Mazi Melesa Pilip resume: A close look at her record
Mazi Melesa Pilip speaks after her win for Nassau County Legislature at the GOP election returns party at the Coral House on Nov. 8 in Baldwin. Credit: Corey Sipkin
As the Republican Party's nominee to replace expelled Rep. George Santos — who fabricated his biography to a huge degree — Mazi Melesa Pilip was under high scrutiny even before she stepped into the spotlight.
GOP leaders said they hired three different private background-check firms to vet Pilip, a Nassau County legislator and a registered Democrat, along with other contenders who were screened as possible candidates in the Feb. 13 special election for the 3rd Congressional District seat.
Party leaders have admitted they failed to vet Santos properly. But with Pilip, “The vetting process was very thorough,” Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Cairo said in announcing her bid last month.
Newsday independently vetted Pilip, 44, of Great Neck, and her Democratic opponent, former 3rd District Rep. Tom Suozzi, of Glen Cove.
Reporters reviewed the candidates' resumes, checked with employers and colleges they cited, and studied numerous public records to confirm many of the details they have shared publicly.
Here are the findings on Pilip:
Pilip was born in Ethiopia in 1979, and immigrated to Israel with her family in 1991. Their move, she said, came during Operation Solomon, a covert 36-hour mission by the Israeli government to resettle persecuted Ethiopian Jews amid a civil war. While there are no available documents listing the names of the roughly 15,000 evacuees, Pilip, whose maiden name is Melesa, was 12 in May 1991, when the airlift mission was executed, records show, and she spoke publicly about her journey for many years before running for elected office.
The Israeli government paid for Pilip and other refugees to attend publicly run boarding schools, she said.
Pilip enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces shortly after her 18th birthday, part of compulsory military service for young people in Israel, Newsday confirmed.
A spokesperson for the IDF’s North American offices did not respond to questions about Pilip's military service, telling Newsday in an email last month: “Out of concern for privacy, we do not disclose the service status and details of individuals.”
Copies of IDF records that Pilip showed Newsday indicate her service began in October 1997 and ended in July 1999, when she was 20.
The records, which are in Hebrew and contain the IDF seal, were dated Dec. 20, 2023. Pilip said she requested new certified copies for Newsday because the originals likely were with her family in Israel. She allowed Newsday to review the documents, and translate them from Hebrew, but — citing security concerns — not to copy or photograph them.
Pilip has referred to herself on social media profiles as a “former paratrooper.”
The documents reviewed by Newsday show Pilip served in a weaponry role in the IDF paratroopers brigade, achieving a rank that is roughly equivalent to that of sergeant in the American military. The brigade is known in Hebrew as “Gibush Tzanchanim,” and the IDF website describes it as an “elite infantry brigade in the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Pilip told Newsday she was a gunsmith responsible for keeping weapons in good working order. Although male members of her unit conducted combat operations during Israel's protracted conflict in Lebanon, which ended in 2000, Pilip said she was stationed in Israel. Women weren’t allowed to serve in combat during her period of service.
After challenges in the 1990s to restrictions on women's IDF service, the Israeli government removed many of the formal barriers in 2000. The first female combatants saw action in 2001, according to published reports.
The IDF had a “Women's Corps” during Pilip's service, but it was essentially a “clearinghouse for placing young women in different units in the military,” said Dan Arbell, a scholar in residence at American University’s Center for Israel Studies in Washington, D.C., and an IDF veteran. Once women were in their units, he said, “there was no reporting to this woman's force, it was solely under the command and control of these units.”
Upon Pilip's discharge, the IDF evaluated Pilip's service by noting “excellent behavior,” “initiative,” “honesty” and “independence in performing tasks,” according to the documents she provided to Newsday. She said she was asked to attend officer school for a possible military career, but declined because she wanted to attend college.
Pilip said her reference to herself as a former paratrooper was not meant to suggest she was a parachutist who jumped from aircraft.
