New York 3rd District special election: Suozzi projected to defeat Pilip

While you may be most familiar with Democratic candidate Tom Suozzi from his runs for New York governor — or that fact that he was Rep. Santos’s predecessor in the House — the former attorney and father of three has had a long political career in this region of New York. Suozzi was mayor of his hometown, Glen Cove, from 1994-2001, and is part of a local political dynasty: his father and uncle served as mayor of Glen Cove prior to him. He was elected Nassau County executive in 2001 and was widely praised for resuscitating the county’s finances during his eight years in that office.

Suozzi’s first run for governor came in 2006, when he lost a challenge against then-state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary. (If you’re too young to remember what happened next, have I got some reading for you.) A few years later, he lost reelection as county executive. He then spent several years in the private sector, working as an attorney and consultant. It wasn’t until Democratic Rep. Steve Israel announced his retirement in 2016 that Suozzi decided to attempt a political comeback, running to replace the 15-year House veteran later that fall. Suozzi beat out four other candidates in the competitive primary and went on to win the seat, and was reelected twice.

During his time in Congress, Suozzi focused on issues of local concern, like raising the cap on state and local tax deductions, and built a centrist record, working across the aisle on issues like immigration and serving as vice-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. He was a reliable supporter of President Biden’s policies, voting with the president 100 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis. He also got into hot water for failing to report stock trades he had made, in potential violation of insider trading laws, though the House Ethics Committee ultimately cleared him and two other representatives.

In 2021, Suozzi announced he would not run for reelection, instead challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in another gubernatorial run. The primary race got heated, and many prominent Democrats were displeased with Suozzi for mounting the primary challenge in the first place. Hochul ultimately trounced Suozzi, who came in third, and he reportedly ended up apologizing to the governor in December, as part of an effort to shore up support among New York’s Democratic powerbrokers and secure the party’s nomination to reclaim his House seat.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538

This special election has national implications not only because it could affect the narrow margin in the House of Representatives. Special election results overall can be predictive of the next regularly scheduled election. But you can’t just look at who wins and who loses; you have to look at which party does better than the baseline partisanship of its district. As I’ve written, there’s a pretty reliable correlation between a party’s average overperformance in special elections and the House popular vote margin in the next election.

According to a weighted average of the 2016 and 2020 presidential election results in the district, New York’s 3rd District is 3 percentage points bluer than the nation as a whole. That means a Suozzi win in the double or high single digits would be a bullish sign for Democrats, and a Pilip win would be a bullish sign for Republicans.

Of course, one special election can’t tell you much of anything. Local factors — such as, in this case, the ghost of Santos — can make them unrepresentative of the national mood. So you’d be wise to throw tonight’s overperformance into an average with all the other special election results from this cycle before drawing any broader conclusions.

Entering tonight, Democrats had overperformed by an average of 7 points in congressional and state legislative special elections since the beginning of 2023. If history is any guide, that’s a sign that Democrats will have a strong 2024 election. On the other hand, The New York Times’s Nate Cohn has convincingly written that special-election electorates are fundamentally different from — and more Democratic than — the electorate that will go to the polls this November.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

New York’s 3rd Congressional District is an urban-suburban and well-educated district mostly situated in northern Nassau County east of New York City, although a small part crosses into northeastern Queens. Overall, 54 percent of the seat’s population that’s 25 years or older has at least a four-year college degree, compared with 36 percent nationally, ranking it among the top 10 percent of congressional districts by educational attainment. The district’s overall population is 55 percent non-Hispanic white, roughly similar to the nation as a whole, but it has a much larger share of residents with Asian backgrounds (25 percent versus about 6 percent nationally). The district is also among the wealthiest in the country by median household income (about $130,000 versus the national median of just under $75,000).

Politically, the highly-educated and affluent district is highly competitive with arguably a slight Democratic lean. Under the current district lines, first used in 2022, the seat would have backed the Democratic nominees for president by 5 and 8 percentage points in 2016 and 2020, respectively, which put the seat just a bit to the left of the nation as a whole. As of November, a plurality of voters in the district were registered Democrats (39 percent), with near-equal shares of registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters (about 28 percent each; the remainder identified with minor parties).

However, the 2022 midterms showed how the seat can very much be in play for the GOP. That year, Santos won in part because of “differential turnout,” whereby one party’s voters turn out at a much higher rate than the other’s. Based on an analysis by the Albany Times-Union, 64 percent of the district’s registered Republicans cast ballots compared with just 51 percent of Democrats. Like other Long Island Republicans, Santos received a boost from GOP gubernatorial nominee Lee Zeldin, who at the time represented the eastern part of the island in Congress. Zeldin gave Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul a strong challenge, losing by just 6 points statewide, and he carried the 3rd District by 12 points — better than Santos’s 7.5-point victory margin.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip has had a unique path to becoming the Republican nominee in this race. Pilip was born to Orthodox Jewish parents in a rural village in Ethiopia that, according to her campaign website, “didn’t even have running water.” When she was 12, in 1991, Pilip and her family immigrated to Israel as part of Project Solomon, a covert Israeli military operation where thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted out of the country in the span of 36 hours. Pilip later served in the Israel Defense Forces before immigrating to the U.S.

A mother of seven, Pilip is a relative newcomer to politics. She was elected in 2021 as part of a red wave that resulted in a GOP supermajority in the county legislature … despite being a registered Democrat, according to reporting from Politico. In that election, Pilip defeated incumbent Democratic legislator Ellen Birnbaum, who had represented the 10th District since 2015. Prior to her political career, Pilip worked in the non-profit sector, with a specific focus on pro-Israel causes, something she has continued to champion as a legislator, most recently speaking out in October in support of Israel in its war against Hamas.

Pilip stuck to party lines during a fairly quiet tenure on the County Legislature. Among her accomplishments are securing grants for the local police department to buy speed radar signs, negotiating a land transfer from the county to expand park space, and funding the restoration of a village hall.

When it comes to the top election issues for voters, Pilip has taken a fairly moderate tack, saying she is against a national abortion ban and would not support Trump as the Republican nominee if he is convicted of a crime — a break from many of her GOP colleagues who have brushed off Trump’s legal woes. “Nobody is above the law,” Pilip told local news station PIX11. “If [Trump is] convicted of a crime, he cannot represent us. But unless we see that … I will support him. He was a great candidate, a great president. He did great things for America.”

She has, however, taken a firm stance on immigration, stating that she wants to end sanctuary city policies and invest in ICE. “We have to secure our border. That’s our top priority,” she said at a press conference last month outside a migrant tent city in Queens. She also aligned with House conservatives and Trump in opposing the bipartisan border security deal that stalled in the Senate last week, calling it “the legalization of the invasion of our country.”

While she lacks the wider notoriety and political experience of her Democratic opponent, Pilip is well known in the region and is active outside of her political duties, including serving as vice president of her synagogue.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538