Republicans spending $11 million to unseat Rep. Tom Suozzi

WASHINGTON — Republicans are pouring millions of dollars into the race to defeat Long Island Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi, seeking to flip his district red even as the GOP nationally is focused more on defending House seats it already holds or were redistricted.

Since early September, President Donald Trump’s new super political action committee has spent or booked more than $6.5 million for TV advertising targeting Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) — with about $2.4 million of that occurring over the past week, federal filings show.

In all, there's been more than $11 million distributed by the No Going Back PAC Inc. and other Republican groups toward backing Suozzi’s GOP challenger, Michael LiPetri, of Farmingdale.

Multiple nonpartisan political handicappers still rate the contest as leaning or favoring the congressman. But they say this GOP onslaught of money targeting Suozzi is intriguing, if unexpected, given it was not high on lists of parties' or pundits' top battleground races.

"My interest is piqued," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, an election-handicapping newsletter, of Republican spending in Suozzi's district.

"Explained to a Senior Democratic Strategist today that Republicans are spending $11+ million to try to beat Suozzi and I think they thought I was on drugs," Jacob Rubashkin, the deputy editor of the nonpartisan Inside Elections, posted on X.

The latest of the ads, airing this week, attacks Suozzi — a former Nassau County executive who won a special election in 2024 for the congressional seat when former Republican Rep. George Santos resigned — for allegedly supporting tax increases and backing congestion pricing. 

"The MAGA attacks against Tom Suozzi are coming fast and furious to try and distract from the skyrocketing costs of gas, groceries and interest rates," Suozzi’s campaign spokesman, Kim Devlin, said Thursday when asked about the GOP spending that is helping LiPetri with TV spots.

LiPetri’s campaign manager, Mike Falk, offered, "We welcome the support in exposing Tom’s record. We like to say he plays a moderate on TV, but his voting record is far from it. We’re exposing that record."

Democrats need a net pickup of three seats in November to seize majority control of the 435-seat U.S. House from Republicans, as both parties compete in a patchwork of key battlegrounds nationally. Republicans are mostly playing defense. For instance, in the lower Hudson Valley, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-Pearl River) is fighting to keep a swing seat in one of the most competitive, most expensive and closely watched House races in the country.

In terms of their own fundraising, LiPetri has been badly trailing. The candidates’ latest Federal Election Commission filings in July showed Suozzi with more than $5 million in the bank, and LiPetri with $742,000.

Charles Gantt, a Republican political operative listed in FEC filings as the treasurer of the Trump-affiliated No Going Back PAC is also treasurer of the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again Inc.. He could not be reached for comment.

Other GOP groups sending money to take down Suozzi include the Congressional Leadership Fund, a House GOP political action committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. "We are targeting Suozzi because he is vulnerable," Lydia Hall, a CLF spokeswoman, told Newsday in an email statement.

Most of the outside-group GOP money nationally is flowing to fights over Republican seats or to contests over districts redistricted mid-decade as the GOP battles to keep its slim majority.

But Kondik said a handful of non-redistricted incumbent Democratic seats are also attracting heavy outside spending — the New Mexico district of Democrat Gabe Vasquez, the Washington state district of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Suozzi’s. He noted all of those are districts Trump won in 2024.

Kondik suggested it may be a case where the Republican Party and its allies — who enter the final weeks of the midterm congressional elections with a financial edge — are trying to find more places to play offense. He noted spending in the district for LiPetri could also help Republican gubernatorial candidate Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who's also on the Nov. 3 ballot.

AdImpact, which tracks political advertising, reported this week that through the end of September, Republican advertisers had aired $596.8 million worth of ads targeting congressional elections, compared with $397.6 million aired from Democratic advertisers.

And for the coming weeks, Trump-related PACs and other GOP-affiliated groups have reserved at least $888 million in advertising over the coming weeks, compared to at least $666 million for Democrats, AdImpact also reported.

The money has been helping the LiPetri campaign to launch a series of ads attacking Suozzi in the expensive New York broadcast TV market. 

Along with this week's new commercial, an earlier No Going Back PAC spot hit the Glen Cove Democrat for making money in the stock market trading while in Congress. That’s something its narrator says LiPetri would seek to ban.

Against this backdrop, the Democratic Congressional Campaign — the political arm of top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) — announced Thursday the release of its first TV ad to run in Suozzi's district, depicting LiPetri as a rubber stamp for Trump in gutting healthcare and raising cost on Americans.