Pilip attended Haifa University in Israel from 2000 to 2004, according to the resume she provided Nassau Republicans before her first campaign for Nassau County Legislature in 2021. She said she graduated with a bachelor's degree in occupational therapy.
Representatives from the school did not return Newsday's messages seeking confirmation, but Pilip allowed Newsday to view a photograph of her diploma, which is in Hebrew. It indicates she received her bachelor of arts degree on June 23, 2004, matching her resume. The diploma was issued jointly by Haifa University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which houses a medical school that participated in a program Pilip said she attended for occupational therapy.
In 2007 and 2008, Pilip attended a graduate program in political science at Tel Aviv University. She earned a master's degree in diplomacy and security in 2009, a university spokeswoman confirmed to Newsday last month. Pilip allowed Newsday to view that document, which indicated the diploma was issued on June 18, 2009.
Pilip said between undergraduate and graduate school, she spent time in both the United States and Israel, including in New York City, working as an advocate for the Ethiopian-Israeli community. Between 2004 and 2009, she was a community relations specialist for the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, attending conferences and raising money, according to her resume.
An email sent by Newsday to the nonprofit was not returned, but several published news reports between 2005 and 2007 note Pilip's presence at events such as Jewish film festivals and local synagogue visits on behalf of the organization.
Pilip's resume lists several other advocacy positions between 2009 and 2012, including as outreach director at the nonprofit Israel at Heart, which sought to improve Israel's image abroad, and as project manager at World ORT, an education and vocational training organization focused on disadvantaged populations. The founder of Israel at Heart last week confirmed Pilip's employment there. Calls and messages to World ORT representatives were not immediately returned.
Most recently, Pilip worked as director of operations at her husband's Smithtown medical practice, New York Comprehensive Medical Care. Her resume says she served in the position from 2017 to 2021, and that she managed daily operations of a “very successful and busy multispecialty practice” and “expanded practice volume from zero to over 12,000 patients.”
From 2015 to 2017, Pilip served on the Great Neck Village appointed architectural review committee, which oversees proposed construction projects, according to her resume. Village Clerk Abraham Cohan confirmed Pilip's service on the committee, noting the village also had been contacted by one of the private vetting firms used by the Nassau GOP.
In November 2021, Pilip, a registered Democrat running as a Republican, was elected to the Nassau County Legislature in the 10th District in North Hempstead. She defeated a four-term Democrat and was reelected to a second term last year, again with GOP and Conservative Party backing.
New York State elections records show Pilip first registered to vote in the state in 2012 as a Democrat, which remains her party registration.
Her voting history shows she voted in the 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 general elections.
Cairo has said Pilip's Democratic enrollment has never been an issue with the party, and Pilip has dismissed the significance of it, saying her values and issue positions now align more with those of Republicans.
Pilip met Adalbert Pilip, a Ukrainian-born American, when he attended medical school in Israel. They came to the United States in 2005 and married that year, she said, when Dr. Pilip was serving a medical residency in New York City.
Mazi Pilip became a U.S. citizen in October 2009, and retains dual Israeli citizenship, her campaign said. A Newsday review of Pilip's state voter registration applications, filed in 2012, 2015 and 2018, showed she swore under oath on each that she was a U.S. citizen.
Asked by Newsday to confirm citizenship for both Pilip and Suozzi, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it did not confirm, deny or share information on individuals.
Mazi and Adalbert Pilip have seven children, ages 2 to 16. They purchased their Great Neck home in 2016, property records show.
Dr. Pilip is a cardiologist who has been licensed to practice medicine in New York State since 2008. He also has registered several health care business entities with the state, according to state business incorporation records.
Newsday last month submitted a request under the state Freedom of Information Law for financial disclosure forms that Nassau County elected and appointed officials, including Mazi Pilip, must submit annually to the county Board of Ethics. The board has not yet responded to the request.
As a congressional candidate, Pilip must file a separate financial disclosure form — listing income and assets within broad ranges — with the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The forms must be filed 30 days after declaration of candidacy and no later than 30 days before Election Day. Republicans announced her nomination on Dec. 14.
