New York special election results: The Democrats flipped George Santos’ old seat. But here’s the real story. – Slate

The first major congressional race of the 2024 cycle was decided on New Yorks Long Island Tuesday night, with Democrat Tom Suozzi flipping the seat once held by disgraced Republican George Santos.

In some sense, this congressional district, New Yorks 3rd, was a true bellwether; its an actual toss-up swing district, and this victory for Democrats will narrow the slim Republican House majority even further. But the temptation to nationalize the outcome here is a misleading one. Suozzis triumph, while great for Democrats, has little to say about Bidens fate; Pilips victory would have said little about Trump. The race did show us, however, just how much money and effort will be necessary to win toss-up districts in 2024and on a more local level, how far national Democrats are going to have to go to make up for the ineptitude of New Yorks state Democratic Party.

From the outside, this race should have been a slam-dunk. Running to replace Santos, who became one of just six representatives ever to be expelled from Congressand just the third since the Civil Warmade for a dream opportunity for Democrats.

Republicans, already wounded by their affiliation with the serial fabulist and accused campaign finance fraudster par excellence, chose a somewhat Santos-like candidate: Ethiopian-born Israeli Mazi Pilip, a young, not-entirely-vetted politician of color with a penchant for exaggeration. Pilip claimed to have been a paratrooper for the Israel Defense Forces. It turns out she did weapons maintenance for a paratroopers brigade and never faced combat, one of a handful of glaring holes in her record.

And yet, up until election day, polling showed a race so tight it was within the margin of error. This, despite massive name recognition advantage for the Democratic candidate, Suozzi, who has already represented this district in Congress and who had a 2-to-1 spending advantage to boot. Good thing for Democrats that a rare election day snowstorm broke in their favor!

The New York State Democratic Party had a lot to prove. Its poor showing in a blue state during the 2022 midterms cost the House a national Democratic majority. Democrats lost this seat to Santos after Suozzi left Congress to try his hand at the New York governors race, challenging center-right gubernatorial candidate Kathy Hochul from the center right. Once Suozzi buried the hatchet with Hochul and promised to be less anti-choicehis record on abortion has been mixed, to put it charitablyhe could return to his district. There was no primary: New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs hand-picked him.

A right-leaning Democratic congressman with a record of warring with Democrats and siding with Republicans, Suozzi is an exemplar of Jacobs Long Island Strategy: running the most conservative possible Democrats in Long Island districts and hoping to fool conservative voters by using their very same slogans.

Its a mixed strategy, at best. Suozzi positioned himself as tough on crime, anti-immigrant, and pro-tax cuts. His foils were the progressive members of the Squad; he trumpeted his bona fides as an unrivaled devotee of the Republican-funded Israel lobby. Suozzi is one of the co-founders of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group stood up by the Republican-aligned No Labels, which has sabotaged Biden repeatedly through three years of his presidency. (One of Suozzis closing messages to the campaign was the stunning and arguably racist assessment that if Pilip were to win, were gonna end up with more migrants coming to New York; and on top of that, theyre gonna have access to AR-15s.)

He won, yes. But more broadly, Republicans have gored Democrats down-ballot in Long Island. And the key to this race was the money. Democrats spent nearly $14 million, almost double the GOPs $8 million investment in the race. According to AdImpact, the total ad spend for just this Long Island district totaled an eyewatering $21.4 million. Thats more than quadruple the outlay of the 2022 race that yielded Santos.

Plus, Democrats of all stripes rallied around to cinch this win. Progressive grassroots groups were campaigning on Suozzis behalf, despite their major policy disagreements with the candidate; Suozzis campaign, meanwhile, was accessible and played nice with them. National groups spent exorbitantly. The only group that seemed lax about flipping the district back was the state and local Democratic Party: According to Rachel Klein, founder of Engage Long Island, a local progressive grassroots organization, the state party repeatedly spurned her groups volunteer efforts to get Suozzi across the finish line.

We have been working so hard. Weve never worked this hard for a single campaign in this concentrated amount of time, Klein said via phone call before the race on Tuesday. But the state party doesnt reach out to us or try at all to bring us in. Its not okay.

So while the New York state Republican apparatus was humming, the New York state Democratic machine was, once again, leaving something to be desired. Jacobs Republican equivalent, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., who hand-picked Pilip, campaigned heavily, serving as her chief strategist, fund-raiser and surrogate, according to the New York Timeseven traveling to Washington to wring more support out of national Republicans, to complement the on-the-ground blitz.

Jacobs will claim this as a win for his dubious, do-nothing strategy, but the real triumph belongs to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who put up the cash, showed up in the district, and helped build an infrastructure to work around the New York Dems.

Waiting for the national party to airdrop a spending advantage of millions of dollars is not a sustainable way to win elections. The difficulty of this win and the price tag show the cost of the New York State Democratic Partys refusal to reconcile with the failures of the party apparatus after the 2022 midterms. This district will also have to go back to the polls for this same race in November. How many millions will that cost?

It could be a problem for Biden too. He may be old. He may be unpopular. But New York Democrats are a millstone around his neck, not the other way around.This should not be a close race, said Klein, the progressive organizer, on election day. It makes me very nervous for November.

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New York special election results: The Democrats flipped George Santos' old seat. But here's the real story. - Slate