NY-03 gives Republicans lots to worry about
Tom Suozzi’s victory highlights GOP weakness and D strengths.
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Much pre-election hype suggested the NY-03 special to replace lying grifting weirdo George Santos was going to be a nail biter. In the event, though, it wasn’t that close.
Democrat Tom Suozzi, who held the seat from 2017 till he stepped down in 2023, easily defeated newcomer Mazi Pilip (Suozzi led by eight points with 93 percent of votes in as this was written early Wednesday). Suozzi racked up impressive margins in Democratic Queens and also did well in GOP-leaning Nassau thanks to anemic Republican voting on election day.
Nate Cohn, the election analyst at the New York Times, tweeted earlier this week warning all and sundry not to overinterpret the contest.
“The NY-03 special election result will not tell us anything about the general election,” he insisted. And it’s certainly true that Suozzi’s win doesn’t ensure a Democratic presidential victory in ten months.
Still, there are some reasonable and important takeaways from the election that tell us about Republican prospects going forward. Specifically, elevating weird grifters and anti-democratic conspiracy theories is not a great formula for success.
The downsides of elevating weird grifters
Santos, who won NY-03 in 2022, famously lied about virtually his entire background, including quite possibly his name. Santos falsely claimed his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and escaped. He falsely claimed he’s Jewish and that his grandparents escaped the Holocaust. He set up a GoFundMe to fund life-saving surgery for the service dog of a disabled veteran — and then he appears to have stolen the money raised.
The extent of Santos’s lies began to come to light soon after he was elected. But the Republican Party was slow to distance itself. Then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with a narrow majority and an even narrower path to hold on to power with enemies in his own caucus, seated Santos on two committees.
It took a full year to expel Santos, and even then, some in the GOP expressed regret. Just last week, after the meritless propaganda nonsense impeachment of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas failed by one vote, Florida MAGA congressman and shameless camera-chaser Matt Gaetz declared that he “never missed George Santos more.” (House Republicans successfully impeached Mayorkas on Tuesday.)
The GOP nominated and supported a lying scumbag and hesitated to disavow him. Is it really a huge surprise that voters punished the party at the polls?
This isn’t an isolated dynamic. Scandal-plagued politicians damage their party’s brand. The red wave in New York state that swept Santos into office was blamed on crime and redistricting. But surely it was caused in part by the fact that the top Democrat in the state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had to resign after allegations of sexual harassment and evidence he lied about Covid deaths in nursing homes.
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You know who else besides Cuomo and Santos is plagued by scandals, criminality, and a pattern of lying? His name starts with a “T” and ends with a “rump.”
The conventional wisdom at the moment is that Trump won’t be much harmed by being held liable for rape, or for his 91 indictments for mishandling classified documents, election interference, and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. But Suozzi’s victory suggests that associating your party with bad actors can in fact come with a cost — and that cost isn’t always fully recognized until election day.
Anti-democratic conspiracy theories demotivate voters
Many analysts pointed out that Suozzi was boosted by a snowstorm on election day. Republicans are more likely to vote in person. Democrats bank votes early, while inclement weather can keep Republicans home, changing a potentially close election into a rout.
Bad weather is just bad luck. But GOP turnout patterns aren’t an accident. Trump’s election denial at least since 2020, including when he attempted to stage a coup and overthrow the government in January 2021, has been based in part on claims that early voting and mail-in ballots are fraudulent and untrustworthy.
For Trump, attacking early voting makes sense; Democrats have traditionally had an advantage there, and his instincts are always to discredit the democratic process so that he can rely instead on threats and violence to deliver him victories. But for the GOP as a whole, the attacks on early voting, and on the electoral system in general, are hugely demobilizing. As many in the GOP recognize, when your opponents vote for 30 or 50 days, and you only vote on one, it’s harder to win.