As of publication of this story, Pilip's federal financial disclosure had not been posted online.
Records showing fundraising and spending by Pilip's congressional campaign through late January must be filed with the Federal Election Commission by Feb. 1. Both the Pilip and Suozzi campaigns are expected to directly raise and spend in the six figures, not counting millions of dollars likely to pour in from national campaign committees and Super PACs.
Pilip's legislative campaign committee reports filed with the New York State Board of Elections show that since declaring her county candidacy in 2021, she has raised roughly $112,000 and spent about $64,000.
The only contributors who have given her county campaign a total of more than $3,000 are the political action committee of the New York Association of Realtors, Great Neck resident Joseph Nazar and a limited liability company tied to Manhattan property management firm executive Hersel Torkian, of Great Neck, records show.
Pilip is not named as a defendant in any federal or state lawsuits, records show.
Adalbert Pilip and New York Comprehensive Medical Care are the subjects of a suit filed in 2020 in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County. The complaint accuses him and the practice of breaching a multiyear lease for a facility in Bay Shore, failing to pay about $72,000 in rent due as of late 2020 and owing an additional $497,000 for the five remaining years of the lease through 2026.
Attorneys for the physician have denied the allegations in court, and Nassau GOP spokesman Mike Deery has called the case “an ongoing lease dispute between a private business owned by Ms. Pilip’s husband and a landlord.”
Lawyers for the landlord who brought the complaint did not return requests for comment.
During the period covered in the lawsuit complaint, New York Comprehensive Medical Care also received nearly $300,000 in federal pandemic relief loans, a fraction of which was earmarked to pay rent, records show. The bulk was designated to cover payroll.
The loans were forgiven subsequently.
With Scott Eidler and Estelle Lander
As the Republican Party's nominee to replace expelled Rep. George Santos — who fabricated his biography to a huge degree — Mazi Melesa Pilip was under high scrutiny even before she stepped into the spotlight.
GOP leaders said they hired three different private background-check firms to vet Pilip, a Nassau County legislator and a registered Democrat, along with other contenders who were screened as possible candidates in the Feb. 13 special election for the 3rd Congressional District seat.
Party leaders have admitted they failed to vet Santos properly. But with Pilip, “The vetting process was very thorough,” Nassau Republican chairman Joseph Cairo said in announcing her bid last month.
Newsday independently vetted Pilip, 44, of Great Neck, and her Democratic opponent, former 3rd District Rep. Tom Suozzi, of Glen Cove.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Special election, Feb. 13: 3rd Congressional District, U.S. House of Representatives.
- The candidates: Nassau County Legis. Mazi Melesa Pilip, 44, of Great Neck, who is running as a Republican. Former 3rd Third District U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, 61, a Democrat from Glen Cove.
- About the job: The winner in 2024 will serve out the remaining two-year term of expelled U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-Nassau/Queens). The salary is $174,000 annually. Republicans hold an eight-vote majority in the House.
Reporters reviewed the candidates' resumes, checked with employers and colleges they cited, and studied numerous public records to confirm many of the details they have shared publicly.
Here are the findings on Pilip:
Early life
Pilip was born in Ethiopia in 1979, and immigrated to Israel with her family in 1991. Their move, she said, came during Operation Solomon, a covert 36-hour mission by the Israeli government to resettle persecuted Ethiopian Jews amid a civil war. While there are no available documents listing the names of the roughly 15,000 evacuees, Pilip, whose maiden name is Melesa, was 12 in May 1991, when the airlift mission was executed, records show, and she spoke publicly about her journey for many years before running for elected office.
The Israeli government paid for Pilip and other refugees to attend publicly run boarding schools, she said.
Military service
Pilip enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces shortly after her 18th birthday, part of compulsory military service for young people in Israel, Newsday confirmed.
A spokesperson for the IDF’s North American offices did not respond to questions about Pilip's military service, telling Newsday in an email last month: “Out of concern for privacy, we do not disclose the service status and details of individuals.”
