New Yorkers have been flooded with ads about the border crisis in the lead-up to this month’s special election, and a shift in tone from the Democratic candidate running to win back his seat underscores how influential immigration policy has become for U.S. voters.
Political ads highlighting the influx of migrants at the southern border have dominated the airwaves as voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District prepare to cast their ballots for expelled Representative George Santos’ replacement. Early voting for the special election begins Saturday.
Running for the vacancy left by the disgraced Republican lawmaker is Democrat Tom Suozzi, who held the seat before Santos, and Republican Mazi Pilip, an Ethiopian-born former Israeli Defense Forces soldier. Suozzi retired from Congress in 2022 to seek the Democratic nomination for governor but lost to Kathy Hochul. Although he has greater name recognition than his opponent, Suozzi will face the challenge of trying to flip the Republican seat.
Republicans have targeted the Democrat for his immigration record, dubbing him “Sanctuary Suozzi” in a six-figure ad campaign and accusing him of having “rolled out the red carpet for illegal immigrants” when he served the district. Those attacks have put Suozzi on the defensive. Despite having supported sanctuary city policies in the past, the Democrat has released his own ads vowing to get tough on illegal immigration and “secure our border.”
The emphasis on immigration in the February 13 special election comes amid growing public frustration with the border crisis. Immigration overtook inflation as the No. 1 voting issue in a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released last week, with 35 percent of voters ranking it as their biggest concern—a 7 percent jump from last month’s poll.
New Yorkers have shifted their immigration stance in the past year. More than 80 percent of registered voters across the state said the recent influx of migrants is a serious problem, according to a Siena College poll from earlier this month. Nearly 60 percent said they were unhappy with the job that Governor Kathy Hochul has been doing to address the influx of asylum seekers.
Adam Gray/Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
From spring 2022 through December 2023, more than 156,600 migrants arrived in New York City alone, according to the city’s Department of Social Services. This has greatly strained the city’s resources and pushed even Democratic officials to call on the Biden administration for help.
The arrivals have been partly fueled by the actions of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has bused over 33,600 migrant asylum seekers to New York City in an effort to challenge the status of so-called “sanctuary cities” that generally don’t cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Several of the GOP-backed ads feature a clip of Suozzi from a 2022 Democratic gubernatorial debate saying, “When I was county executive of Nassau County, I kicked ICE out of Nassau County.”
Some of the ads also highlight Suozzi’s no vote on the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act during his time in Congress. The bill would have defunded sanctuary cities and expanded the scope of immigration-related law enforcement activities.
Even in his own ad, Suozzi admitted that while the U.S.-Mexico border is 2,000 miles away from New York, “the migrant crisis has landed right in our own backyard.”
“I’ll work across the aisle to do what our leaders haven’t: secure our border,” Suozzi says to the camera. “Close the routes used for illegal immigration but open paths to citizenship for those willing to follow the rules and pay a fee to help finance it all.”
New York’s special election could be a bellwether for the national election as Republicans watch to see if their emphasis on border security and immigration will turn out to be a winning strategy in November.
The 3rd District is ripe for such messages. Republicans have made steady gains there since Joe Biden won by 9 points in 2020. And last weekend a group of migrant suspects were recorded on video assaulting two police officers in Times Square. Outrage over the incident even pushed Hochul to declare that the offenders should be deported from the U.S.
“Get them all and send them back,” Hochul said Thursday about those who had been arrested in connection with the assaults. “You don’t touch our police officers. You don’t touch anybody.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.