Tom Suozzi returns to Congress with two words for House: ‘Wake Up’

It took three hectic months for Tom Suozzi to fight his way back into Congress. On Wednesday, after taking the oath of office, Mr. Suozzi waited a few moments before scolding the place.

“Waking!” Mr. Suozzi, an outspoken Democrat from New York who just won a special election for a rocking chair seat on Long Island, roared at his new colleagues in a packed House of Representatives chamber.

“People are tired of finger pointing and petty partisan politics,” he said, chastising both Republicans and Democrats for “letting themselves be bullied by our base” on issues like inflation and “the chaos at the border.”

He challenged the House of Representatives, fresh off one of the least productive years in modern history, to get into “the solutions business,” starting with a vote on a bipartisan border bill that Republicans demanded and then abruptly abandoned.

With a possible government shutdown looming, Mr. Suozzi immediately assumed an unusual amount of power in a closely divided House. After being sworn in to replace George Santos, the disgraced former congressman, Republicans can now only afford to lose two votes on a partisan measure.

But as his combative re-entry speech showed, Mr. Suozzi, a centrist former congressman, is determined to use a volatile platform to turn his victory into a lesson in the electoral possibilities of bipartisanship.

Even with three terms under his belt, Mr. Suozzi is hardly guaranteed to have much influence over the Capitol. Still, Democrats from President Biden on down have closely examined his victory in light of the nation’s inflation, crime and migrant crisis headwinds as they prepare for a difficult election season.

In a telephone interview earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Suozzi said his approach could be repeated if Democrats were willing to disregard “the sentiment of the bombers” on the party’s left flank.

“My playbook is to try to meet the people where they are,” he said, addressing his victory for the first time since election night. “I just say what I think.”

During his campaign, that meant breaking with party orthodoxy on crime, tax policy and especially immigration, while promoting abortion rights and tighter restrictions on guns.

Republicans spent millions of dollars on ads trying to link Mr. Suozzi to Mr. Biden and blame him for the record number of illegal border crossings. But instead of leaving the issue to Republicans, Mr. Suozzi threw himself into the middle, calling for a border closure and attacking his Republican opponent when she opposed the bipartisan border bill.

In the interview, Mr. Suozzi argued that he managed to neutralize the issue, not by talking like a Republican, but by talking about the issue at all.

“There are plenty of people who said, ‘Tom, you shouldn’t be talking about immigration, it’s the Republicans’ issue,’” he said. “I don’t buy that. It’s not a Republican issue. It is an American problem that needs to be addressed.”

Mr. Suozzi, the son of an Italian immigrant, pointed out that, for example, he has long supported a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented residents. He also calls himself a “seasoned Democrat.”

“But just because I believe strongly in immigration does not mean I support chaos,” he said, adding that the status quo was “unfair” both for Americans and for migrants trying to enter the country. “These are real life things.”

As he settled down this week, Mr. Suozzi said he was surprised, even just a year after leaving office, by how “disheartened” other members of the House of Representatives sounded. “They’re all really like, why are you coming back? Nothing works,” he said.

It was a cathartic homecoming for Mr. Suozzi, a lifelong politician whose political career looked as if it was over just a year ago. After serving as mayor, executive and congressman of Nassau County, he had given up his seat in the House of Representatives in 2022 in a fit of ambition to challenge the incumbent governor of New York. It ended badly, and then he saw Mr. Santos win his old seat.

He was Democratic leaders’ first choice to run again when Santos was deported in December, but even that experience was humiliating: Governor Kathy Hochul, his old rival, forced him to drive to Albany, but he almost groaned for her support.

This week, Mr. Suozzi saw his name appear again outside his congressional office. He had hosted cable TV interviews and a media breakfast hosted by Third Way, the center-left group, to publicize his case.

Even more good news came Wednesday afternoon, when New York Democrats adopted a new map for the House of Representatives that would put his seat more closely aligned with their party ahead of the November elections.

Later, in his speech in the House of Representatives, Mr. Suozzi named another force that he believed was on his side.

“Mr. Speaker, I never thought I’d be back here,” he said to applause. “But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and God made a way when there was no way.”