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The GOP has been trying to convince Republican voters to cast ballots early. But when the leader of the party keeps lying and saying early voting is controlled by evil Democrats, a lot of Republicans are going to figure that their vote won’t matter if they send it by mail. Some may even believe their vote won’t matter at all since Trump keeps saying all elections are rigged. Add in a snowstorm, and you’ve got a lot of GOP voters sitting on their hands at home, watching Fox and railing against the libs as those libs vote them into oblivion.
A snowstorm in February on election day doesn’t mean there will be a snowstorm in November on election day. But things happen around elections — and when they do, it’s not great to have lied to your voters and convinced them that their votes don’t count. Trump’s election conspiracy theories probably cost the GOP two seats in Georgia and control of the Senate in 2021. It’s quite possible it could cost the party in 2024 too.
On policy, Pilip’s campaign demonstrated how in this post-Dobbs world, Republicans running in relatively moderate districts are flailing to come up with a coherent position on abortion — a local report on one of her campaign events noted that she struggled “to toe the line between Republican talking points and assuring she would protect a woman’s reproductive rights.” Pilip, with a boost from Fox, desperately tried to make the race about migrant fear-mongering. But as Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg pointed out Tuesday night on MSNBC, immigration is rarely a winning issue in general contests. That should give Republicans serious pause heading into November, as immigration is quickly becoming the only thing they want to talk about.
On the Trump issue, Pilip served up embarrassing word salads when asked about the former president, trying to praise him while simultaneously keeping distance. So it wasn’t a surprise that Trump threw her under the boss after she lost, smearing her on Truth Social as “this very foolish woman” who “didn’t endorse me and tried to ‘straddle the fence.’” But his endorsements haven’t proven to mean much in general election contests, particularly in purple-ish areas where he’s not that popular.
Elections matter for themselves
Specials may not always predict general elections results, but every election is important. Suozzi’s victory reduces the GOP House majority to 219-213, making it harder for the Republicans to forward their agenda of nonsense impeachments and … well, that’s about the entirety of their agenda.
Suozzi’s victory also means he’ll be an incumbent in November, giving Democrats a better chance to hold a key seat and perhaps regain their majority. And there was another important Democratic victory on Tuesday. Democrat Jim Prokopiak won a Pennsylvania House seat by an astonishing 35 points, beating Biden’s +10 performance in 2020 by 25. That means Democrats keep their 102-100 majority and can prevent the GOP from eroding abortion rights.
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There’s currently a vigorous debate among analysts about what Democratic strength in off-year elections means. Some argue that Democrats have actually gained ground with voters overall. Others suggest that the Democratic coalition has changed to include more educated voters. That means Democrats are more likely to turn out in special elections, but don’t necessarily have an advantage when less regular voters show up in presidential years.
We’ll know more about which explanation is correct after November. But either way, one thing is certain: Democrats are winning a lot of off-year elections. And that has enabled significant policy changes, especially at the local level.
Democrats won a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin and as a result have been able to break the state’s notorious and brutal GOP gerrymander. After winning control of both state houses in Michigan in 2022, Democrats repealed the state’s 10-year-old right to work law, a major victory for labor. Democratic legislative victories in Virginia in 2023 effectively killed the Republican governor’s promised abortion restrictions.
The presidential election in 2024 is extremely important, and a loss to Trump has terrifying implications. But other elections matter too — and Democrats being able to win consistently in off-year elections ever since the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights in 2022 has already materially benefited millions of people and pointed towards a better future for the country and for democracy. We shouldn’t overread Suozzi’s victory. But however you look at it, it’s a good sign.
That’s it for today
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We’ll be back with more Wednesday. Until then.
Excellent piece.
The results continue to show that Dobbs is an issue. Also, that voters ‘get’ who is responsible for the Border. It is a good sign of an apparent trend which must continue.
Yes it's certainly heartening news for Americans who want to keep their country a democracy with the rule of law. I think this pattern of Democrat over-performance in Special elections is quite significant and suggests that the Democrat base is well fired up regardless of their level of enthusiasm for Biden. Furthermore, nothing fires up the Democrat base better than having Trump on the ballot. We can but hope.