Migrant crisis complicates Democrats' bid to win back George Santos' seat

Just two months ago, George Santos' expulsion from the House of Representatives seemed like everything Democrats could have asked for. It gave them an open Republican seat in a winnable New York district, where the electorate was still reeling from the congressman's spectacular unraveling.

The party even had a name candidate, Tom Suozzi, who had easily won the seat three times before.

But with less than a week to go before the Feb. 13 special election for the House of Representatives, a wave of suburban discontent, fueled by the surge of migrants arriving at the southern border and in New York City, has helped create a potential Democratic revival has turned into a statistical dead heat. .

“If I run my campaign just saying, 'I'm Tom Suozzi, I'm a Democrat and my opponent is a Republican,' I'm going to lose this race,” Mr. Suozzi told union workers at a rally on Long Island on Saturday. “People are angry that Democrats haven't been tough enough on issues like the border.”

“Precisely!” “That's right!” “Yes, sir,” some in the crowd shouted in agreement.

“I'm stronger than you'll ever be,” Mr. Suozzi responded angrily.

Republicans would disagree. They have seized on the issue in a vivid preview of their strategy for the November general election, spending millions of dollars on the Queens and Long Island Swing District in ads that paint an image of Mr. Suozzi as a lousy supporter of open borders .

The issue's growing dominance in the fight became clear Wednesday, when Mazi Pilip, a little-known provincial lawmaker who toes the Republican line, stood outside a migrant shelter in Queens to accept the endorsement of the federal Border Patrol union.

“Joe Biden and Tom Suozzi have brought the border crisis to our doorstep,” she said, gesturing to tents set up to house some of the more than 170,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the city since 2022.

Both parties see echoes of that year's midterm elections, when Republicans were able to use fear of crime to defy national trends and capture swing seats in Congress across New York.

But this time, Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat and deft campaigner, has refused to let go of the narrative, making an issue often shunned by his party a centerpiece of his campaign.

At events across the district, he has bucked liberal orthodoxy by calling on President Biden to close the border. He said a group of migrant men accused of assaulting police officers in Times Square should be deported: “That's outrageous. Kick them out!”

And sensing that his opponent may have overplayed her hand by rejecting a conservative, bipartisan deal to increase deportations and harden the border, Mr. Suozzi accused her of putting political interests above national security. She had called the bill “the legalization of the invasion of our country.”

“This is a pretty good indication of what this whole race was about,” Mr Suozzi replied on Monday. “I want to have bipartisan solutions to the problems we face, and my opponent is taking Republican talking points from extremists.”

The debate had helped give the off-cycle competition an unusual significance. Democrats hope Suozzi can reduce the House's slim majority in the House of Representatives and help write a playbook for a path back to power in November. But a Republican victory in a district that Biden won by eight points would provide an ominous warning about who voters think is to blame.

Immigration is far from the only issue shaping the race. Both candidates are also competing to show who is the stronger defender of Israel, public safety and the state and local tax deductions that are sacred to affluent suburban homeowners here.

Democrats have spent $13 million — twice as much as Republicans — attacking Ms. Pilip's personal opposition to abortion (though she has said she would oppose a national abortion ban), her support for former President Donald J. .Trump and her tendency to evade. reporters and debates.

But immigration has overshadowed them all. A large number of voters in polls have identified the issue as their top concern and appear ready to blame Mr Biden and his party. Surveys show Mr. Suozzi is the only major Democratic figure with a net positive approval rating in the district; Mr. Biden's approval rating is just over 30 percent.

Voters here are looking not only at illegal crossings at the border, fueled by mass migrations of Venezuelans, Central Americans and others, but also at a smaller influx in their own backyard.

“It's bail reform all over again,” said former Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, referring to the rallying cry used by Republicans to oust nearly every major Democratic figure on Long Island since 2021, including herself .

“This is a test of how tough it is for Democrats,” Ms. Curran continued. “Could it be possible for an unknown Republican to defeat a well-respected and well-known Democrat who has had cross-party support over the decades?”

Mr. Suozzi, 61, has a long history of breaking with his party as Nassau County mayor, executive and congressman. It has made him wildly popular among moderate voters, and provided useful precedents to point to during the campaign, such as an immigration overhaul he proposed in 2019 with Peter T. King, a former Republican congressman.

The effort to split from his party now amounts to a risky gamble, especially in the kind of special elections where candidates usually win or lose based on how well they motivate their most loyal voters. But in an interview, Mr Suozzi said ignoring issues such as immigration and crime would be a political and administrative malpractice.

He may have been given a lifeline this week, when a bipartisan group of senators announced that after months of work, they had struck exactly the kind of immigration deal he campaigned for.

The bill would make it harder to seek asylum, expand detention capacity and effectively close the border if the number of illegal border crossings becomes too high — just what Republicans have demanded. But Republicans threw it out, apparently more concerned about delivering Biden's victory in the election year than winning the policy battle.

Ms. Pilip, who emigrated from Israel, said she would favor an even tougher House border package that Senate Democrats have called dead on arrival.

The question is whether his approach will be enough in light of the daily stream of headlines from New York City about the costs of the migrant crisis. Just this week, the police commissioner said a “wave of migrant crime” had “swept” across the city — the latest statement from Mayor Eric Adams' administration, reinforcing Republican claims that the situation was spiraling out of control under Democratic watch. has run.

Mr Suozzi's long track record has not always made his job easier. Republican advertisers have flooded voters with a statistic showing that the Democrat voted with Mr. Biden 100 percent of the timeand selectively highlighted other votes opposing Republican measures to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration agents.

The most common attack functions a clip in which Mr. Suozzi boasts during an ill-fated 2022 campaign for governor that he had “kicked ICE out of Nassau County.”

Mr. Suozzi has explained that he only took action against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement group after its officers pulled guns on Nassau County police officers. As a congressman, he denounced calls from fellow Democrats to abolish the agency.

But strategists from both parties said investigations showed the ad had damaged Suozzi's image. One compared it to 2022, when Republicans blanketed a nearby suburban district with ads about Sean Patrick Maloney's support for changes that would loosen New York's bail laws; Mr. Maloney, then the chairman of the national Democratic campaign, lost in an upset.

Interviews across the district showed voters were divided.

“Tom Suozzi was given a chance to prove himself,” said Michelle Green, 62, a retired teacher from Great Neck who considers herself an independent.

“We really need change,” she said. “It's scary, the open borders.”

But in Bethpage, where nearly a thousand carpenters came to knock on Mr. Suozzi's door, the candidate made progress — at least with one voter.

Kenneth Salgado, a carpenter who considers himself a Democrat but voted enthusiastically for Mr. Trump, approached Mr. Suozzi with a single question: Would he support closing the border?

Mr. Salgado, 30, liked what he heard.

“People are taking our jobs and committing stupid crimes,” he said, adding that he worried that off-the-books migrant labor would undermine union work. “I will vote for him for that purpose alone.”