Stefan Jeremiah/AP Photo
Tom Suozzi won a special election for the House seat formerly held by George Santos.
Democratic candidate Tom Suozzi defeated Republican Mazi Pilip in New York’s Third Congressional District on Tuesday night, retaking a reliably blue seat lost to George Santos in the 2022 midterms.
The victory brings Democrats one step closer to winning back the House in 2024, via one of the four New York congressional seats that flipped to Republicans in 2022. The race will be decided again this November, though Suozzi’s win significantly improves Democrats’ chances of holding onto it.
In the near term, the loss cuts Republicans’ already slim House majority, which once the race is certified will stand at 219-213, with three vacancies. That will make it even more difficult for Republicans to carry out their agenda, which these days seems to mostly entail deposing either their own Speakers or Biden administration officials. On the same night as the election, the House voted to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas by just one vote; if Suozzi were seated, the vote would likely have been a tie. (Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) contracting COVID and missing the vote is the only thing that put the impeachment resolution over the top as it is.)
Suozzi, who represented the district until 2021, far outperformed pre-election predictions, with several polls showing the race as practically a toss-up. He helped avert a devastating blow to Democrats had they lost the seat after Santos’s disgraceful tenure, as some feared.
The national stakes for the race were set sky-high, with some outlets practically suggesting it would be a bellwether for the presidential race in 2024. Those declarations were overdramatized. Sometimes, the former congressman of a district has just enough name recognition to take back his old seat against a relatively unknown local official in a lower-than-usual-turnout special election—in the middle of a blizzard, no less.
NY-03 was also more of an outlier, not a predictor, of the 2022 midterms. Democrats lost four seats in New York, costing them the House, despite overperformance in most of the country. It’s also worth remembering that both candidates distanced themselves from the presumptive presidential nominees of their respective parties, saying publicly they wouldn’t welcome their honorary visits to the district.
The Republican focus on immigration at the southern border did not resonate with enough voters in the district, and may have instead had the opposite effect.
That said, there are certain insights to be gleaned from the results.
Suozzi ended up winning by nearly eight points, managing to defy expectations by delivering enough Democratic turnout in the unusual special election. In particular, he carried an especially high margin of victory in the Queens section of the district, a small but pivotal area for Democratic victory, given that Nassau County is more conservative-leaning. Depressed turnout in Queens was one of the reasons why Robert Zimmerman lost the seat to Santos in 2022.
While holding his own in Nassau, Suozzi’s campaign ran a solid ground game that made huge gains in the Queens part of the district, which has sizable Asian and Latino populations. Those pockets delivered Suozzi a higher margin of victory in the borough than even the 2020 Biden presidential year.
Pilip needed to run a solid campaign to make up for her low name recognition, and she did not particularly help her cause in the race. The Ethiopian Jewish immigrant and former Israel Defense Forces soldier disappeared for extended stretches of the campaign. She couldn’t be found at her own fundraising events (allegedly because she was observing the Sabbath), and was caught in a financial-disclosure scandal that echoed her predecessor Santos’s sketchy record, though not to the same degree. Despite a purportedly strong local Republican Party machine in Nassau County known recently for delivering unexpected wins, Pilip did not inspire a strong showing at the ballot box. An icy snowstorm on Election Day may have hurt turnout somewhat, since Democrats practice early and mail-in voting to a greater extent, while Republicans mostly vote at polling stations.
On the national implications of the race, it seems clear that the Republican focus on immigration at the southern border did not resonate with enough voters in the district, and may have instead had the opposite effect. Pilip and her campaign tried to pin an influx of migrants in the New York region on a covert open-borders policy by Suozzi’s party. Down the stretch, her campaign heavily relied on this issue in several rounds of television ads.
That attack began to fall flat once Democrats in Washington unveiled a legislative package that paired military aid to Israel and Ukraine with Republican priorities for border enforcement. Once Republicans balked at the deal, because members of their coalition didn’t want to deliver Biden another legislative victory, Democrats went on the offensive.
As national Democrats hoped, Suozzi used this talking point to portray himself as tough on immigration and Republicans as soft for abandoning the deal.
The Republican about-face on the deal seems to have at least undercut Pilip’s attack on Suozzi and perhaps neutralized the issue altogether.
Another factor in the race was reproductive rights, which has maintained continued relevance in elections around the country after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. One takeaway New York Democrats had from their failures in the 2022 midterms was that they underestimated the impact of the overturning of Roe for voters and didn’t lean into abortion rights enough.
Suozzi made the issue a far greater priority than he had in previous races. Though his record in Congress was mixed and more conservative-leaning on abortion, he managed to gain the endorsements of Planned Parenthood and other women’s rights groups.
Democrats and affiliated PACs went all in on spending for this race, shelling out over $13 million in total on digital and television ads, nearly twice as much as Republicans. The House Majority PAC, closely aligned with Democratic leadership, alone spent $7 million.
Leadership believes its path to victory runs through Long Island, and the race affirmed that approach.
