Tom Suozzi, a former congressman and Democrat, has won the New York special election for the seat left vacant when the House expelled George Santos in December.
The Associated Press called his win, in the district Santos won by eight points, an hour after polls closed. His victory will afford Democrats a sigh of relief on multiple fronts.
New York’s third district, which includes part of Long Island’s North Shore and extends into Queens, is one of the suburban districts that Joe Biden won in 2020, but that flipped Republican in 2022. It’s a swing area that the President likely has to win this time if he’s to return to the White House. It’s also among the handful of New York seats House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) quipped are just Republican “rentals,” emphasizing Democrats’ need to win them back to secure the majority.
And it gives them an edge in the short term too. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has struggled to lead his 219-212 House majority, the slim margin giving his government-breaking right flank disproportionate power and making absences legislatively fatal. The first vote to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas last week, for example, failed by one vote (and the second, on Tuesday, only passed by one).
Those margins will only matter more in the next couple months, when Congress is faced with government funding deadlines it can’t duck with continuing resolutions (resolutions which, themselves, proved extremely difficult for Johnson to shepherd through). Due to provisions written into the Joe Biden-Kevin McCarthy debt ceiling deal, the entire budget will be slashed to 2023 levels minus one percent if Congress has failed to pass an appropriations package by April 30, or has a continuing resolution in place for any part of the government instead. This across-the-board cut, known as sequestration, includes the Defense Department, which Republicans have historically been adamant about funding generously.
With Suozzi, a dependable Democratic vote, Johnson will have even less room to maneuver and less leeway to pass bills without significant Democratic support — the downfall of his predecessor.
Given the relatively high stakes for just one seat with less than a year left on its term, outside money poured in, Democrats outspending Republicans by $13.8 million to $8.1. Suozzi ran as a Republican-lite on the border, and pounded Republican Mazi Pilip, a Nassau County legislator, on abortion and guns. A dramatic snowstorm on Election Day may have also boosted his chances, as Democrats banked more of the early vote.
The contours of the district may be even more short-lived than its current term. The New York maps, embroiled in near-constant litigation of late, are being redrawn again with a potential bipartisan compromise in sight. Such a deal would reduce the bounty Democrats could extract from a maximal gerrymander in one of the few states they can use to combat Republican map-rigging in many of the states they control. But given the backfiring of New York Democrats’ last attempt at an aggressive gerrymander, they may be more inclined to take the lesser win.