Dems Flip Seat In Special Election To Replace Disgraced NY Rep. George Santos

The Republican Party’s numerical edge in the US House of Representatives just got even smaller, as New York Democrat Tom Suozzi has been declared the winner in a special election to fill the seat formerly held by disgraced GOP Rep. George Santos.  

Democrat Tom Suozzi distanced himself from Biden’s soft policy on immigration (Mary Altaffer/AP)

Suozzi will represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of Queens and Long Island. Suozzi, who represented the district before giving up his seat for a failed gubernatorial campaign, defeated Republican Mazi Pilip, a heavily-accented Israeli military veteran of Ethiopian descent with a Ukrainian-American husband. Pilip brought a lower profile to the race, having served in the Nassau County legislature. With 93% of votes counted, Suozzi led Pilip by a 53.9% to 46.1% margin. 

The New York Republican Party ousted George Santos and then ran an unknown woman who struggles to speak English as a sacrificial lamb in the Special Election. The Democrats won easily.

It’s hard to put into words just how ridiculous the GOP can be.pic.twitter.com/BKUw9BDhSM

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 14, 2024

With the seat flipping from the GOP to the Democrats, the Republican margin in the House is now just 219-213. The thinner the margin, the fewer the number of Republican reps it takes to derail the agenda of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who just last week was humiliated in a rare defeat of a stand-alone bill to send more money to Israel. He faces skepticism about his seriousness about border security, and growing Republican reluctance to fund the proxy war in Ukraine.  

The win for Democrats dents a winning streak that had the GOP sweeping major Long Island elections since 2020. Democrats in suburban districts across the country will be examining Suozzi’s winning campaign strategy, which relied on distancing himself from the Democratic Party. 

For example, Suozzi took a relatively hard line on immigration, a topic of intense interest in the New York area, which is struggling to manage an influx of more than 170,000 migrants in New York City alone. Suozzi urged President Biden to seal the country’s borders, and called for the migrants who beat up cops in Times Square to be ejected from the country. 

Republican Mazi Pilip struggled in her only election debate with Suozzi (Mazi Pilip, Facebook)

It’s not clear exactly how much of a bellwether this election was, in part because of a weather wild card: An Election Day snowstorm dumped six inches on the district. Since Democrats are more prone to avail themselves of early and absentee voting, the weather likely hurt the GOP more. Indeed, the New York Times reports that a Republican super PAC even hired private snow plows to minimize the damage.    

After the race was declared for Suozzi, Donald Trump took to social media to call Pilip a “very foolish woman” who paid the price for not supporting him and appealing to his voters: 

“In a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to ‘straddle the fence’…she would have easily WON if she understood anything about MODERN DAY politics in America. MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME — AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH HE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES.” 

Suozzi will immediately jump back into election mode with an eye on November, since Tuesday’s special election only puts him in the seat until January. Meanwhile, Suozzi faces uncertainty about the future of his district, which could be redrawn when the state’s map is updated later this year pursuant to an order from New York’s highest court.  

In December, the oddball Santos became just the sixth representative to be ousted from Congress by a vote of his peers — and the first who had neither fought for the Confederacy or been convicted of a crime. His career unraveled after he’d been caught stacking up a huge pile of lies about his background, and after he was indicted for, among other things, charging donors’ credit cards without consent, spending campaign money on personal expenses, and lying about his campaign fundraising.