Tom Suozzi makes a triumphant return to Congress

After a contentious special election, Tom Suozzi has won back his old seat in Congress with 53.9% of the vote as of midnight on election night. Despite a vigorous campaign by his Republican opponent Mazi Melesa Pilip, Suozzi’s election showed that the 3rd Congressional District is hoping for a return to normalcy following the tumultuous, if thankfully incomplete, term of George Santos.

Throughout the race, Suozzi has touted his decades of experience and his deep roots in the district as the standout traits which make him best suited to fill his old seat. Suozzi, who left Congress to run against Kathy Hochul in the 2022 gubernatorial race, emphasized his long career of fighting for local issues, environmental reforms and his outspoken support for Israel and border reform.

"His victory demonstrates that when Democrats stand united and fight for our shared values - affordability, public safety, abortion rights, and common sense - we win," Suozzi's former political rival Hochul wrote in a statement. "I look forward to working with him to serve the people of Long Island and Queens."

The former, and now current, congressman also emphasized throughout the race that he is a problem solver, and someone who is willing to work with anyone in Congress to get legislation passed. Whether Suozzi will succeed in a House of Representatives more divided than ever along partisan lines still remains to be seen.

"Today the voters of New York's Third Congressional District chose experienced leadership over extremism," Suzan DelBene, the chair of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wrote in a statement. "Tom Suozzi ran a formidable campaign that prioritized the issues that matter most to families across Queens and Nassau County: protecting reproductive freedom, bipartisan solutions to address border security, and lowering costs. In Tom, voters will once again have a representative they can trust."

This was only Pilip’s third ever political campaign, having previously won two for her current seat on the Nassau County Legislature, and the lack of name recognition seems to have made an impact, winning only 46.1% of the vote as of midnight on election night. The former Israeli Defense Forces soldier made strong efforts to win over Jewish voters with her pro-Israel stance and attempted to lay the blame for the migrant crisis at Suozzi’s feet, but her race may have been hurt by her refusal to participate in many debates with her opponent, and instead relied on the Nassau County Republican Party’s voter machine to win the election.

"Congratulations to Mazi Pilip on a remarkable campaign that fell just short. Mazi was a phenomenal candidate and has a bright future in our party," Ed Cox, chair of the New York Republican State Committee, wrote in a statement. "Republicans will win this seat in November when the campaign resets to focus on Joe Biden and Democrats' disastrous open-borders, soft-on-crime policies, rather than the specific circumstances that brought about this special election."

Unfortunately for Pilip, it wasn’t enough for a district still recovering from Santos, who like her was a relative unknown before his election.

More information to come later.