In Tom Suozzi’s win on Long Island special election, experience prevails

It was about abortion, gun safety and Israel. It was always about immigration.

But in the end, after two months of furious campaigning and fundraising and unique national attention fixed on a sliver of Queens and swaths of Long Island, the frantic special election battle for the House seat vacated by George Santos may have boiled down to another element that defies easy policy categorization.

At the ballot box, voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District — an area that was seen as turning increasingly red over the years — decided to pick a seasoned veteran over a mostly unknown newcomer.

Tom Suozzi, a Democratic former Nassau County executive and three-term House representative for the district, won the race Tuesday, besting Mazi Melesa Pilip, the Republican nominee and registered Democrat plucked out of the Nassau County Legislature to run for the seat.

Incomplete results showed Suozzi winning by nearly 8 percentage points.

Pilip, 44, had some clear advantages. Voters were frustrated about the migrant crisis that has stressed the city’s finances and planted a sprawling tent-style shelter in the Queens portion of the district. The Nassau County Republican Party was humming like a formidable machine. The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, visited the district to buoy Pilip.

And the Ethiopian-born Pilip seemed to have the perfect biography: She was an immigrant herself, and could tout her past as a veteran of the Israeli armed forces at a time when many district voters were distressed by the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.

Suozzi had his own challenges on immigration; as recently as 2022, he bragged about having kicked Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of Nassau County during his time as the county executive.

None of it mattered.

Suozzi, carrying high name recognition, staged a confident, freewheeling campaign, convening frequent news conferences, and even showing up at Pilip’s.

Pilip, meanwhile, was strikingly cautious, gingerly avoiding media contact, offering restrained and occasionally self-contradictory positions, and acknowledging her limited public speaking skills by saying she was a doer rather than talker.

Pilip waffled on reproductive rights, dodged questions about gun control and proved cagey about who she voted for in the 2020 presidential election. Ultimately, she said she is “pro-life,” avoided endorsing an assault weapons ban and acknowledged supporting former President Donald Trump.

Voters may have had an easier time figuring out where Suozzi, 61, stood — regardless of whether they liked his positions. The Long Island lifer has long been an avowed centrist, and he staked his campaign on support for gun control, abortion protections and Israel.

On the issue of immigration, Suozzi surprised some by going on the attack, presenting himself as a common-sense advocate for border security. He declared that he — not Pilip — would be a stronger voice to close the border.

The GOP offered him a possible gift when, at Trump’s urging, Republicans refused to sign on to a bipartisan border security compromise. Suozzi called the Republican opposition “appalling” and hammered Pilip for not backing the deal.

The contrast between Suozzi and Pilip was never more clear than in the election’s lone debate, aired by News12 last week. Suozzi appeared well versed on the issues and clear in his positions, moving deftly to parry attacks on his shift on immigration, and putting Pilip on the defensive.

At one point, he backed her into a corner on reproductive rights, pressing her to articulate a position on whether Roe v. Wade should be enshrined into law by federal legislators after the Supreme Court erased the right to abortion in 2022.

Pilip accused Suozzi of lying about her record, but never gave a clear answer on abortion.

Suozzi, satisfied that he had won the debate, posted the entire tilt on his campaign website and implored district voters to watch it.

The campaign between Suozzi and Pilip was often seen as a test of national political winds. And the race certainly centered on issues that will return to the fore in November. Long Island has long been a valuable bellwether for suburban areas across the U.S.

At the same time, Tuesday’s election was also a unique local race.

Pilip’s campaign worked hard to make the campaign a referendum on national Democrats, describing Suozzi as “Joe Biden’s accomplice” and trying to tie him to the progressive “Squad” in the House.

Pilip insisted the race was not about “Mazi or Suozzi.” Voters did not seem convinced.

“After Santos there were people — at least a group of people — who thought: ‘Let’s get somebody in here who is familiar to us,'” said Steven Cohen, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University. “It’s always about the candidates. No matter what they say.”

—With Dave Goldiner