Suozzi Win Narrows House GOP Majority And Provides Playbook For Swing-District Democrats
Tom Suozzi continued the Democratic win streak by flipping the script on Republicans. I spent two weekends on the ground in NY-03 and saw the effectiveness of the Suozzi campaign firsthand.
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Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) already narrow House Republican majority just got even slimmer.
On Tuesday night, Democrat Tom Suozzi defeated Republican candidate Mazi Pilip to fill the vacancy left by George Santos in New York’s third congressional district (NY-03). While polls depicted the race as a 3-4 point tight contest, it didn’t end up being close at all.
Suozzi won with 53.9% of the vote to Pilip’s 46.1% - about an 8-point margin. The GOP’s House majority is now set to be 219-213 with 3 vacancies. Democrats now only have to net 4 seats to take back the Speaker’s gavel. Lucky for them, the battle for the House majority runs through districts just like NY-03 and Suozzi gave Democrats a lot to learn from.
New York was part of the reason Democrats lost the House in 2022, and NY-03 is one of those districts Republicans flipped. President Biden won the district by 8 points in 2020, and Santos won it by 7 points in 2022 as part of a string of Republican wins that swept New York. Now, Suozzi has taken back the seat by 8 points. NY-03 is the definition of a swing district.
NY-03 encompasses part of Queens and Long Island’s Nassau County. The suburbs of NY-03 began to trend more consistently blue in the past decade, much like other highly educated, high-income suburbs have shifted nationwide in the Trump era. A district of about 771k people, NY-03 is majority white but still very diverse, with thriving Jewish, Asian, and Hispanic communities.
I spent the past two weekends in NY-03, helping to lead teams of canvassers with the Suozzi Campaign and the civic engagement nonprofit Common Power. I was in Glen Cove in Nassau County the first weekend and Queens during the second. I’ll talk more about my experience on the ground later in this piece, but in a nutshell, I was impressed by the resounding enthusiasm for Tom Suozzi among Democratic voters.
Suozzi, of course, had some advantages heading into this race. Suozzi and his family members have held local office in the district for decades. Suozzi held this seat between 2017-2023, and beat Santos in 2020 by nearly 13 points before vacating his seat to seek the Democratic primary nomination for NY governor. Mazi Pilip, on the other hand, was a largely unknown candidate who barely hit the campaign trial to directly interface with voters.
Souzzi’s unmistakable name recognition aside, there are still some key insights to glean from the success of his candidacy. Suozzi ran a moderate campaign in a purple district, showcasing the importance of candidate-district fit, ran an excellent ground game, and flipped the script on the issues Republicans usually win on - like the border.
This race is widely seen as a bellwether election, potentially providing key indicators of the general election ahead. If that’s the case, it’s looking good for Democrats.
Let’s dive into some takeaways from the race, and I’ll also touch on my experience talking to voters and meeting Souzzi.
What Democrats Can Learn From Suozzi’s Win
Going On Offense
In an interesting shift, Tom Suozzi launched a messaging offensive on the issues that Republicans typically campaign on, like crime, taxes, and the border. While abortion, of course, loomed over this race, the border loomed largest in the campaign. In a result that runs contrary to conventional wisdom, a Democrat won in a race focused on the issue.
Since red state governors began their coordinated effort to bus migrants to blue cities like New York, the impact of the border crisis has been more directly felt by non-border states. Amid this bussing campaign, more than 170,00 migrants have arrived in New York City since 2022, straining the city’s resources. This has changed the politics around the border and brought it front and center to the people of New York.
Mazi Pilip sought to make the border central to her campaign, but Tom Suozzi refused to be on the defensive, making proactive calls for the federal government to do more to secure the border. This culminated in a self-inflicted wound on the part of congressional Republicans that helped Suozzi’s campaign.
Pilip spoke out against the bipartisan border bill that Senate Republicans negotiated. Suozzi, on the other hand, ran on finding bipartisan solutions to the border crisis and spoke out in support of the bill. Then, last week, Republicans tossed Suozzi a layup: They rejected the bipartisan bill they negotiated after Donald Trump simply told them to - a sequence of events I outlined in my newsletter last week.
This move was ill-timed for Pilip. Suozzi amplified this misstep, highlighting the fact Democrats want to solve this issue while Republicans opted for continued dysfunction. NY-03 voters may have recognized Republicans want to keep the border crisis ongoing so that Trump can campaign on it. Republicans clearly have no interest in solving the crisis.
