I don’t know much about Souzzi, but I am celebrating his win!
I’ll just say hallelujah and leave it at that.l
Democrat Tom Suozzi won a hotly contested special election for Congress on Tuesday, the Associated Press projected, retaking a seat in suburban New York and offering his party some reassurance amid high anxiety about President Biden’s political vulnerabilities.
Suozzi beat Republican nominee Mazi Pilip to replace Republican George Santos, who was indicted on a charge of fraud and then expelled from Congress late last year amid revelations that he fabricated much of his life story. The race for New York’s 3rd District — long viewed as a dead heat — played out in a suburban part of Long Island that favored President Biden by 8 points in 2020 but then swung toward Republicans.
With 85 percent of the vote counted late Tuesday night, Suozzi led Pilip by about 8 points.
National issues dominated the campaign, making Tuesday’s vote this year’s first high-profile test of the parties’ messages on abortion, the economy and, above all, immigration. Suozzi represented the area for six years previously and campaigned as a moderate who wanted to work across the aisle. But with New York City struggling to absorb more than 100,000 migrants arriving from the southern border, much of the campaign centered on what polling suggests is Democrats’ toughest issue.
Anybody know how fast we can get this guy sworn in? (Confession: I haven’t read the full article yet, maybe the answer is in there.)
Open thread.
Update: Oh, and don’t forget that the deadline for the Ukraine quilt raffle tickets is Wednesday at 5pm Eastern.
Update 2: This seems like big news!
BREAKING: Democrat Jim Prokpiak just WON his special state house election in Pennsylvania’s 140th district. This now means that the Pennsylvania State House, State Senate, AND governorship are *all* Blue. Another Democratic trifecta. Amazing news for Pennsylvania & Democrats.
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) February 14, 2024
CORRECTION:
BREAKING: Democrat Jim Prokpiak just WON his special state house election in Pennsylvania's 140th district. This now means that the Pennsylvania State House, State Senate, AND governorship are *all* Blue. Another Democratic trifecta. Amazing news for Pennsylvania & Democrats.
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) February 14, 2024
.
sdhays
So, the campaign “centered” on immigration, but voters ended finding the threat to abortion rights more compelling.
Maybe voters don’t actually care about “immigration” to the degree the media demands that they do.
ETA: Since it seems it’s not going to be even close, Republicans should be concerned about November.
sdhays
Great news for Pennsylvania!
smith
I read elsewhere that Suozzi will be sworn in tomorrow morning.
WaterGirl
I see the House voted for impeachment tonight. No doubt they are snickering about getting the vote in on the night of the win in NY. What would have happened if there had been a tie on a vote like that?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
that’s great
New York Times Pitchbot
@DougJBalloon
In a stinging rebuke of president Biden, New York voters elected his party’s nominee, giving him one more Democratic vote in the House
WaterGirl
@smith: So that’s why they had the impeachment vote tonight.
Alison Rose
Huzzah!
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Hm. Not sure that one from Doug quite works. Shouldn’t it be worded more like “…his party’s nominee only won his race by a mere 8.5%”? His sounds more like typical sarcasm rather than a NYT headline. Unless maybe he was going for plain sarcasm and not a fake headline.
AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue Team
Halle freakin lujah!!
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: No one can hit it out of the park 100% of the time. This one is certainly excellent.
sdhays
@WaterGirl: A tie vote is still a failure to achieve a majority. I hope the Democrat who couldn’t do his job for a few more months really likes his new sinecure.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: Josh Marshall at TPM wrote something similar, just before AP called the race:
Sfinny
The Souzzi win is great. The polls were close and the turnout was a concern given the snowstorm.
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: LOL yes :)
smith
The other fun news today is that, now that she’s been anointed by His Orange Majesty to head the RNC, Lara Trump has pledged that every cent will go to electing him. That will do wonders for down ticket races, not to mention the party’s already shaky bottom line. ETTD!
