QUEENS, NEW YORK (CN) — Chipping away at Republicans’ razor thin majority in the House, Democrat Tom Suozzi won a special election on Tuesday to take back his old seat in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, the seat vacated last December by expelled former congressman George Santos.
Suozzi defeated Republican Mazi Pilip on Tuesday by 9 percentage points for the swing district seat representing the western portion of suburban Long Island and a small northeastern corner of Queens.
Suozzi, 61, has been a fixture in Long Island politics for three decades since he was first elected mayor of Glen Cove, on Long Island’s North Shore, in 1993.
The former congressman, two-term Nassau County executive and 2022 Democrat candidate for New York governor, Suozzi has already thrice held the house seat he won in Tuesday’s special election.
During his campaign, he highlighted his ties to the district, which he represented for six years before launching an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2022.
His campaign portrayed him to voters in the swing district as a centrist who is willing to split from his own party and work across the aisle.
As of 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Suozzi had 54.1% of the vote, while Pilip had 45.6%, according to unofficial results posted by the New York State Board of Elections.
Suozzi won 52.7% of votes in suburban Nassau County, which accounts for more than three quarters of of the vote in the congressional district, with Pilip garnering 47%.
Voters in the smaller Queens portion of the district chose the Democrat Suozzi over Republican Pilip 61% to 38%, with 15,205 votes for Suozzi to Pilip’s 9,495, according to the Board of Elections.
Democrats greatly outspent Republicans on advertising for the race, funneling in $13.8 million compared to the GOP’s $8.1 million, according to the media tracking service AdImpact.
Despite being an Ethiopian-born Israeli émigré herself, Pilip challenged Suozzi over the hot button topic of the influx of asylum-seeking migrants into New York City, accusing the Democratic party and President Joe Biden of failing to secure the U.S. southern border.
Suozzi hammered Pilip on the topic of abortion, claiming she couldn’t be trusted to protect abortion rights in states like New York where it remains legally protected.
Pilip said she is personally against abortion but would not force her beliefs on constituents and pledged to oppose any attempt by Congress to impose a nationwide ban.
She has also said she supports the national availability of the abortion pill mifepristone.
Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, told Courthouse News Tuesday’s special election was particularly important right now because of the vastly narrow Republican majority in the House.
“The Republican leadership is having a very difficult time maintaining the party discipline needed to pass legislation,” Feldman said ahead of election day. “If Suozzi wins, it reduces the Republican majority by another seat and that means that the leadership will need almost unanimous party support in order to move any legislation for the rest of this session.”
Republicans now have one of the smallest majorities in history, currently in control of a slim 219-212 majority in the House, meaning they can afford to lose only three votes on any party line bill, assuming full attendance.
That narrow margin, in tandem with the GOP’s internal conflicting ideological factions, have rendered the chamber unruly at times and dysfunctional at passing legislation.
Last week, hardline Republicans’ effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was shot down on a razor-thin 214-216 vote, with several Republican lawmakers breaking ranks to vote against impeaching Mayorkas.
On Tuesday afternoon, the House GOP’s revived effort cleared articles of impeachment against Mayorkas, who has been head of the Department of Homeland Security since 2021, on a tight 214-213 vote. Three Republicans voted against the revamped measure.
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