Copies of IDF records that Pilip showed Newsday indicate her service began in October 1997 and ended in July 1999, when she was 20.
The records, which are in Hebrew and contain the IDF seal, were dated Dec. 20, 2023. Pilip said she requested new certified copies for Newsday because the originals likely were with her family in Israel. She allowed Newsday to review the documents, and translate them from Hebrew, but — citing security concerns — not to copy or photograph them.
Pilip has referred to herself on social media profiles as a “former paratrooper.”
The documents reviewed by Newsday show Pilip served in a weaponry role in the IDF paratroopers brigade, achieving a rank that is roughly equivalent to that of sergeant in the American military. The brigade is known in Hebrew as “Gibush Tzanchanim,” and the IDF website describes it as an “elite infantry brigade in the Israeli Defense Forces.”
Pilip told Newsday she was a gunsmith responsible for keeping weapons in good working order. Although male members of her unit conducted combat operations during Israel's protracted conflict in Lebanon, which ended in 2000, Pilip said she was stationed in Israel. Women weren’t allowed to serve in combat during her period of service.
After challenges in the 1990s to restrictions on women's IDF service, the Israeli government removed many of the formal barriers in 2000. The first female combatants saw action in 2001, according to published reports.
The IDF had a “Women's Corps” during Pilip's service, but it was essentially a “clearinghouse for placing young women in different units in the military,” said Dan Arbell, a scholar in residence at American University’s Center for Israel Studies in Washington, D.C., and an IDF veteran. Once women were in their units, he said, “there was no reporting to this woman's force, it was solely under the command and control of these units.”
Upon Pilip's discharge, the IDF evaluated Pilip's service by noting “excellent behavior,” “initiative,” “honesty” and “independence in performing tasks,” according to the documents she provided to Newsday. She said she was asked to attend officer school for a possible military career, but declined because she wanted to attend college.
Pilip said her reference to herself as a former paratrooper was not meant to suggest she was a parachutist who jumped from aircraft.
Education
Pilip attended Haifa University in Israel from 2000 to 2004, according to the resume she provided Nassau Republicans before her first campaign for Nassau County Legislature in 2021. She said she graduated with a bachelor's degree in occupational therapy.
Representatives from the school did not return Newsday's messages seeking confirmation, but Pilip allowed Newsday to view a photograph of her diploma, which is in Hebrew. It indicates she received her bachelor of arts degree on June 23, 2004, matching her resume. The diploma was issued jointly by Haifa University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which houses a medical school that participated in a program Pilip said she attended for occupational therapy.
In 2007 and 2008, Pilip attended a graduate program in political science at Tel Aviv University. She earned a master's degree in diplomacy and security in 2009, a university spokeswoman confirmed to Newsday last month. Pilip allowed Newsday to view that document, which indicated the diploma was issued on June 18, 2009.
Employment
Pilip said between undergraduate and graduate school, she spent time in both the United States and Israel, including in New York City, working as an advocate for the Ethiopian-Israeli community. Between 2004 and 2009, she was a community relations specialist for the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, attending conferences and raising money, according to her resume.
An email sent by Newsday to the nonprofit was not returned, but several published news reports between 2005 and 2007 note Pilip's presence at events such as Jewish film festivals and local synagogue visits on behalf of the organization.
Pilip's resume lists several other advocacy positions between 2009 and 2012, including as outreach director at the nonprofit Israel at Heart, which sought to improve Israel's image abroad, and as project manager at World ORT, an education and vocational training organization focused on disadvantaged populations. The founder of Israel at Heart last week confirmed Pilip's employment there. Calls and messages to World ORT representatives were not immediately returned.
Most recently, Pilip worked as director of operations at her husband's Smithtown medical practice, New York Comprehensive Medical Care. Her resume says she served in the position from 2017 to 2021, and that she managed daily operations of a “very successful and busy multispecialty practice” and “expanded practice volume from zero to over 12,000 patients.”
