Tom Suozzi, a former Democratic congressman, won a closely watched special congressional election in New York on Tuesday, narrowing the Republican majority in Washington and giving his party a potential playbook for running in key suburban areas in November.
His larger-than-expected victory in the Queens and Long Island district avenged a year of humiliation unleashed by the seat’s former occupant, George Santos, and halted a trend that had seen Republicans win nearly every major election on Long Island since 2021.
Mr. Suozzi, 61, fended off the Republican candidate, Mazi Pilip, in a race that became a costly preview of many of the fights expected to dominate the November general election, including over the influx of migrants at the border and New York. York.
A well-known centrist, Mr. Suozzi has distanced himself from his party, calling for tougher policies at the border and promising to work with Republicans to fix a broken immigration system. Polls suggest the independent approach has helped narrow Ms. Pilip’s advantage on the issue, as Democratic super PACs have flooded her with ads attacking her as anti-abortion.
Ultimately, the race also became an old-fashioned local contest over turnout, as a rare Election Day snowstorm blanketed Long Island. This eleventh-hour twist most likely helped Democrats, who turned out in greater numbers during early voting despite the Republicans’ vaunted machine in Nassau County.
With 93 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Suozzi won 54 percent of the vote, to Ms. Pilip’s 46 percent, according to the Associated Press.
Mr Suozzi’s return will have an immediate impact in Washington. Once seated, Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose two votes on any partisan bill, a hefty margin that could limit Republicans’ election-year legislative agenda.
Speaking to supporters in Woodbury, New York, on Long Island, Mr. Suozzi said his victory was an endorsement of the moderate approach he championed as mayor, county executive and congressman.
“This race took place in the midst of a very divided electorate, like our entire country,” Mr. Suozzi said. “We, you, won this race because we solved the problems and found a way to bridge our divisions. »
It is also a personal vindication for Mr. Suozzi, an ambitious career politician who has seen his fortunes rise and fall during three decades in power. He gave up his House seat after three terms in 2022 to run for governor of New York, ultimately finishing in third place in the Democratic primary.
The cost of that decision became clearer when Mr. Santos was exposed as a serial liar and was ultimately indicted by federal prosecutors on 23 counts of election fraud and other charges. The House expelled him in December, after serving nearly a year.
“Thank God,” Mr. Suozzi rejoiced at his victory party, boasting that he had overcome “all the lies about Tom Suozzi and the Squad, about Tom Suozzi as the godfather of the migrant crisis, about the ‘Suozzi Sanctuary'», and despite the best efforts of the Republican machine.
Republicans in New York and Washington always knew it would be difficult to hold onto the seat vacated by Mr. Santos. But party leaders were confident they could win in a district that includes some of the nation’s wealthiest suburban enclaves.
Instead, barely an hour after the polls closed, they conceded. Ms. Pilip, a 44-year-old county legislator, did not directly say whether she would run against Mr. Suozzi again in the fall.
“Yes, we lost, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop there,” Ms. Pilip told supporters at a watch party. “We will continue the fight.”
There was little reason to believe the outcome would alter former President Donald J. Trump’s determination to make immigration a pillar of his own campaign.
But it will likely force Republican leaders and strategists preparing for the House and Senate races to reconsider the importance of the border issue that Ms. Pilip has made the centerpiece of her campaign.
The issue was particularly sensitive here in the New York suburbs, and Democrats had privately warned in the final weeks of the race that it might be enough to defeat Mr. Suozzi. Voters were confronted daily with headlines about increasing illegal border crossings and the arrival of more than 170,000 migrants in New York. Just a week before Election Day, New York City’s police commissioner warned that a «wave of migrant-related crime» had «swept through» the city.
Rather than seeing this issue as a Republican-friendly problem, Mr. Suozzi has made the migrant crisis a daily concern, along with cutting taxes, fighting crime and protecting the right to abortion. . He called on Mr. Biden to temporarily close the southern border and sought to show voters that he, too, saw the problem and wanted it fixed.
So when Ms. Pilip joined her party earlier this month to denounce a bipartisan border deal that included many of the provisions called for, such as speeding up expulsions and making it harder to seek asylum, Ms. .Suozzi went on the offensive.
«MS. Pilip points out that there is a problem! A problem! A problem!» he said in the only debate of the race. “But she has no solution.”
Voters noticed.
“She’s someone who doesn’t need to start from scratch,” said Rachelle Ocampo, 36, Queens’ director of health care communications. “He has experience and he knows how to handle local and federal issues.”
Mr. Suozzi sought to establish this contrast, question after question. He presented himself as a seasoned veteran ready to step in and find solutions: restoring full state and local tax deductions, sacrosanct for suburban homeowners, and defending Israel in its war with Hamas.
Republicans chose Ms. Pilip even though she was virtually unproven, with few known policy positions and little experience in a nationally scrutinized race. It was a gamble that her life story as a former Israeli soldier of Ethiopian descent fit the political moment perfectly.
But Ms. Pilip’s inexperience showed throughout the campaign. She held very few public campaign events and declined invitations to the kind of forums and debates that would have introduced her to voters. In the one in which she participated, the Republican raised her voice several times and left the moderator struggling to pin down her position on major issues like abortion and gun rights.
Although Mr. Suozzi did not make these issues a focal point of his own message, the main House Democrats’ campaign committee and the House super PAC have seized on the ambiguity of Ms. Pilip’s positions, l ‘burying with $10 million in abortion attack ads. Democrats ended up spending twice as much as Republicans on television.
And Mr. Suozzi attacked Ms. Pilip for her evasiveness and qualifications, suggesting she was unproven and unready for such a senior role.
“How can you run for Congress in this post-George Santos world and not be completely transparent? » he asked on the debate stage.
Ms. Pilip, who broke forcefully with Mr. Santos a year ago, tried to reassure voters that she was a model of personal and public ethics. Many voters ultimately concluded that she was simply too risky.
“We couldn’t welcome back someone like Santos,” said Pierre Vatanapradit, a computer scientist, as he voted for Mr. Suozzi on Saturday in Bayside, Queens. “We can’t let this happen again.”
But after weeks of campaigning, it was the most local issue, a snowstorm, that electrified the race’s closing day, as both parties raced to get voters stuck at home out.
Because this is Long Island, a suburb where politics and public works have traditionally intertwined, Democrats were wary that Republicans who control Nassau County government and each of its three townships might lead the way selectively to their voters.
“Of course we’re concerned about where they’re plowing the roads,” Jay Jacobs, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said Monday.
Nassau County Republican Executive Bruce Blakeman said he was “personally offended” that Democrats were questioning the integrity of his administration and pledged to clean the streets fairly.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans, has even hired private snow plows to help clear the party’s best areas more quickly, according to its spokeswoman.
In the end, it wasn’t enough to close the gap.
Ellen Yan And Nathan Schweber reports contributed.