Vote Tom Suozzi for Congress
After a year of the madness of George Santos’ unraveling, the voters of the now vacant Nassau/Queens congressional district deserve a return to seriousness, sanity and experience. Their avenue to that is clear: Tom Suozzi, their once and hopefully future representative. The Daily News enthusiastically endorses him in the special election. Early voting starts tomorrow.
His GOP opponent, Mazi Melesa Pilip, is seen mostly in mailers and TV ads and is largely ducking the press. The Nassau Republican machine — which has seen tremendous success over the past few years — seems intent on running her as an idea more so than a specific candidate with specific preferences, the same situation that allowed con man Santos to flourish.
Did Pilip vote for Donald Trump in 2020? Who knows. What’s the deal with discrepancies on her various financial disclosures? Who knows. The machine seems to be relying on its own muscle more than on her individual strength as a candidate, which makes sense given that she has little name recognition.
The GOP contender has said that she personally opposes abortion but would not vote in favor of a federal ban. We’ve heard those types of promises before (who can forget how multiple conservative Supreme Court justices claimed in confirmation hearings they’d respect the precedent of Roe v. Wade before axing the ruling in 2022?).
With a razor-thin Republican majority of just three members, every single vote in favor of a potential nationwide abortion restriction will matter greatly; a single vote could conceivably make the difference between New Yorkers having access to abortion care, as we currently do, and having that right taken away.
Suozzi was a first rate congressman, fighting without stop to reverse the unfair limits on the deductibility of state and local taxes that hit New York hard. He is smart, focused and effective and is far from the lefty firebrand that many Long Island voters love to hate. He’s a known quantity and has been for a while, including his total support for Israel; though his opponent is trying to make this an issue, she can only do it in the vaguest possible terms because in actuality there is no daylight between them.
On immigration and the migrant crisis, we’d also be loath to forget the years Suozzi spent sketching out immigration compromises with former colleague, Republican Pete King. The GOP can attack him, falsely, for his supposedly weak stance on the border, but Suozzi has actually tried to build legislative deals on the issue, as opposed to the current House Republicans’ total obstruction, to the point that they’ve practically walked away from negotiations completely despite getting the policies they claim to want.
For voters concerned about the possibility of even further thinning the GOP’s microscopic majority in the House, we ask: what has this majority been accomplishing, exactly? Decapitating their own speakers, planning phony impeachments, shutting down negotiations, patting itself on the back for managing to pass short-term funding bills?
The only thing that the GOP majority seems willing to do is to keep enabling and excusing their standard-bearer, Donald Trump, who is both nationally unpopular and a real and present threat to our democracy. Such craziness needs a strong and centered Democratic Party. That’s Tom Suozzi. Send him back to Congress.