Public positions
From 2015 to 2017, Pilip served on the Great Neck Village appointed architectural review committee, which oversees proposed construction projects, according to her resume. Village Clerk Abraham Cohan confirmed Pilip's service on the committee, noting the village also had been contacted by one of the private vetting firms used by the Nassau GOP.
In November 2021, Pilip, a registered Democrat running as a Republican, was elected to the Nassau County Legislature in the 10th District in North Hempstead. She defeated a four-term Democrat and was reelected to a second term last year, again with GOP and Conservative Party backing.
Voting history
New York State elections records show Pilip first registered to vote in the state in 2012 as a Democrat, which remains her party registration.
Her voting history shows she voted in the 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 general elections.
Cairo has said Pilip's Democratic enrollment has never been an issue with the party, and Pilip has dismissed the significance of it, saying her values and issue positions now align more with those of Republicans.
Family
Pilip met Adalbert Pilip, a Ukrainian-born American, when he attended medical school in Israel. They came to the United States in 2005 and married that year, she said, when Dr. Pilip was serving a medical residency in New York City.
Mazi Pilip became a U.S. citizen in October 2009, and retains dual Israeli citizenship, her campaign said. A Newsday review of Pilip's state voter registration applications, filed in 2012, 2015 and 2018, showed she swore under oath on each that she was a U.S. citizen.
Asked by Newsday to confirm citizenship for both Pilip and Suozzi, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it did not confirm, deny or share information on individuals.
Mazi and Adalbert Pilip have seven children, ages 2 to 16. They purchased their Great Neck home in 2016, property records show.
Dr. Pilip is a cardiologist who has been licensed to practice medicine in New York State since 2008. He also has registered several health care business entities with the state, according to state business incorporation records.
Financial disclosures
Newsday last month submitted a request under the state Freedom of Information Law for financial disclosure forms that Nassau County elected and appointed officials, including Mazi Pilip, must submit annually to the county Board of Ethics. The board has not yet responded to the request.
As a congressional candidate, Pilip must file a separate financial disclosure form — listing income and assets within broad ranges — with the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The forms must be filed 30 days after declaration of candidacy and no later than 30 days before Election Day. Republicans announced her nomination on Dec. 14.
As of publication of this story, Pilip's federal financial disclosure had not been posted online.
Campaign finance
Records showing fundraising and spending by Pilip's congressional campaign through late January must be filed with the Federal Election Commission by Feb. 1. Both the Pilip and Suozzi campaigns are expected to directly raise and spend in the six figures, not counting millions of dollars likely to pour in from national campaign committees and Super PACs.
Pilip's legislative campaign committee reports filed with the New York State Board of Elections show that since declaring her county candidacy in 2021, she has raised roughly $112,000 and spent about $64,000.
The only contributors who have given her county campaign a total of more than $3,000 are the political action committee of the New York Association of Realtors, Great Neck resident Joseph Nazar and a limited liability company tied to Manhattan property management firm executive Hersel Torkian, of Great Neck, records show.
Lawsuits
Pilip is not named as a defendant in any federal or state lawsuits, records show.
Adalbert Pilip and New York Comprehensive Medical Care are the subjects of a suit filed in 2020 in State Supreme Court in Suffolk County. The complaint accuses him and the practice of breaching a multiyear lease for a facility in Bay Shore, failing to pay about $72,000 in rent due as of late 2020 and owing an additional $497,000 for the five remaining years of the lease through 2026.
Attorneys for the physician have denied the allegations in court, and Nassau GOP spokesman Mike Deery has called the case “an ongoing lease dispute between a private business owned by Ms. Pilip’s husband and a landlord.”
Lawyers for the landlord who brought the complaint did not return requests for comment.
During the period covered in the lawsuit complaint, New York Comprehensive Medical Care also received nearly $300,000 in federal pandemic relief loans, a fraction of which was earmarked to pay rent, records show. The bulk was designated to cover payroll.
The loans were forgiven subsequently.
With Scott Eidler and Estelle Lander
Paul LaRocco is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in late 2010, he has also covered Nassau and Suffolk county politics and government and the Town of Oyster Bay.
