In the country of George Santos, machine politics is fueling a Republican Party revival

It was the biggest event of Mazi Pilip's campaign in a must-win special House election in New York. The No. 3 Republican of the House of Representatives had flown in. A half-dozen congressmen led a crowd chanting “Mazi!” Mazi!”

There was only one thing missing from the Republican show of force in a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall recently: the candidate who observed Shabbat at home.

In any other race, her absence would have been a dealbreaker. But on Long Island, the event vividly illustrated an open secret that animated Tuesday's contest to replace former Rep. George Santos. Ms. Pilip's name may be on the ballot, but the campaign belongs to Nassau County's Republican machine.

After decades of election losses and corruption scandals, the organization has resurrected in the New York City suburbs, reviving a political tradition that has largely become an anachronism elsewhere in the country.

In the past three years alone, Republicans have captured every major office in the county, filling high-profile posts and hundreds of patronage jobs with party regulars often forced to give back during campaign season.

Joseph G. Cairo Jr., the group's silver-haired chairman and de facto boss, has handpicked Ms. Pilip, 44, a part-time district lawmaker, and now serves as her chief strategist, fundraiser and surrogate. He has sent loyal lieutenants to be its spokespeople and campaign managers. And in previously unreported conversations, he persuaded party leaders in Washington to spend more on advertising.

You only have to drive the streets of Levittown or Glen Cove on Long Island to understand the company's reach. On any given Saturday, some of the 2,000 local Republican committee members — many of whom are taking time off from government jobs — have split up to withdraw the vote door by door.

In contrast, Ms. Pilip's election records show that there is not a single person on her campaign payroll, an extremely unusual arrangement.

“Hakeem Jeffries wants to be the speaker. He has put $8 million into this race,” Mr. Cairo told volunteers at another recent campaign kickoff. “How are you going to compete with that? The answer is here, all of you.”

It is the kind of organized power that has made the group perhaps the most powerful remaining political machine in the country, one that could make it possible for Ms. Pilip to upset Tom Suozzi. The former three-term Democratic congressman enjoys a partisan enrollment advantage, a major fundraising advantage and decades of political experience.

At a time when Republicans have been fighting nationally in the suburbs, Mr. Cairo's party now controls all three of Nassau County's powerful cities, the office of the provincial executive and, until Mr. Santos' expulsion, the four seats in the House of Representatives in the region – equal to the narrow number of seats held by the Republicans. majority in Washington.

“I don't think there has ever been a local chairman in the country as good as him,” said Alfonse D'Amato, a former three-term senator who has known Cairo since the 1970s.

There has only been one huge blemish: Mr. Santos, the serial liar who now faces 23 criminal charges. He went through Cairo's candidate screening and won the group's enthusiastic support (it helped that Mr. Santos donated $180,000 to local Republican groups).

When The New York Times revealed that key elements of Mr. Santos's biography had been falsified, the party was humiliated. It turned out that Mr. Santos had submitted a written resume that was full of untruths and had lied about his criminal record. Mr. Cairo's team had taken his word for it.

Mr. Cairo immediately began laying the groundwork for an eventual campaign to replace him. He has described the current elections in terms of post-Santos redemption.

“If you make a mistake and see all the evidence, you have to admit it immediately,” he said in an interview.

Democrats are relying on their own, more widespread network of supporters to generate votes after years of staggering local losses. More than a thousand union carpenters, health care workers and hotel workers were sent across the district on the first day of early voting. Kim Devlin, a senior adviser to Mr. Suozzi, said the campaign had generated one million contacts with voters.

Democrats were pleased with the results. As a week of early voting ended on Sunday, Democratic turnout outpaced that of Republicans and independents and appeared stronger than in other recent elections.

But even Mr Suozzi has warned his supporters of the headwinds ahead.

“We have to accept the fact that the Republican machine in Nassau County is the strongest it has been since I was county executive,” he recently told volunteers in Port Washington, referring to his term from 2002 to 2009. “We have taken the wind out of their sails for a good 15 years and, guess what? They are back.”

The renaissance began around the time the 78-year-old Cairo took over in 2018 after serving as Joseph N. Mondello's No. 2 for 30 years.

For much of the 20th century, Nassau Republicans were seen as the suburban counterpart to the Daley machine in Chicago and, earlier, Tammany Hall in New York City. They dominated elections and controlled the spoils, handing out patronage jobs and lucrative government contracts.

By the turn of the millennium, the model was sputtering, burdened by corruption scandals, demographic shifts and a financial mess in the province. A backlash landed Mr. Suozzi in the county executive office.

But in recent years, Republicans in Nassau have deftly positioned themselves to capitalize on their own backlash. At a time when the national party was moving rightward, they largely eschewed divisive social issues and reoriented themselves around intense local policies that cut across party lines: property taxes, inflation and, above all, fears of a spike in crime during the pandemic.

“To be honest, middle class people are a bit fed up,” says Cairo, who describes his personal politics as “middle of the road.”

New York City, a laboratory for progressive policy, served as a convenient foil. An analysis of voting patterns shows that Republicans have succeeded partly by winning over independents, but also by simply getting more of their own votes at the ballot box than Democrats.

“We're winning in places like North Hempstead, where I don't think we've had a supervisor and a majority on the city council since I was 4 and the Mets were in the World Series,” said Rep. Anthony D'Esposito. .

As chairman, Mr. Cairo has a say in hundreds of political appointments to local government offices, known as patronage posts. According to his own estimate, about 70 percent of those appointed are active in party politics.

“They are taught that they got their jobs because they will be loyal when the organization needs them, which is election time,” said Jay Jacobs, the Nassau County Democratic chairman.

“I won't say we're not doing the same thing,” he added of Democratic administrations, “but it's not with the same hammer.”

Mr. Cairo has reaped personal benefits. In addition to his $150,000-a-year job as party chairman, he has earns another $200,000 or so as president of the Nassau County Off-Track Gambling Bureau and maintains a private legal practice.

He was stripped of his law license in the 1990s after admitting to misusing $400,000 in client funds. But even opponents say they have found no reason for any suspected inappropriate behavior since he became chairman.

Now Cairo faces perhaps the most scrutinized test of its political career.

He turned to Ms. Pilip in part because her life story seemed perfectly aligned with the political moment and despite the fact that she was a registered Democrat. Born in Ethiopia, she later served in the Israeli army and said she was motivated by Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7.

But her lack of political experience has been apparent. She just started her second term in the part-time Nassau County Legislature, where much of her work has involved nonpartisan, local issues.

The candidate has rarely appeared without an escort committee of party regulars, such as Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman or Mr. D'Esposito, who step in when potentially damaging questions about former President Donald J. Trump or thorny policy issues arise.

And until the last few days of the campaign, she had held just two news conferences and accepted just one debate with Mr. Suozzi, who was relatively ubiquitous across the district. “My opponent is unvetted and unprepared,” he said during the debate. “We've been down this road before with George Santos.”

Ms. Pilip and Republican leaders appear willing to pick up the pieces, hoping that in a remarkably close, low-turnout election, the party that does a better job of shaping its most reliable voters will be rewarded.

Mr. Cairo relies on his field operation. After the meeting at a local VFW hall, he retreated to a private room upstairs to discuss the race.

Halfway through the conversation, an assistant came over with an old-fashioned silver presence clicker. Mr. Cairo squinted and read the total.

“All locations today: 1,374,” he said, adding a forecast. Next week, he said, the number would be higher.