WaterGirl
@sdhays: I knew he was stepping down, but I didn’t know he was stepping down immediately. If he did already step down, selfish doesn’t even begin to cover it.
dmsilev
@smith: It’s like a intestinal parasite, let’s say a tapeworm, is being eaten away from the inside by a cancer. Despite the fact that cancer is horrible, you kind of feel that the worm deserves it.
WaterGirl
@smith: I’ve been away from the news for most of the day. Is she officially in that slot now? Or is she the presumptive person because Trump wants her?
What about the other person who also runs it, who apparently has to be male?
Juice Box
I read an absolutely bizarre explanation of “Russian” history that my Qanon friend sent me this morning. It “proved” that Putin would be justified in invading any European country, Iran and half of India as well as, quite possibly, former European colonies such as the big one in which most of us live. It was a mind melting experience.
SpaceUnit
It’s like the Halloween movie. The polls are coming from inside the house!!!
Alison Rose
@Juice Box: Why the hell do you have a Qanon friend?
NotMax
@Sfinny
Word is the Nassau County Republican executive had an armada of snowplows out early and often within the district.
Many presumably pulled from other non-CD 3 parts of Nassau County.
frosty
OMG, PA has a trifecta! Combined with finding out today that my R rep is solid on Ukraine, this is a great day!
btom89
@smith:
Yeah, it looks like Lara will be in a position to divert as much money as she can towards Trump who will have to deal with all those felony trials in multiple jurisdictions. Meaning less money for other republican politicians trying to keep their seats.
smith
@WaterGirl: I don’t think there’s been an election yet, but given the rock-bottom sycophancy of the entire party, I can’t imagine they will cross him. Yes, I think she will be co-chair, but once again, if she’s carrying out his wishes, who is going to object?
WaterGirl
@smith: amazing how so many of them or maybe make that all of them just throw away their own agency for Trump.
Fake Irishman
Dems just retain control of House in PA. Senate is GOP 28-22.
frosty
@smith: Every cent will go to electing him? As long as it’s understood that paying criminal defense lawyers is part of what’s necessary to elect him, right?
NotMax
Bodes well for when Suozzi will again be on the ballot for the general election come November.
gwangung
@NotMax: Makes me laugh.
(Though it’s really not a trick I mind or think is all that dirty….)
Sfinny
@NotMax: I dug my car out at 2pm, so hoped that the snow would not be an issue.
frosty
@Fake Irishman: Rats. Too good to be true. One step closer, though.
Fake Irishman
@smith:
The RNC and DNC are solely focused on electing their respective nominated presidential candidates. There are separate committees for the House and Senate and the state legislatures etc
H.E.Wolf
1. Congrats to the PA Democrats on their trifecta, and to everyone who helped win that special election!
2. Congrats to everyone who voted Democratic in NY-03 – and to everyone who did the non-glamorous work to get Dems to the polls! I include myself in the latter category. 90 GOTV postcards is quite tiny in the grand scheme of things, but it isn’t bupkis either.
3. Suozzi is a good fit for the NY-03 constituency: he’s a moderate-to-conservative Democrat. He isn’t going to crank the steering wheel of U.S. government hard left, but he’s likely to be a reliable Democratic vote in the House.
4. I anticipate a good year at the ballot box for Democrats… as long as we all do the work. Our gym teacher in middle school used to tell us (OK, yell at us), “Don’t sit on your petunias!” I’m gonna be working my petunia off. :)
cain
@Juice Box: Half of India? Why not the whole country?
Russia as far as I’m aware has not made any forays into the subcontinent in the past. So I’m not sure what justifications it has to invade India or Iran. I mean they can’t say it either of those countries are in its sphere of influence unlike the baltic states.
Jackie
Suozzi hopes to be sworn in this Thurs. The House is in recession the next two weeks as of Fri.
Kent
Biden won the district by 8 points in 2020 so this is just holding form.
