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

When I traveled to New York's 3rd District two weeks ago, there was a part of me that expected to find a bit of a circus atmosphere surrounding the special election. After all, it was the first seriously contested House special of the Biden presidency, and it was taking place under the shadow of the Santos scandal. As we've discussed, the outcome has massive implications for the current narrow GOP majority, which can barely pass anything as is, and could give Democrats a head start on their path to flipping the House this fall.

Instead, I found a pretty sleepy race, all things considered. There were no campaign events during the two days I was in town, a Monday and Tuesday, and only one person showed up to the Suozzi canvassing event I checked out. The Democrat had a bunch of campaign offices around the district, but the three I stopped by, including campaign headquarters, weren't exactly buzzing with activity.

I spoke to a number of local Democrats who expressed concern about low levels of enthusiasm in their party; they were especially worried that Suozzi wasn't doing enough to motivate rank-and-file Democrats because he was too focused on winning back moderates and independents who had swung toward Republicans in recent years. Coupled with the organizational muscle of the Nassau Republican Party, local activists and officeholders I spoke to were worried they were on pace for an upset.

Democrats have developed a serious branding problem on Long Island since 2020. The party had a bad 2021 local election cycle, when they lost every countywide office in Nassau; a bad 2022, when they lost all four Long Island congressional seats for the first time in decades; and a bad 2023, when they lost control of the North Hempstead Town Council for the first time since 1989. So I sensed a lot of desperation from them heading into this special election. If Suozzi, who's been around forever and can point to his concrete record of breaking with the national and state party on crime and immigration, can't get his party over the finish line, it's not obvious who can.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

If you're a close political observer, you may remember that, in December, New York's top court ruled that the state's congressional map must be redrawn. The state's redistricting commission was ordered to submit a new map by Feb. 28, although observers believe Democrats and Republicans on the commission will probably not be able to agree on a single proposal. That would kick the redraw over to the Democratic-controlled state legislature, which would likely draw the new map in a way that favors their party.

Since this special election is to fill the term that Santos was elected to in 2022, today's election was always going to take place along the 2022 lines regardless of redistricting developments. But whoever wins today will have to immediately turn around and campaign for reelection in a district that looks at least a little bit different — and probably bluer, if the legislature does indeed get its way.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

Long Island has been friendly territory for Republicans in recent years, but Democrats are trying to take advantage of this unexpected opportunity by highlighting a familiar issue: abortion rights. It's an issue they've been hammering home in races across the country, and one where local sentiment and national Republican politics are wildly out of step.

Abortion has been legal in New York since 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade was decided, and this November, a referendum that would ban discrimination based on sex and gender and enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution will appear on the ballot. New York is one of the states most supportive of abortion rights in the country, with 71 percent of residents saying it should be legal in all or most cases in a Public Religion Research Institute survey from last year.

But while abortion access isn't in danger at the state level, Suozzi is arguing that electing a Democrat in today's race is critical to protect it from Republican efforts to enact a federal abortion ban. Though Pilip says she would vote against a national abortion ban despite being "pro-life," the Democratic National Campaign Committee is running ads warning that Pilip "is part of the extreme wing of the Republican Party that wants to take away your rights and benefits."

Suozzi's message seems to be working. In a Newsday/Siena College Poll from Feb. 3-6, 67 percent of likely voters in the district said they think Pilip would vote with Republican leadership to enact a national abortion ban, and 55 percent thought Suozzi would do a better job addressing abortion. That said, only 4 percent of voters in the district named abortion access as the "most important issue facing New York" in an Emerson College Polling/PIX11 survey last month, with issues like immigration and the economy more top-of-mind.

—Monica Potts, 538

The event that precipitated today's contest was a highly unusual one: a congressional expulsion. On Dec. 1, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 311 to 114 to expel Santos, surpassing the two-thirds majority necessary to remove him from office and leave New York's 3rd Congressional District seat vacant. This marked just the sixth expulsion in House history and only the third since the Civil War.

After winning the 3rd District in the 2022 midterms, Santos quickly became an infamous figure. He currently faces a 23-count federal indictment that includes charges for wire fraud, money laundering and falsifying campaign finance records. Santos survived an initial floor vote to expel him in early November, but his position became more untenable after the House Ethics Committee handed down a report in mid-November that documented more alleged crimes, including redirecting thousands of dollars from campaign funds for personal use.

In the leadup to the expulsion, Republicans had contentious internal and public deliberations over how to handle Santos, in part because of the downstream political consequences of his ouster. With the GOP holding just a 222-to-213 seat majority before Santos's expulsion, each Republican vote was critical to maintaining control of the chamber — which remains the case, as demonstrated last week when a Republican-led effort to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas failed by one vote. And because the 3rd District is highly competitive, expulsion risked handing a seat to Democrats in an ensuing special election. Nevertheless, House Republicans split about evenly on the question of expelling Santos. And with most Democrats voting for the measure, that was enough to remove him from office.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538