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“Democratic former congressman Tom Suozzi won a special U.S. House of Representatives election in New York on Tuesday… The seat became available after the House took the extraordinary step of expelling Republican George Santos, whose dizzying array of lies about his biography led to his indictment on fraud charges.” Reuters
The right is disappointed by the loss, and divided about what it means for November 2024.
“Suozzi made a perfect stand-in for the Biden administration’s policies. During his two years in the U.S. House of Representatives under Biden, he voted with the administration’s position 100 percent of the time. And somehow… the issue of immigration fell short. If the ‘Democrats have left our borders insecure, and their decisions have left our communities overwhelmed with migrants’ message isn’t going to work here, where is it going to work?…
“You can see the signs that 2024 is looking a lot like 2022, an environment where the public is frustrated with Democrats and Republicans should be romping to victory, but they don’t — in large part because the Trump loyalist leadership of the party looks like the bar scene from Star Wars instead of competent, professional, clear-eyed problem solvers…
“Suburbanites, generally speaking, don’t like parties whose leaders embrace kooky conspiracy theories. They don’t like relitigating elections that they see as resolved years ago. They don’t like tirades on social media… There was a blue wave in 2018, there was a blue wave in 2020, and Republicans fell well short of expectations in 2022 and in 2023. How many more times do Republicans want to do this?”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
Others note, “Democrats didn't really have a ‘Long Island problem,’ at least not in NY-03. They only lost that seat once, and mainly due to Zeldin's coattails and Suozzi's attempt to move up the ladder. Having an incumbent-ish and prominent Democrat come in and beat an unknown Republican in a D+2 district -- a Republican candidate still registered as a Democrat, by the way -- by seven points isn't exactly a sign of strength or renewal. It looks more like chickens coming home to roost, at worst… Electing a fraud has consequences.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
“Heavy snow caused turnout to shrink, which is a problem for Republicans who largely have rejected voting by mail and usually vote only in person on Election Day… There are certainly problems with mail-in voting and ballot-harvesting that must be addressed, but the GOP cannot address any of those problems if the party is not in power. By pushing voters to disregard mail-in ballots and only vote on Election Day, Republicans are raising the barrier to vote for their own voters…
“Republicans know this, which is why the RNC under Ronna McDaniel was trying to promote mail-in voting as a strategy for the GOP. Glenn Youngkin rode such a strategy to victory in Virginia, and California Republicans became more competitive in House races after embracing ballot-harvesting even as they said, ‘We don’t like it,’ and, ‘We don’t agree with it.’ It’s wise to play by the rules on the board if you want to change the rules later. Trump hasn’t recognized that. Trump has continued to denigrate the process and push GOP voters away from mail-in ballots.”
Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner
The left is encouraged by the win, and divided about what it means for November 2024.
The left is encouraged by the win, and divided about what it means for November 2024.
“The election became a test case for the political salience of the GOP’s attacks on President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration and the influx of migrants over the southern border. Suozzi’s opponent, Mazi Pilip, used nearly all her campaign ads to tie him to Biden’s border policies…
“Suozzi, meanwhile, took a firmer stance on the border than many Democrats and assailed Mazi for opposing the bipartisan deal that Senate Republicans killed last week…
“Suozzi’s message prevailed, and his victory could offer Democrats, including the beleaguered president, a road map for rebutting Republicans on immigration in battleground states and suburban districts this fall. Notably, Suozzi broke with Democrats who have waved off voter concerns about the border as a GOP-manufactured crisis; he called for higher spending to fortify the border and urged the deportation of migrants accused of assaulting New York City police officers.”
Russell Berman, The Atlantic
“The national stakes for the race were set sky-high, with some outlets practically suggesting it would be a bellwether for the presidential race in 2024. Those declarations are over-dramatized. Sometimes, the former congressman of a district has just enough name recognition to take back his old seat against a relatively unknown local official in a lower-than-usual-turnout special election; in the middle of a blizzard, no less…
“NY-03 was also more of an outlier, not a predictor, of the 2022 midterms. Democrats lost four seats in New York, costing them the House, despite overperformance in most of the country. It’s also worth remembering that both candidates distanced themselves from the presumptive presidential nominees of their respective parties, saying publicly they wouldn’t welcome their honorary visits to the district.”
Luke Goldstein, The American Prospect
“This race should have been a slam-dunk… Republicans, already wounded by their affiliation with the serial fabulist and accused campaign finance fraudster par excellence, chose a somewhat Santos-like candidate: Ethiopian-born Israeli Mazi Pilip, a young, not-entirely-vetted politician of color with a penchant for exaggeration…
“Pilip claimed to have been a paratrooper for the Israel Defense Forces. It turns out she did weapons maintenance for a paratroopers brigade and never faced combat, one of a handful of glaring holes in her record…
“And yet, up until election day, polling showed a race so tight it was within the margin of error… Waiting for the national party to airdrop a spending advantage of millions of dollars is not a sustainable way to win elections. The difficulty of this win and the price tag show the cost of the New York State Democratic Party’s refusal to reconcile with the failures of the party apparatus after the 2022 midterms. This district will also have to go back to the polls for this same race in November. How many millions will that cost?”
Alexander Sammon, Slate