How Santos ever won in the first place in 2022 points to the sheer and utter incompetence of the Democratic Party establishment in NY. That was epic criminal negligence.
cain
@H.E.Wolf: It’s a very good night – even with the news that Lara Trump is taking over the RNC. It just means the RNC is not going to have that much money to help the down tickets. Likely will also funnel money to Trump’s legal defense and not actually on campaigning.
Because the GOP likes to fall in line – should be fun when they lose large across the board.
cain
@Kent: Glad they held themselves accountable.
Kent
Justified?
Offensive wars of conquest are tantamount to war crimes since 1949. No one cares what centuries old grievance or claim you think you might have had. By that measure, the UK would be justified in invading pretty much any country on the planet outside of South America which I think is the only region of the world where they never had a claim except for Belize and the Falkland Islands.
But if we are hypothesizing, I think they should come for Alaska and see how well their Navy and Air Force holds up against the US Pacific Fleet and Air Force.
Jackie
@btom89:
Can Democrats call RIGGED ELECTION yet? Or is it too soon?
Marcopolo
Funny how despite a lot of crappy polling, actual election results keep pointing to Ds being in good shape in 2024. Looks like the margin in NY-O3 will be very close to Biden’s margin in 2020 (~+10). The D hold in the PA house (+35 D) is a 25 point over-performance from Biden’s 10 point margin there in 2020. AND there was also a special for OK HD 39 that was Trump +26 in 2020 but the R only won by +5 tonight.
With the disaster that is the RNC (managerially & financially), the disaster of current R governance in the US House, the fracturing of senate Rs into MAGA & non MAGA camps, Dobbs, etc… I’d much rather be a D than R heading towards Nov.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
Ah… If you knew Suozzi like I know Suozzi…
TriassicSands
Let’s hope that Mazi Pilip’s BIG loss today will put an end to her political career. In reading about her, it was clear to me that, like all current Republicans, she has nothing positive to offer her constituents, her state, or the country.
There isn’t a single office today that wouldn’t be better served by having almost any Democrat in it over any Republican. I’d say ANY Democrat, but the reality is that there are Democrats like Menendez, Manchin, and formerly Sinema. Yes, when it comes time to vote, even all three of them will usually be better than any Republican, but it doesn’t do the Democratic Party any favors to be represented by crooks or self-obsessed, opportunistic narcisists. When there are Democrats like those three, the idea is to try to find someone better. That should be relatively easy in Arizona and NJ, but impossible in West Virginia.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
How could we win this special election? Don’t voters know there’s “crime”, that there’s a “migrant crisis”, that “inflation is out of control”, that “Bud Lite went woke”, that Biden’s “memory is bad” ?
H.E.Wolf
Agreed! And fun, for sure. It’s going to make Mardi Gras look like a quiet day at the library.
Citizen Alan
@Kent: The Dems didn’t take him seriously enough. The dumbest person to ever sit on the Mississippi Supreme Court got in by defeating the highly respected Chief Justice because her “serious” competition dropped out of the race, so she basically shut down her campaign rather than spend a few $100k to beat a mouth-breathing nobody.
H.E.Wolf
@Marcopolo:
Yes to all of your points.
Winning is contagious – it has its own momentum.
Jackie
TIFG just went off on a lengthy ALL CAPS screed on Adam Schiff. Does anyone have a clue what set him off?
Just posting the link; you can read for yourselves:
https://www.rawstory.com/slimeball-trump-schiff/
wjca
Because there’s no particular urgency to the two CRs that expire in early March.
Citizen Alan
@WaterGirl: I am flabbergasted that once again Tom McClintock voted no on impeaching Mayorkas.
dmsilev
@Jackie: Beyond the start of voting in CA? Maybe Schiff said something at the debate the other day that TFG found particularly insulting? I don’t know; I didn’t watch it.
PJ
@Kent: C’mon, man, British Guyana – it’s even there in the title!
