Special election winner could face altered terrain in November
A map of the 3rd Congressional District. Credit: Newsday
Democrat Tom Suozzi launched his campaign Dec. 9 from a makeshift stage in front of a classic Levittown Cape strung with old-fashioned, multicolor Christmas lights.
Republican-backed Mazi Melesa Pilip kicked hers off Friday with a raucous rally at a crammed American Legion post in nearby Massapequa.
In the closely watched special election to replace expelled Rep. George Santos, Suozzi and Pilip signaled something with their backdrops.
Each chose arguably the 3rd Congressional District’s reddest swath. It's an area Suozzi never represented in the House, despite serving three terms in the seat.
And it's one the winner of the Feb. 13 special election, be it Suozzi or Pilip, may not represent for long.
The importance of redistricting — both a 2022 court decision that benefited the GOP, and Democrats’ possible redo for the 2024 general election — looms large in a condensed, eight-week race expected to see outsized national attention and spending.
In the special election, Republicans who are clinging to a narrow House majority will get at least one more shot in the current 3rd District. It's a more-favorable landscape than state Democrats first had drawn last year in the once-a-decade redistricting process.
But the GOP also might be looking at altered terrain in November — potentially without their newly added strongholds of Levittown and Massapequa.
“It just adds more uncertainty,” David Hopkins, a Boston College political science professor, told Newsday.
Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), whom the House expelled on Dec. 1 after a House Ethics report accused him of defrauding campaign donors for personal profit, was elected in 2022 as part of a red wave that swept Long Island’s congressional districts and helped the GOP win back the House.
His historic expulsion has created the opening for Suozzi, a former Nassau County executive from Glen Cove who held the 3rd District seat from 2017 through 2022 — when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor — and Pilip, a first-term Nassau County legislator and Ethiopian Israeli immigrant from Great Neck.
She has GOP support despite being a registered Democrat.
“If you see Republicans hold the seat, even running a relatively anonymous candidate against a much better known former congressman,” Hopkins said, “then I think that will be interpreted as a sign of a continued Republican surge in the area.”
In 2022, new congressional district maps drawn by Democratic state lawmakers made the blue 3rd even bluer, even stretching the district around Long Island Sound and into Westchester County to include more Democratic voters.
Courts ruled congressional maps in New York were illegally gerrymandered. A special master drew new ones, including in the 3rd, that retained a similar balance from before but swapped portions of northwestern Suffolk County with communities in southeastern Nassau and eastern Queens.
Suozzi had defeated Santos by 12 points in 2020, but Santos, with heavy Republican turnout and without the district Democrats had intended, bested Democrat Robert Zimmerman by an 7.5-point margin in 2022.
This month, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled the 2022 maps were a temporary fix not meant to be kept in place for a decade. The court ordered a bipartisan state redistricting commission to propose new maps to state legislators by Feb. 28.
If the commission agrees on maps, the Democrat-led State Legislature will have the final say, and it’s possible that the configuration of the Third District will change again. As of Nov. 1, the district had 224,741 enrolled Democrats, 161,624 Republicans and 161,057 voters with no party affiliation, according to the state Board of Elections.
House members earn $174,000 a year.
Shawn Donahue, a University at Buffalo political science professor who studies redistricting, raised the prospect that Democrats' new maps will try to expand their advantage, which has been blunted of late by unaffiliated voters turning to the GOP.
Donahue told Newsday that in November, 3rd District candidates are “going to be running in probably a substantially more Democratic district. I think it's a question of how far are they going to try to push it … and how much do the Republicans really want to spend on the race if they're only going to be able to hold it for a few months?”
Local party leaders say they’re not thinking about any of that.
“I always believe in playing the game that you're on the field for,” said Nassau Republican Chairman Joseph Cairo. “We're not going to worry about a primary or November.”
“You run in the election that is in front of you first, and you have to win it,” said Jay Jacobs, chairman of the Nassau and state Democratic committees. “Everything else comes later.”
Still, Jacobs acknowledged the significance of Suozzi opening his special election campaign at the home of a registered Republican in Levittown: “You go first to introduce yourself to the people who do not know you,” Jacobs said.
Richard Fleisher, a retired Fordham University political science professor who lived in the 3rd District for more than 30 years, said the impact of redistricting may be less important in light of Republicans on Long Island outperforming Democrats in three consecutive elections.
In 2021, the party flipped the Nassau County executive and Nassau and Suffolk county district attorney’s offices; in 2022, they flipped two House seats in Nassau and cruised in two Suffolk races. This year, they won the Suffolk executive's office for the first time in more than 20 years and made further gains in North Hempstead Town and the City of Long Beach, which not long ago had been fully Democratic.
“If the Democrats can’t do better in the New York suburbs than they've done in the last few elections,” Fleisher said, “then I don't think redistricting is going to make that much of a difference.”
