GOP leadership is divided over how to spin Pilip's loss to Suozzi
Mazi Melesa Pilip, center, the GOP’s CD3 candidate, in East Meadow Tuesday night, with Nassau GOP chairman Joe Cairo, second from left, and former congressman Peter King, far left. Credit: AP/Mary Altaffer
Morning-after reactions to Tom Suozzi’s win — and Mazi Melesa Pilip’s loss — in the Third Congressional District expose sharp differences among Republican leaders as to what the results portend.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday sought to calm trepidation in his caucus over its loss in Tuesday's special election of the seat formerly held by George Santos. Johnson reportedly noted in a closed-door meeting that the Democrats were forced to spend $15 million on winning back a district where voters supported Joe Biden in 2020.
Then there was Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who told CNN it was “stupid” to have expelled the indicted Santos before he was convicted of a crime; the expulsion came at the urging of Long Island’s other three Republican House members.
Back in New York, Ed Cox, the state’s impeccably courteous party chairman, issued a statement late Tuesday: “Congratulations to Mazi Pilip on a remarkable campaign that fell just short. Mazi was a phenomenal candidate and has a bright future in our party.”
Along similar lines, Nassau County’s Republican chairman, Joseph Cairo, said: “It was a very short campaign, very compact, and Mazi did a great job.”
Privately, however, GOP operatives acknowledged that Pilip ran as a tightly scripted, somewhat inscrutable candidate who didn’t engage voters. Suozzi had nearly 54% to Pilip’s 46%, a rather decisive, if low-turnout, win.
Much as the election was truly about Nassau and Queens residents, former President Donald Trump as usual sought to make it about himself. Which wouldn’t matter except he is the boss of all GOP bosses these days, lording it over the party unchallenged as he runs to recapture the White House.
“Republicans just don’t learn,” Trump said condescendingly on his social-media platform. He said he “just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to straddle the fence when she would have easily won if she understood anything about modern day politics in America.”
“MAGA, which is most of the Republican Party, stayed home … Give us a real candidate in the district for November. Suozzi, I know him well, can be easily beaten.”
The reality, of course, is that in a purple district, with many unaffiliated voters, identifying oneself as a loyal agent for either Trump or Biden could have proved costly.
One longtime GOP insider from the district privately addressed how Trump’s irascible conduct and hurling of verbal stink bombs become a burden for local Republicans to carry into the fall. It’s the flip side of Suozzi having seen the need to separate himself from the Biden administration’s chaotic record on immigration.
By the local Republican’s reckoning, perhaps one-third of party members will follow Trump’s directions no matter what, another third will ignore him, and the final third “hates his guts” and rejects his pronouncements of how to proceed.
“Being anti-Trump costs a candidate 33% of Republicans off the bat,” the GOP insider said. On the other hand, being pro-Trump loses crossover Democrats. He is divisive, purely and simply.
Which leads to the question: Will state and county GOP leaders find the gumption to answer Trump, since his shots at Pilip were nastier than anything Suozzi issued during the campaign? A sharp response might benefit them later on, if only to show they have the self-respect to defend themselves and their choices.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