HumboldtBlue
@Citizen Alan:
Why? McClintock is an old corporate GOP member, he’s never been anywhere near maga, more closely aligned with McCain.
NotMax
Marcopolo
Not an apples to apples comparison to 2020 as by 2022 the district boundaries had been redrawn to include more R-skewing communities in central Nassau County, such as Levittown.
lgerard
Surprised that Lara is willing to give up her singing career for the thankless job of grifting the rubes
TaMara
@Kent: Wasn’t it redistricted (is that a word, LOL) between 2020 and 2022, bringing in a big chunk of Republican voters? My timing may be off, but I thought that is what they said tonight in the analysis. So it was a big deal for this win tonight
@NotMax: Or what you said. 😉😁
wjca
Actually, down ballot candidates (potentially) get their funding from the NRCC. Given the demonstrated (in)competence of House Republicans, there might be some question how well they will even manage raising money. (McCarthy was actually good at that, but he’s gone.) Let alone spreading it around usefully.
NotMax
@Jackie
Advance notice of a California senate race poll coming mañana?
Alison Rose
LOL Colbert on Mike Bolton: “Colonel Sanders’ brother who went to Kentucky Fried Law School”
Redshift
@Fake Irishman:
Not true. DNC transfers lots of the money it raises to state parties, and while some of that is for presidential campaign support and party infrastructure, it also goes to funding downballot candidates. Per Ballotpedia:
Alison Rose
@Jackie:
The fuck?
Alison Rose
@lgerard: Tom Petty’s ghost was haunting her and said he wouldn’t stop until she stopped pretending she could sing.
wjca
Depends on what the vig is. Thanks are beside the point if her cut is big enough.
Jay
@lgerard:
sick burn dude,………
wjca
@Alison Rose: Geography is one of the many, many areas where TIFG’s ignorance is massive.
Marcopolo
@NotMax: I’m thinking the election number crunching folks have taken that into account and are looking at precinct level data instead of the old district boundaries when they say the current NY-03 is baseline +8 ish Biden. But maybe not. We do know, though, that Santos won it by +8 so quite the turnaround (and some form of reversion to the norm) from those numbers.
NotMax
@Jay
Shekel and Schneid.
//
VFX Lurker
Thank you so much for writing those. I wrote 18 postcards for NY-03, myself. It all helps.
SectionH
@Alison Rose: 👍
NotMax
@Marcopolo
Comparisons to 2022 more apt than drawing conclusions from 2020 is all I’m saying.
Backwards extrapolating a special election (today) to a presidential election (2020) is statistically shaky.
Xantar
Ok but did this Suozzi fellow ever win the Nobel Prize or become the captain of his volleyball team? I’ll bet he didn’t even invent penicillin!
Alison Rose
@Xantar: Of course he didn’t do any of those things. How could have time for all that when he was busy writing the screenplay for Oppenheimer, climbing Mount Everest, and building the Golden Gate Bridge?
trollhattan
Electing the winner of EGOT and the Nobel and the Cy Young was a very shrewd move on New York’s part. Well done, Empire State!
rikyrah
@smith:
They are going to bleed them dry
Brachiator
@smith:
And no conflict of interest here. Nosiree!
The GOP is not even pretending to be independent of Trump.
Gretchen
@WaterGirl: what’s the proper email to send you act blue receipts? I got failure from [email protected] and [email protected].
Eolirin
@NotMax: Yep. I’m actually really happy with that margin, given the map. The local elections there last year were not great, so this is a good sign that we’re still overperforming when things can get nationalized. We’re very likely going to pick up 4-5 house seats in the general in NY if we can keep this up. And we’re going to have a better map on top of it.
CA and AZ have some good pickup opportunities too, and I hope those break the way we need them to as well. I feel really good about our chances of taking the House back.
Senate still scares me though. Tester’s race is going to be hard. And unless we pull a miracle and win in Texas, we’re still looking at power sharing agreements at best.