With Scott Eidler
Democrat Tom Suozzi launched his campaign Dec. 9 from a makeshift stage in front of a classic Levittown Cape strung with old-fashioned, multicolor Christmas lights.
Republican-backed Mazi Melesa Pilip kicked hers off Friday with a raucous rally at a crammed American Legion post in nearby Massapequa.
In the closely watched special election to replace expelled Rep. George Santos, Suozzi and Pilip signaled something with their backdrops.
Each chose arguably the 3rd Congressional District’s reddest swath. It's an area Suozzi never represented in the House, despite serving three terms in the seat.
And it's one the winner of the Feb. 13 special election, be it Suozzi or Pilip, may not represent for long.
Redistricting looms large
The importance of redistricting — both a 2022 court decision that benefited the GOP, and Democrats’ possible redo for the 2024 general election — looms large in a condensed, eight-week race expected to see outsized national attention and spending.
In the special election, Republicans who are clinging to a narrow House majority will get at least one more shot in the current 3rd District. It's a more-favorable landscape than state Democrats first had drawn last year in the once-a-decade redistricting process.
But the GOP also might be looking at altered terrain in November — potentially without their newly added strongholds of Levittown and Massapequa.
“It just adds more uncertainty,” David Hopkins, a Boston College political science professor, told Newsday.
Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), whom the House expelled on Dec. 1 after a House Ethics report accused him of defrauding campaign donors for personal profit, was elected in 2022 as part of a red wave that swept Long Island’s congressional districts and helped the GOP win back the House.
Santos expulsion creates opening
His historic expulsion has created the opening for Suozzi, a former Nassau County executive from Glen Cove who held the 3rd District seat from 2017 through 2022 — when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor — and Pilip, a first-term Nassau County legislator and Ethiopian Israeli immigrant from Great Neck.
She has GOP support despite being a registered Democrat.
“If you see Republicans hold the seat, even running a relatively anonymous candidate against a much better known former congressman,” Hopkins said, “then I think that will be interpreted as a sign of a continued Republican surge in the area.”
In 2022, new congressional district maps drawn by Democratic state lawmakers made the blue 3rd even bluer, even stretching the district around Long Island Sound and into Westchester County to include more Democratic voters.
Courts ruled congressional maps in New York were illegally gerrymandered. A special master drew new ones, including in the 3rd, that retained a similar balance from before but swapped portions of northwestern Suffolk County with communities in southeastern Nassau and eastern Queens.
Suozzi had defeated Santos by 12 points in 2020, but Santos, with heavy Republican turnout and without the district Democrats had intended, bested Democrat Robert Zimmerman by an 7.5-point margin in 2022.
This month, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled the 2022 maps were a temporary fix not meant to be kept in place for a decade. The court ordered a bipartisan state redistricting commission to propose new maps to state legislators by Feb. 28.
If the commission agrees on maps, the Democrat-led State Legislature will have the final say, and it’s possible that the configuration of the Third District will change again. As of Nov. 1, the district had 224,741 enrolled Democrats, 161,624 Republicans and 161,057 voters with no party affiliation, according to the state Board of Elections.
House members earn $174,000 a year.
Shawn Donahue, a University at Buffalo political science professor who studies redistricting, raised the prospect that Democrats' new maps will try to expand their advantage, which has been blunted of late by unaffiliated voters turning to the GOP.
Donahue told Newsday that in November, 3rd District candidates are “going to be running in probably a substantially more Democratic district. I think it's a question of how far are they going to try to push it … and how much do the Republicans really want to spend on the race if they're only going to be able to hold it for a few months?”
Local party leaders say they’re not thinking about any of that.
“I always believe in playing the game that you're on the field for,” said Nassau Republican Chairman Joseph Cairo. “We're not going to worry about a primary or November.”
Running the election 'in front of you'
“You run in the election that is in front of you first, and you have to win it,” said Jay Jacobs, chairman of the Nassau and state Democratic committees. “Everything else comes later.”
Still, Jacobs acknowledged the significance of Suozzi opening his special election campaign at the home of a registered Republican in Levittown: “You go first to introduce yourself to the people who do not know you,” Jacobs said.
Richard Fleisher, a retired Fordham University political science professor who lived in the 3rd District for more than 30 years, said the impact of redistricting may be less important in light of Republicans on Long Island outperforming Democrats in three consecutive elections.
In 2021, the party flipped the Nassau County executive and Nassau and Suffolk county district attorney’s offices; in 2022, they flipped two House seats in Nassau and cruised in two Suffolk races. This year, they won the Suffolk executive's office for the first time in more than 20 years and made further gains in North Hempstead Town and the City of Long Beach, which not long ago had been fully Democratic.
“If the Democrats can’t do better in the New York suburbs than they've done in the last few elections,” Fleisher said, “then I don't think redistricting is going to make that much of a difference.”
With Scott Eidler
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.
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