Do Special Elections Predict Anything?
The answer is always yes and no. It's more about lessons learned and consequences. Republicans could win by losing.
Much is being made about a special congressional election in New York’s Third Congressional District, one of four heavily suburban House seats on Long Island. After the 2022 election, all four were won by Republicans. Long Island is politically competitive.
The Third was represented by expelled US Rep. George Santos, who is facing a 23-count federal indictment and is one of the more remarkable fabulists ever elected to public office. His Long Island GOP colleagues led the expulsion effort in the House. That alone led me to suspect that former Rep. Tom Suozzi, a center-left Democrat who held the seat for six years before losing a primary for Governor, was likely to win. Republicans were scandal-plagued from the start.
In some cycles, special elections can foretell the future. In 1994, Republicans won two largely rural seats held previously by popular Democrats in Kentucky (Ron Lewis) and Oklahoma (Frank Lucas). It foretold a 54-seat GOP gain in the House, leading to their first majority in 40 years. Given the unique local dynamics, it’s doubtful that’s the case here. As usual, partisans are projecting their agendas on the result.
But while the dark, foreboding cloud of George Santos hovers over the election results, there is one very big red flag that Republicans need to pay attention to - they are losing the suburbs.
I know very little about the district. I’ve driven through it, but not recently. It is the wealthiest and one of the most highly educated congressional seats in the Empire State - it is the fourth wealthiest district in the United States. Notably, eight of the ten wealthiest districts in the US are represented by Democrats. Half are in California’s Bay Area, home of our big tech giants, such as Google and Apple. Only the neighboring New York 4th on Long Island (US Rep. Anthony Esposito) and New Jersey’s 7th, represented by my friend Tom Kean Jr., are represented by Republicans, and only since the last election - both are serving their first term.
That’s your first clue that Republicans faced headwinds here. Joe Biden won the seat by about 10 points in 2020; Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by six points in 2016. The only GOP presidential candidate to win the seat since 1992 was George W. Bush in 2004. He lost to Al Gore in 2000.
Republicans gained four seats, including two on Long Island, in the 2022 election on the strength of fellow Long Island GOP Congressman Lee Zeldin’s impressive if ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign, where he overperformed and boosted down-ballot races, mostly on the issue of rising crime. Zeldin, rumored to be on Donald Trump’s shortlist for Vice President, won the Third District by a whopping 10 points. Riding his coattails, Santos won the seat by 20,000 votes with just under 54% of the vote. Zeldin led the GOP to sweep all four Long Island congressional districts, which I define as Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
The Third District included a slice of heavily Democratic Queens, contributing to, but not solely responsible for, Suozzi’s comfortable 13,000 vote victory.
The GOP nominee (who also won a spot on the Conservative Party line) was little-known two-term Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip, a naturalized citizen and Ethiopian-born Jew whose family migrated to Israel. The mother of seven served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces before migrating to New York. She ran on a ten-point plan that covered the usual GOP issues, from tax relief (expanding the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT) to border enforcement, crime, and support for Israel. She ran as a “pro-choice” candidate on abortion.
The border was a top issue, given the issues being faced in neighboring New York City, with an infusion of illegal aliens stressing local resources. Suozzi promised to support the border compromise negotiated in the Senate. Whether that was a deciding factor may emerge in subsequent post-election surveys. I doubt it. Voters also didn’t buy Pilip’s characterization of her opponent as “Sanctuary Suozzi,” who was running commercials with the tagline, “Let’s Fix This.” He appeared to have run a notably less partisan campaign focused on cooperation and results.
“Instead of continuing to fight with each other, we can begin to work with each other,” Suozzi opined.
Suozzi and Democrats badly outspent Pilip, $14 million to about $8 million. That’s a lot of money. “Democrats had a slew of advantages in the race,” opined left-leaning Politico. “A recent former incumbent with extremely high name ID in the most expensive media market in the country. A massive fundraising and spending advantage. A short six-week timeline that made it difficult for Republicans to catch up. And GOP groups that largely sat out the race for the first few weeks.”
“Voters stuck with the candidate they know,” opined David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report.
I can’t speak to her quality as a candidate or the effectiveness of her campaign. But turnout was low, even for a special election - 100,000 fewer people cast votes in the special election compared to November 2022. She garnered about 75,000 votes, about half the 145,000 won by Santos over the execrable Robert Zimmerman, a former Fox News contributor on behalf of Democrats best known for insufferably offending people.
A snowy election day may have been a factor since GOP voters favor election day voting over early or mail votes. Democrats had banked a significant number of early votes. There is more to learn from a deeper post-mortem.
Suozzi won by 8 points, the same as Joe Biden in 2020. Suozzi last congressional win in 2020 was over George Santos by nearly 13 points. The district reverted to the recent norm. For whatever reason, Philip did not replicate Zeldin’s or Santos’s success in 2022. Republicans now have a very slim three-vote margin in the US House, with New York’s Democratic legislature still yet to implement state court-ordered redistricting.
Comically, Santos weighed in on the election. So did Donald Trump, trashing Pilip for keeping her distance from him and refusing to endorse his presidential candidacy. I’ll let friends from or more knowledgeable about Long Island politics tell me whether it’s “MAGA Country.” I don’t find many wealthy, highly-educated suburban districts north of the Maxon-Dixon line - or most anywhere else - that qualify as “MAGA Country.”
Due to the Santos factor, the election is probably not a bellwether. But for Republicans, it is a fresh reminder of their decline in wealthier and suburban enclaves and among higher educated voters. In addition, the GOP continues to struggle with turnout and, it seems, messaging, especially with independent voters. What voters have seen from Republicans in Congress the past several weeks, especially in the House, probably is not helping.
It also helps that Democrats nominated a more centrist candidate, a former incumbent, whom they knew and were comfortable with - Suozzi was easily reelected in this district (altered slightly by reapportionment) before he ran for Governor in 2022. He wasn’t a crazy woke leftist.
According to my friend Charlie Cook and his Partisan Vote Index (PVI), it’s a D+2 district—the other three Long Island Districts lean Republican. The Third District remains marginal and winnable for the right Republican candidate running with a little wind to their back and a good campaign. Suozzi’s new seat doesn’t appear as friendly as his prior district, so he’ll have to work to keep it, depending on how the independent redistricting commission or Democratic legislators (it’s a byzantine process) may redraw it. The independent commission has until February 28th to submit a map.
Democrats may now work to strengthen Suozzi’s hold on the district and thus bolster the other three Republicans on Long Island, curbing possible gains in 2024. It might be an example of Republicans winning by losing.
Elections have consequences.
I grew up in the District next door. While overall it might not be super-Trump friendly, like many other places, Trump is very popular with the activists. And, when you have a low-turnout election that is who votes. The snow hurt, mostly because Republicans still think voting by mail is a form of cheating. We need to get over ourselves. The more concerning thing is that immigration might not be as big an issue as some Republican pollsters think. The final thing I would say is that Democratic Leader Hakim Jeffries believes the path to the majority starts with winning back the four seats the Democrats lost in NY in 2022. One down, three to go.