Tony Jay
@Juice Box:
From the list of geographical touch points I guess your friend’s ‘history’ boils down to “He who rules Russia rightly rules all the Aryan lands!”?
Which is nice and honest of them.
Steeplejack
@Gretchen:
It’s watergirl at balloon-juice dot com.
mrmoshpotato
Duplicate.
Eolirin
Oh, also, the best polling we had for NY-03 only showed a 4% margin, and the very last poll before the election was only +1. So we’re still overperforming polling. Which is a big deal.
smike
@Alison Rose:
The flip-side of of all this mess is that Santos is now available for the much coveted VP slot, as long as he pinky swears that he will not upstage the Orange Menace.
Gretchen
@Steeplejack: thanks. I’ll try that.
It seems to have gone through.
@Steeplejack:
Kathleen
@sdhays: But “bad news for Joe Biden” I’m sure.
Kathleen
@WaterGirl: That’s pitch perfect.
Ruckus
@Jackie:
Likely nothing at all sane. Thing is he’s never really been all that sane, but he appealed to a certain demographic in humanity thinks logic is a dirty word, never to be spoken of, have any operating part of thought whatsoever and that they should just follow the most insane and asinine concepts possible. SFB is their leader and asinine insanity is his game.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I’m getting tired of so winning
Baud
Whew. Thinking about this race ruined my sleep. Go Team Blue!
Baud
Holy crap. Good job, PA Dems.
Baud
@Fake Irishman:
Ah. Thanks. too bad.
Manyakitty
@HumboldtBlue: most of the old school corporate GOP gave that up. Glad to hear he didn’t. Maybe he’ll support a discharge petition for Ukraine aid.
prostratedragon
@Jackie: Some matter from Schiff’s time on House Intel Committee? They seem poised to go all in on Russia.
prostratedragon
Belated happy 97th to H.M. Wynant, veteran character actor. Has 10 episodes of Perry Mason among his numerous tv credits, and this memorable Twilight Zone, in which he plays a naive American trekker who FAFOs.
Baud
Via reddit.
Trump voters for Suozzi
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud: Thats a good one.
OT: Joe and Mike are having a lot of fun this morning.
Princess
That WaPo article is terrible. It sounds like they wrote it before the vote was counted and damnit if they were going to allow Suozzi’s thumping of his opponent to change their narrative. They’ve decided Dems lose on immigration and by god they’re going to keep telling that story no matter what the voters tell them.
Barry
@lgerard: “Surprised that Lara is willing to give up her singing career for the thankless job of grifting the rubes”
Family trade.
Baud
@Princess:
Much of it probably was written in advance.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Princess: Dewey Defeats Truman
Geminid
@Princess: Tom Bonior on the NY 3rd result:
After kicking Nate Silver around some, Bonior said he was going to bed and would provide more analysis in the morning.
A John Alexander responded to Bonior:
Made me wonder if this “John Alexander” account is run by Tom Suozzi’s Mom.
–
Baud
@Geminid:
Was Nate being a douche again?
Princess
@Geminid: I read that the Dems sent every AAPI rep they could to go campaign for Suozzi. Looks like they know their target districts. Good sign.
Jay C
@Geminid:
And one more factor:
Tom Suozzi was a known quantity : he’s been a fixture in LI politics for years, was a Congressman for several terms, winning handily most times*, and his opponent -exotic backstory notwithstanding** – was an obscure nobody.
*He would have likely been in the House still had he not tried a(nother) quixotic run for Governor in 2022.
** Ethiopian Jewish immigrant from Israel. Though Mazi Pilip was also reportedly prone to George Santos Syndrome, supposedly exaggerating her military record.
Baud
@Princess:
House special elections are different than Presidential elections, but some folks here were debating the continued importance of retail campaigning a few weeks ago. Sounds like showing up helped a lot here.
