New York Republicans on Thursday nominated Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator, as their candidate to fill the vacancy created by former Rep. George Santos’ expulsion from Congress earlier this month.
Former Rep. Pete King, a Long Island Republican, confirmed the selection to Newsday.
“Mazi is the choice,” King told Newsday. “She’s going to be a great candidate. She’s really the American success story, the American dream.”
Pilip is due to face former U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), the Democratic nominee, in a Feb. 13 special election that is expected to draw a massive influx of national resources and attention to New York’s 3rd Congressional District, a coveted swing seat.
Democrats, in particular, are eager to give President Joe Biden a jolt of positive political momentum and land an early victory on their road to retake the House.
But Pilip could make for a formidable foe. As an Ethiopian-born Israeli immigrant to the U.S. who served in the Israel Defense Forces’ paratroopers unit and is a relative newcomer to politics, she presents an interesting biographical contrast with Suozzi, an Italian-American lawyer and accountant who previously served as Nassau County executive and mayor of Glen Cove.
If elected, Pilip would join the House’s growing number of Black Republicans (there are currently four). But she would be the only Black Republican woman in the current Congress, and almost certainly the first Black Jew ever to serve on Capitol Hill.
National Republicans plan to paint Suozzi, a centrist who challenged New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) from the right, as a liberal who has more in common with the party’s left wing than he lets on.
“Tom Suozzi is just another defund-the-police, self-enriching New York Democrat,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Savannah Viar said in a statement. “His party has been hemorrhaging support on Long Island for the past two election cycles thanks to their soft-on-crime, soft-on-border and soft-on-Biden policies, and this upcoming election will be no different.”
President Joe Biden carried New York’s 3rd, which encompasses northeast Queens and northwestern Nassau County, by eight percentage points in 2020.
But Santos flipped the seat in 2022 ― one of four House seats that the GOP retook in the state. Nationwide, Republicans enjoyed a net pickup of five seats in all, making New York the single most significant state for Republicans’ narrow takeover of the House.
The GOP benefited from a court-ordered redistricting in 2022, which replaced maps that Democratic lawmakers had drafted to benefit their party. New York Democrats hope to improve their chances with new maps approved by the state legislature, but those boundaries will not be in effect for the special election.
Despite Biden’s poor standing in the polls, Democrats feel good about the outcomes of several off-year elections this past November. On the strength of voters’ continued wariness of Republican efforts to curtail abortion rights, Democrats held on to the governorship in Kentucky and a seat on the Pennsylvania state supreme court, while taking control of Virginia’s House of Delegates.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.