Suozzi dominates fundraising as early voting begins in NY3 race
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Former Representative Tom Suozzi leads Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip in fundraising as early voting starts in the special election for the New York 3rd Congressional District. Suozzi campaign/Rep. Mike Lawler via X
By Ryan Schwach
Tom Suozzi, the Democratic candidate and former seat holder in the race to fill the congressional seat vacated by former Rep. George Santos, held a significant fundraising lead over his Republican competitor Mazi Pilip as early voting in the special election began over the weekend.
With election day for the Queens and Long Island seat less than two weeks away, Suozzi was winning in the funding game and on name recognition, as Pilip – a Nassau County legislator – looked to exploit her opponent’s record on immigration and crime while mostly staying out of the public eye and ignoring local press.
According to financial filings with the Federal Election Commission as of Friday afternoon, Suozzi has pulled in around $4.4 million for his bid to retake his old seat.
Suozzi’s campaign and ad buys have left him with around $2.2 million on hand, as of the most recent filing period with the FEC.
Those numbers are significantly higher than Pilip’s, who has filed around $1.3 million in total as of Friday afternoon.
Pilip has also spent significantly less of her money than Suozzi has, spending around $714,300. That left her with $628,561 on hand, or about 28 percent of Suozzi’s remaining cash.
Suozzi is not just riding on his financial support, but on his name recognition as the former holder of the NY-3 seat from 2017 to 2023. He chose not to run for reelection for the seat in 2023 and instead ran a failed bid for governor. The open seat in NY-3 was filled by Santos, who was recently expelled for office after being accused of multiple fraud charges.
“Suozzi has 100 percent name ID,” said political strategist Hank Sheinkopf, who believes Suozzi has the upperhand going into the special on Feb 13.
Despite being well-known, Suozzi may face difficulties with voters who, like Pilip and her many GOP surrogates, have called Suozzi out for abandoning the seat in the first place.
“It's not insignificant because people do have a sense of relationship between the people,” said Sheinkopf. “When they go away, the people of a district kind of feel used. ‘Oh, he’s coming back. Okay, so, why did you leave us in the first place?’ It breaks the bond that is so critical with Congress.”
Suozzi has mostly hit Pilip on her connection with the more right-wing members of her party and her inaccessibility during the abbreviated campaign.
For instance on Friday, Suozzi took aim at a meeting Pilip had with House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“Mazi Pilip’s closed-door event with Mike Johnson today makes one thing crystal clear: she will go to Washington to do the bidding of her Republican bosses, not the people of Long Island and Northeast Queens,” he said in a statement. “Johnson is one of the most extreme members of the Republican Party. He wants to implement a national abortion ban, slash Social Security and Medicare, and block any progress on securing our border because he believes chaos will benefit Donald Trump in November.”
Suozzi, himself a conservative Democrat, has been able to secure the support of the party as Democrats try to flip the crucial House of Representatives seat. He also received endorsement from myriad labor unions in recent weeks.
The Pilip camp has taken a strategy which mostly keeps the candidate out of public light, and chiefly outside of contact with media, with local outlets saying they have had a hard time contacting Pilip’s campaign.
Political strategists argue the silent approach to the campaign could go both ways for Pilip, a mother of seven and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces.
“It works because it doesn't allow her to be exposed as the person that Suozzi is trying to paint in his ads, the anti-abortion extremist,” said Sheinkopf. “But it allows her to continue to paint Suozzi as what she's been making.”
For Piilp, that means exploiting local animosity toward the migrant crisis and aligning Suozzi with a Biden-backed border policy that many voters blame for the crisis in the first place.
In a Jan. 18 tweet, Pilip addressed the crisis as the “Biden-Suozzi” migrant crisis.
Recent incidents, like the assault of a police officer at the hands of migrants in Time Square, only play into Pilip’s hand, Sheinkopf says.
“You have a population that's in panic about migrants, that is concerned about the city, which in this case means the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn, seeping into those areas,” he said. “If there's another attack on cops, if there's something else that gets crazy…anything that happens in those realms becomes fodder in that district.”
Pilip has heavily criticized the city’s use of the Creedmoor campus, which sits in the district, as a massive migrant shelter.
"Look around me – that playground used to be full of young kids playing here, now parents tell me they are afraid to bring their children here – why?” Pilip said at an event held outside the shelter. “Because just across the street in the back, a massive tent city was built to house 1,000 migrants.”
Pilip’s appearance at the shelter was only one of a handful of public appearances she’s made in the past several months.
Lupe Todd-Medina, a political strategist, argues that Pilip’s less than public approach makes it harder for her to connect to voters.
“What is unhelpful is that she is not going out publicly and speaking to the voters at the end of the day,” she told the Eagle. “Campaigns are job interviews. People need to see you, people need to be able to feel a connection with you and you can't make that connection firing shots from behind a wall. You look a little bit like the Great Oz – you're behind a curtain.”
“They need to talk to you, they need to know that their kitchen table issues are your issues,” she added. “The way you do that is by engaging the voter and she's not doing that.”
Pilip’s campaign strategy after fellow Republican Santos flooded public discourse and media waves, a scandal that Sheinkpopf and Todd-Medina agree is yesterday’s news.
“He's not involved,” said Sheinkopf. “He's not important in this game whatsoever.”
Todd-Medina said that voters feel that Santos was merely a “blip.”
Despite the approach however, Pilip has been able to garner wide support from the Republican base and endorsements from notable law enforcement unions in both Long Island and the city.
A recent Emerson College poll reported that Suozzi only maintained a three point lead over Pilip in a head-to-head election.
Regardless of the issues surrounding the race and the district, the race may come down to who can get their vote out more in what is expected to be a low turnout special election with a lot of stakes for the future of the House of Representatives.
“Republicans in Washington see this as a very important race, because to them, it's the bellwether, where they can hold on to seats in the suburbs of New York City and upstate,” said Sheinkopf.
Early voting in the race runs through Saturday, Feb. 11. Head to vote.nyc if you are a Queens voter in the district to find early voting hours and locations. Election day is on Feb. 13.
