Republicans suffered an embarrassing defeat Tuesday night, as Democrats won back a key House seat.
Former Representative Tom Suozzi reclaimed his throne representing New York’s 3rd Congressional District, after a bitter fight against Republican Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip. The Associated Press called the race at 10:03 p.m.
The pair went neck and neck for four months before showing off in a special election on Tuesday to fill the vacant seat left behind by disgraced former Representative George Santos. Suozzi will finish out the remaining 11 months of Santos’s term even as the seat is up for another election in November.
Suozzi’s win secures one additional seat in the House of Representatives for Democrats, and one less for Republicans, who have been struggling to pass any legislation with a historically divided caucus and a razor-thin majority. Republicans now hold an even narrower majority in the House of Representatives: 219-213, with three vacancies.
It’s a triumphant return to the world of Long Island politics for the 61-year-old Suozzi, who had previously represented the district from 2017 until January 2023, when he gave it up following his second unsuccessful bid for New York’s governorship. Before that, he had also served two terms as Nassau County executive. It’s just the second—and possibly last—time that New York’s 3rd Congressional District will border these specific parameters in northern Nassau County and northeastern Queens, a penalty after Democrats bungled the last redistricting, giving Republicans an edge in the newly baked district. New York’s highest court recently ordered the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to come up with a new congressional map by the 2024 elections, which could help Democrats take back their advantage.
Pilip’s loss, meanwhile, comes after months spent skirting the limelight rather than courting it, avoiding media presences and refusing debates with the seasoned politician until just five days before election night, when she finally faced off against Suozzi to lackluster reception.
“I can explain why she didn’t want to debate and I can explain why the Republican Party who’s been handling her didn’t want her to debate, because she doesn’t have any detailed positions on any issues,” Suozzi said on Sunday, adding that he was “flabbergasted” by her dismal performance.
Prior to the debate, both candidates had attempted to relegate one another to the extremes of their party. Pilip accused Suozzi of being a member of “The Squad,” the progressive BIPOC circle in the House of Representatives that includes Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, while Suozzi castigated Pilip as a female George Santos.
Polling had predicted a Suozzi win over Pilip by roughly four percent since November, according to aggregated data by FiveThirtyEight. Still, Suozzi told Politico he was “very happy” with a Newsday/Siena College poll released Thursday showing similar results, adding that he thought “it would be closer,” acknowledging the GOP’s baked-in advantages in the district.
The final stretch in the nail-biting race depended on both candidates urging their supporters to turn out for early voting, ahead of snowfall that blanketed the region on Tuesday.
The devastating result is evidence that Republicans, despite having an upper hand in District 3, will be hard pressed to earn back the support of their voters after failing to vet Santos, aggressively pushing him as a candidate despite his fabricated resume.
In December, Santos became only the sixth representative to be expelled from the lower chamber in U.S. history after “overwhelming evidence” emerged out of a House Ethics Committee report that alleged Santos had broken the law by stealing peoples’ identities, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in authorized charges on his donors’ credit cards, and lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public, about himself and his campaign.
The fabulist former congressman—who also lied about having a high-paying job working for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup and ultimately used stolen campaign money to bolster his Botox and designer goods binges—faces 23 charges related to wire fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and credit card fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to the first 13 charges announced in May and has since denied another 10 charges announced in a superseding indictment in October.
Santos’s trial is scheduled to begin in September. But, six weeks after he professed his innocence and claimed he would never take a plea deal, Santos said he was in negotiations with prosecutors to chalk up to some of the charges.