Bolstering this hypothesis is reporting from CNN’s Dana Bash, who said she spoke to voters who chose Suozzi because Republicans blocked the bipartisan border bill.
President Biden made this claim in remarks last week, which rings even more true now:
“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”
Candidate Quality Matters
The Democratic Party is a wide-tent, consisting of progressive and moderates alike. A tactic that has proven successful, particularly in the 2018 midterms, is running candidates that fit the specific makeup of the given district and allowing that candidate to run the race they need to in order to win - even if they at times run contrary to broader Democratic messaging.
In the campaign literature I was given to hand out to voters, there was no mention of “Democrat” anywhere. Suozzi ran as an independent-minded leader whose main focus was getting things done.
Suozzi constantly flexed his previous role as vice-chair of the House’s bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and discussed moving beyond vitriol and partisanship. His slogan was literally, “Let’s fix this!”
Suozzi’s attention to compromise and bipartisanship runs contrary to the current position of the Republican Party, which is essentially one of chaos and division. The message and the messenger worked in tandem in this district to deliver a huge win.
Candidate-district fit is always important, especially in special elections. It’s arguable that Suozzi was the perfect candidate for this district.
Suozzi has decades of government experience, including as Mayor of Glen Cove, Nassau County Executive, and three terms in Congress. Suozzi’s father also served as the mayor of Glen Cove, as well as his uncle and cousin. His name recognition is unparalleled in the district, to say the least.
Philip wasn’t that well known in the district. She also was a registered Democrat but ran as a Republican. The mystery surrounding her didn’t do her any favors, especially given the fact she was running to replace George Santos - a man who faked his entire identity.
Democratic Momentum Continues
Races like NY-03 are why I’m optimistic about the 2024 election. But this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Suozzi’s win comes after a series of Democratic overperformances that defy polling.
In 2018, Democrats made historic gains, taking back the House in a massive blue wave not seen since post-Watergate. In 2020, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris led Democrats to take back the White House, Senate, and the House. In 2022, Republicans under-performed, as Trump-backed election deniers lost. Republicans barely took the House majority, while Democrats expanded their majority in the Senate. Joe Biden had the best performance of an incumbent first-term Democratic president in a midterm since John F. Kennedy.
In the 2023 off-year elections, Democrats defied expectations once again, over-performing in Kentucky and Virginia while abortion ballot measures moved forward in red states like Ohio.
If polls didn’t exist, the dominating narrative in American politics would be about how Republicans are in total disarray after six consecutive years of major election losses and embarrassing underperformances, and their former president is now facing 91 criminal charges after inciting an insurrection.
Early Voting Is Still King
Democrats dominated early voting numbers, partially as a result of Trump’s previous attacks on mail-in voting and false claims of voter fraud. The snowstorm on Election Day likely did no favors for Republicans who waited to cast their ballots.
What It Was Like On The Ground In NY-03
The enthusiasm on the ground in NY-03 was infectious. I’ve never canvassed for a candidate where so many people knew personally. In both Glen Cove, Suozzi’s hometown, and Queens, I encountered a lot of “I know Tom, that’s my guy” and “I was just with him last week” remarks from voters. Not only were these Democratic voters eager to vote, but they were specifically passionate about voting for Suozzi.
I deployed to help the Suozzi Campaign knock on doors to get out the vote with a nonprofit called Common Power. I’ve written about their organization before, but for those who need a refresher, Common Power organizes volunteers nationwide to mobilize for Democratic campaigns. Over the past couple of years, I’ve partnered with their nonpartisan youth education arm, Common Power Future, to provide media literacy lectures to college students.
When Common Power asked me to be a canvassing team lead on the fieldwork side of their operation, I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I’ve been eager to get on the ground and make a direct impact beyond my journalism and lectures.
Common Power’s fieldwork team takes an interesting approach to their canvassing. They train volunteers and organize them in pairs across demographics. So, volunteers are paired up across age, ethnicity, and cultural background differences. We all went off in groups of 3-4 and then reconvened to debrief once we were done knocking. We not only knocked on hundreds of doors a day, we also cultivated community.
As for the campaign itself, they ran an excellent get out the vote operation we were able to seamlessly collaborate with. During this past weekend in Queens, I had the opportunity to see Tom Suozzi in action personally. Suozzi stopped by the campaign office to meet volunteers, and it was clear he was a great retail politician.
Suozzi stopped and spoke to each person individually, including myself.
This surely won’t be the last time I work to get out the vote, that’s for sure. I’ve been transparent about where I stand politically. I’m pro-democracy, and I’m going to do everything in my power to uphold it.
