A three-term former Congressman looking for a comeback and a retired paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces are squaring off in a special election Tuesday that’s taken on outsized importance due to Republicans’ slim majority in the House.
Summary
A three-term former Congressman looking for a comeback and a retired paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces are squaring off in a special election Tuesday that’s taken on outsized importance due to Republicans’ slim majority in the House.
- Voters in New York’s Third Congressional District are heading to the polls in the middle of a snowstorm on Tuesday to elect a replacement for disgraced ex-Rep. George Santos after his expulsion from the House in December.
- Tuesday’s election represents Democrats’ best chance to narrow Republicans’ majority in the House before November. Tom Suozzi, who held the seat for three terms before unsuccessfully running for governor in 2022, is the Democratic candidate in this key swing district.
- Republicans nominated Mazi Melesa Pilip, a little-known local elected official with an incredible backstory as an Ethiopian Jew who served as an IDF paratrooper before immigrating to the United States. Pilip has made tackling the migrant crisis her key issue in the campaign.
- The Long Island-based district voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election before swinging rightward in the 2021 and 2022 elections.
- Democrats hope their advantage in recent special elections and historic victories in this seat will hold in Tuesday’s special election, while Republicans hope their recent wins in Long Island will continue on Tuesday despite Santos’ rapid fall from grace.
- The New York Times covered how “an ill-timed Election Day snowstorm” could impact Tuesday’s special election. “The wintry mess left both parties racing to rewrite last-minute campaign plans and sophisticated models to understand how the storm might affect turnout,” wrote Nicholas Fandos. “Yet with the result expected to be exceedingly close, the most useful tools were suddenly old-fashioned shovels and snow plows — which wary Democrats feared would be used by Nassau County Republicans to their voters’ advantage.”
- “But as the special election to succeed the disgraced former congressman has made painfully clear to Democrats, Santos’ victory was not a fluke or anomaly,” CNN reported. “What had been a safely blue suburban Long Island seat for most of the past three decades is, once again, shaping up to be a political battleground.”
- The Atlantic’s Russell Berman called Tuesday’s contest “the special election that could give Democrats hope for November.” Should Suozzi “reclaim the seat he abandoned” for a quixotic gubernatorial campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022, it would put Democrats one step closer to retaking the House in November.
- “A pair of independent polls released this month showed Suozzi with a lead, but within the margin of error,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “Further complicating the picture is a forecast for between 6 and 8 inches of snow falling from Monday into Tuesday. Public schools in New York City have already announced a remote-learning day for students. Just over 66,000 people cast early votes, according to the state Board of Elections.”
- The New York Post Editorial Board urged voters to remember that “a vote for Mazi Pilip is a vote for sanity.” Besides her policy stances, the Post pointed out that “Pilip also has an amazing and quintessentially American backstory: Born into poverty in Ethiopia, she emigrated to Israel, served in a paratrooper unit there and is now fighting the good fight here.”
- “The pair have traded jabs over key issues ranging from immigration to abortion on the campaign trail, with Suozzi most recently calling Pilip ‘George Santos 2.0’ and accusing her of being ‘unvetted’ and ‘untruthful’ about her record,” Fox News reported. “Pilip responded to the accusations during ‘America’s Newsroom’ on Monday, calling her opponent’s rhetoric ‘disrespectful.’”
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