Geminid
@Baud: I think Nate Silver was pooh-poohing early voting as an indicator; Bonior said that once again, early voting provided useful data and Silver is an idiot.
Someone else said that Silver never learned Statistics beyond a basic level and this shows in his shoddy methodology and analysis.
That made me think of two people whose political analysis I respect a lot. Rachel Bitecofer is a political professional while Magdi Jacobs (aka Mangy Jay) is a perceptive amateur, but both women have a solid base of social science knowledge and know how to apply it.
Baud
@Geminid:
Thanks.
O. Felix Culpa
@H.E.Wolf:
Some friends and I wrote postcards too. Don’t know how many votes our collective efforts yielded, but I’ll happily take the victory and continue writing into swing districts in November. Onward!
RevRick
@Baud: We don’t have the PA Senate. It’s 28-22 GOP. But the 25% over performance by the Democrat in the Biden +10% House district ought to give the GOP pause.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: Somebody once defined data science as “statistics done by non-statisticians” and in my experience, that is quite accurate.
Geminid
@Jay C: Another of Bonior’s commenters, a “Laura Markis,” noted that:
I read some about Pilip’s military service claims. Her campaign literature embellished her service, saying she “volunteered” for an IDF combat unit. But in fact Pilip was drafted like the rest of the IDF’s incoming soldiers, and served in a non-combat role as an armorer.
The IDF has a large Reserve component and they store a lot of weapons in armories between training periods or deployments. Evidently Pilip spent her 24(?) months in the army checking weapons in and out and maintaining them, and not in the field.
Ken
Odd, Speaker Johnson specifically said the House would not be taking up the Senate’s foreign aid bill because they were much too busy.
Oh, wait, I see my confusion; I didn’t notice his lips were moving.
Matt McIrvin
I’ve heard that Suozzi kind of sucks, but is way better than any kind of Republican.
I saw a Mastodon post from an Indivisible group taking some credit: they said something like “we have legit differences with him but when we heard he’d won the primary, we didn’t hesitate.” The explicit endorsement of strategic campaigning in general elections is notable.
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: The only suckitude of which I was aware was the defensive crouch and whining about what losers we are. I am fine with moderate to conservadems in districts where that is appropriate, which this one seems to be, but it’s really inexusable to go around bad-mouthing the party like that.
Subsole
@Alison Rose:
What with every accusation being a confession, I’m going to be amazed if it turns out Trump doesn’t have dementia or Alzheimer’s or something.
On that note, does it seem like our friends in the librul media have been a little more….reticent….when it comes to putting Trump in front of a camera these days??
Like, no podium countdown clocks lately.
Anyone else think that’s…funny?
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Suozzi’s politics are fairly similar to those of 1st CD Rep. Daniel Goldman’s, and lefty Democrats and Working Families members dislike Suozzi for the same reasons they disliked Goldman. Not “Progressive” enough.
I wonder what are the differences the Indivisible folks have with Suozzi. Did they say?
H.E.Wolf
@VFX Lurker: “I wrote 18 postcards for NY-03, myself. It all helps.”
@O. Felix Culpa: ”Some friends and I wrote postcards too. Don’t know how many votes our collective efforts yielded, but I’ll happily take the victory and continue writing into swing districts in November. Onward!”
Whenever I sit down to write postcards, I think of all the BJ writers who’re doing the same. It’s companionable and inspiring! And the research says that it does help turnout. So cheers to us. :)
Westlake
When Suozzi ran for governor, I received mailers emphasizing his tough-on-crime-ness and opposition to bail reform. His win in Queens is not a surprise to me, but I’d prefer to see other names if it comes to higher offices
Paul in KY
@Alison Rose: Get some giggles from the crackpot-meth fueled theories? Some of them do actually make me laugh.
Paul in KY
@cain: Defender of the Aryans, dontchaknow. Got the gig from another former-dictator…
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: They so so so so want these cray cray things to be true, because it makes their boring, worthless, little lives seem biggerer.