Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip finally faced off against former Rep. Tom Suozzi in a town hall–style debate on Thursday, after polling showed a neck-and-neck contest in the closing days of the special election to replace expelled fabulist George Santos in the increasingly right-leaning House district in eastern Queens and Nassau County, Long Island.
For weeks now, Democrats have labeled Pilip — a registered Democrat running on the Republican line — as a political novice who’s dodged the press and the public. Republicans, for their part, have sought to bill Suozzi — a centrist trying to reclaim the seat he left for an unsuccessful primary challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul two years ago — as an ineffective career politician who is on “two sides of the same, rusty unwanted coin” with President Joe Biden.
In their first and only public debate on Thursday, the two stayed on their talking points. Suozzi called his challenger “unprepared and unvetted,” and pressed Pilip — who first won office in the Nassau County legislature just three years ago — to clarify her positions and explain how she would get things done as a member of Congress.
“I am so happy that we’re finally here for a debate, when people can finally hear that you actually don’t have ideas to offer,” he said in summation. “You have no specific solutions. You don’t have the experience.”
Meanwhile, Pilip dismissed her opponent as merely a “talker,” while charging that “Joe Biden Suozzi” policies, as she put it, were behind America’s problems.
“You did it, the crisis we are facing with migrants, open borders — this is absolutely you.” she said at one point in their 90-minute pre-taped town hall. “You have to own it. This is your responsibility. It happened under your watch,”
Much as crime and bail reform were the dominant issues in New York 2022’s elections, where pick-ups helped Republicans claim control of the House, the special election has centered around the migrant crisis. One outside group supporting Pilip is spending $1.35 million on a Super Bowl ad that closes with footage of migrants kicking a pair of police officers in Times Square while a narrator accuses Suozzi of punishing taxpayers.
While turnout in early voting has so far exceeded its 2022 levels, voters this week told THE CITY that the deluge of negative messaging hasn’t done much for them.
“It’s all lies, lies, lies,” said one 92-year-old Whitestone resident who voted for Pilip at Queensborough Community College on Tuesday, and declined to be named.
Another woman, a medical field worker who asked only to be identified as Ingrid, also lamented what she saw as constant attacks and misinformation targeting Suozzi and other Democrats — saying it was her desire to restore civility and decency in politics that has brought her out to vote.
“I used to have hope in the future, and now I just feel like people are just so easily misled, so easily swallow propaganda, so easily tribalized,” said Ingrid, a Suozzi-voting independent raised in a Republican-leaning Tawianese household in the district, where a growing Asian-American population now accounts for nearly one-fifth of its eligible voters.
“People swallow it, and they get crazier and crazier, and they go down the rabbit hole,” she said.
While there are about 10% more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, the independents who make up 20% of its registered voters have been increasingly leaning to the right, helping to deliver GOP wins in recent local races.
Those include former House representative Lee Zeldin beating Gov. Kathy Hochul in Nassau County two years ago, City Councilmember Vickie Paladino’s 20-point win in northeast Queens and town supervisor victories in Oyster Bay and North Hempstead last year. The GOP wins help explain why House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D – New York) backed the centrist Suozzi, who has three previous wins in the district, as the party’s best hope of retaking the seat.
To compete, Suozzi has openly run away from what he’s called his party’s “damaged” brand. He did not appear with President Joe Biden earlier this week at a series of fundraising events in New York, and has offered himself as an independent actor with a history of working across party lines.
Pilip, for her part, has relied on the backing of the potent Long Island Republican machine, while offering herself to voters as a bulwark against Democratic control of Congress.
“The stakes are very high” after Republicans won districts previously represented by Democrats in 2022, said veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “New York State is blamed for the loss of the House by the Democrats.”
On the Attack
Since the special election was first announced in December for Feb. 13, both Suozzi and Pilip’s parties have poured millions of dollars into advertising and messaging.
All told, the Democratic machine has bankrolled $9.6 million in advertising and campaign messaging on behalf of Suozzi, while its Republican counterpart has put about $6.8 million behind Pilip, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure records as of Wednesday evening.
Almost all of that Republican spending — $6.4 million — has gone into attack ads and campaigns. Democrats have spent $6.9 million targeting Pilip too, but they have also spent $2.6 million promoting Suozzi. Republicans, on the other hand, have put just $396,000 toward positive messages about their candidate.
Republicans are running an aggressive negative campaign, said Sheinkopf, attacking Suozzi more than they’re talking up their Ethiopian-born Israeli military veteran candidate.
This may be because Pilip has had little experience discussing national issues, Democratic political consultant Lupe Todd-Medina argued. Indeed, Pilip seemed ill at ease in Thursday’s debate when Suozzi or the moderator pressed her to spell out details of how she would enact change in Congress.
In recent days, Democrats have also hit Pilip with negative ads spotlighting questions about her financial disclosures, Sheinkopf noted.
“The Democrats have taken the smart tactic of trying to make the Republican into another Santos,” he said, “to try to get voters to not want to repeat that mistake.”
That critique, which Suozzi opened and closed the debate with, had already resonated with Rob Yacovone, a retired teacher who has lived in the district for 34 years and who voted for the Democrat during the early voting period.
“The most important issue to me is honesty — honesty, experience and democracy,” said Yacovone, who added he has learned little about Pilip. He had intended to wait for Election Day, he said, but changed his mind after Pilip stayed away from earlier debates.
That “Rose Garden strategy” from the first-time House candidate with little name recognition is risky, said Todd-Medina.
While Biden’s unpopularity in the district was a drag on Suozzi, she said, “Pilip is kind of running as if she’s the incumbent… I think it’s always better to run like you’re not winning.”
‘It’s Very Personal’
Now with just days left to go for the special election, Suozzi has turned to major unions for his get-out-the-vote operation — and Pilip has her robust Republican machine to count on, too. But Todd-Medina noted that the Suozzi campaign still has significantly more cash in hand compared to Pilip leading up to Election Day on Tuesday.
Suozzi has more than $2 million in hand out of the $4.4 million he’s raised, according to campaign finance records, while Pilip has just $630,000 from her $1.3 million haul.
“That’s what you have to look at. It’s not how much they’ve already spent — it’s what they’ve got on hand for the election,” said Todd-Medina. “It’s almost another campaign within a campaign on Election Day.”
Much of the GOP’s recent spending has focused on ads attacking Suozzi on the migrant crisis that largely emerged after he left office — an issue that’s resonated in a district where a tent shelter for 1,000 migrant men was erected at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus against loud objections.
“It’s in the neighborhood, it’s very personal,” said Todd-Medina. “The macro issues that are coming into play in this district, the voters there are not looking at it like it’s a macro issue — they’re looking at it as ‘This is about me.’”
But the attack ads targeting “Sanctuary City Suozzi” have done little to persuade 62-year-old Con-Edison worker Kris Harnarain, a Santos-turned-Suozzi voter who’d cast his ballot Tuesday at an early polling station just next to Creedmoor’s inpatient tower.
Harnarain pointed specifically to a Pilip ad showing Suozzi saying he “kicked ICE out of Nassau County,” a quote the Democrat argues has been taken out of context.
“That’s a disinformation,” Harnarain said. “I don’t like that type of attack. I don’t go for that.”
Having immigrated from Guyana more than 40 years ago, Harnarain said he sympathized with migrants who have come to his neighborhood — and would rather whomever gets elected focus on making life better for aging residents who would like to retire and age in place.
“Everybody comes here. But make the life better for people who are here regardless,” he said.
Gabriel Poblete contributed reporting.