bad blood is because Suozzi left the seat to make a failed run for governor against Kathy Hochul in 2022. Many believe that Suozzi’s exit opened the seat up for the Santos drama that New York and the country have endured for the past year. Despite that criticism, Suozzi was rewarded by the party that saw him as the safest bet to flip the district.
Suozzi, a conservative Democrat who helped found the Problems Solvers Caucus, also has a mixed record on abortion, a major factor in sinking his bid for governor. Suozzi initially supported the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds for abortion procedures, but has since reversed himself. Still, some of his opponents questioned whether his track record on the issue might make him a poor fit for the seat, given how mobilizing the issue has been against Republicans since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
One lesson New York Democrats took away from the 2022 midterm races is that they didn’t adequately turn abortion into a central issue, which carried Democrats elsewhere. Suozzi seems to agree. He’s shored up support from reproductive rights groups such as Planned Parenthood and gone on the attack against his Republican opponent over her party’s extreme position. He’s repeatedly pressed Pilip on what exactly her stance is on supporting Roe v. Wade or the proposed national abortion ban legislation. Pilip has only offered vague responses about respecting a woman’s “decision,” both bucking the conservative flank of her party without fully committing to supporting Roe either.
Pilip has other issues as well. She hid from the public for a stretch of the campaign, only appearing on the trail occasionally. In her absence, a major controversy broke that echoed her Republican predecessor’s corruption. A New York Times investigation revealed that Pilip’s financial disclosures included a number of inconsistencies and omissions compared to her previous filings for Nassau County, where she served as a legislator. Her campaign immediately corrected some of the errors, claiming they were mistakes, but there are still outstanding questions about her and her husband’s financial holdings.
Despite the national tenor of the race, both candidates have distanced themselves from the presumptive nominees of their respective parties and exhibited nothing but angst about the possibility of them visiting the district. Pilip won’t even say whether she voted for President Trump in 2020 despite being pressed on this question constantly by Suozzi’s campaign. In swing districts like NY-03, with scores of independent and moderate voters, it’s a reflection of the extreme unpopularity of both presidential candidates and even the toxicity of the national brands of both parties. In fact, both candidates also opted not to publicize when House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries each visited the candidates for rallies in the district.
Yet, the adage “all politics is local” doesn’t seem to be holding true so far in the race, where hot-button national issues predominate. While Santos won on relatively parochial issues like crime and migrant busing, this contest is centered heavily on the southern border situation, along with abortion.
Both candidates have exchanged barbs on immigration. Up until the past few weeks, Pilip, an immigrant herself, was accusing Democrats of allowing an invasion at the southern border. The tenor has changed somewhat since the collapse of the border deal brokered in Washington to pair restrictive immigration enforcement with military aid for Israel and Ukraine.
Republicans killing the deal, to avoid delivering Biden another legislative victory, has given Suozzi a talking point in the race to fend off the open-borders charge from Republicans. He’s pushed Pilip to respond to the collapse of the border deal, accusing Republicans of not being serious about solutions. Whether that will change the minds of voters is yet to be tested.
The border package also raises the question of support for Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza. Suozzi is a loyal supporter of Israel and even visited the country in December. For that, he received the endorsement and financial support of Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, even though his opponent actually fought in the IDF. Suozzi has used his backing by the Israel lobby to try to defang his opponent’s charge that his party welcomes “terrorist sympathizers.”
THE MAIN QUESTION HANGING OVER THE RACE is whether the state party can revamp itself after suffering four humiliating congressional losses in 2022, two of which were in Long Island, which also saw wipeout down-ballot at the local level.
Those four races arguably cost Democrats control of the House, which Republicans won back by just four seats. National Democratic leadership has made it clear they believe their path back to the majority in 2024 runs through Long Island and retaking those lost seats from the midterms. They’re already dedicating an incredible amount of resources to those races up and down the state, upwards of $45 million from the national party’s coffers. That vast amount of money earmarked for what would usually be state party responsibilities indicates national Democrats might not fully trust the abilities of the Albany bosses to get the job done.
Democrats are also spending big in the special election. Just over a week before the election, the GOP’s Congressional Leadership Fund was forced to pump $2.6 million into TV ads to try to make up the yawning gap Democrats had put between them and Republicans on spending. Prior to that infusion of funds, Suozzi led almost threefold on spending for television and digital ads, at $8 million to $3 million.
House Majority PAC, the main vehicle for Democratic leadership spending, dumped $7 million on the race for Suozzi.
That amount of spending is obscenely high for a special-election race that will just be redecided in November, likely under more favorable conditions for Democrats after redistricting. While leadership PACs expend resources on Suozzi, they have all but refused to lift a finger to protect the incumbent house progressives facing well-financed primary challenges, funded largely by right-wing donors.
Some progressives in New York also question the tactics that the state party has decided to run with under the leadership of party chair Jay Jacobs to win back Long Island.
As Gov. Hochul has consolidated power, the state party for the most part has supported the more moderate candidates in state and local races across the state against progressives.
In contested Long Island races, the party believes tacking right to win over middle-of-the-road Republican and independent voters is the necessary path to victory. In 2022, that more conservative strategy led not just to the losses of congressional candidates but also the unseating of the Democratic Nassau County executive, Laura Curran, and several district attorney candidates who tried to distance themselves from criminal justice reform positions.
The alternative approach would be to try to mobilize more energy among the party’s core base of voters.
Tuesday’s election has been made out to be a referendum on President Biden. In reality, it may be more a reflection of the state party in New York, and whether it’s up for the task in 2024.
