EXPERIENCE MAY’VE BEEN KEY TO WIN
Immigration, abortion & Israel mattered, sure, but L.I. voters decided Suozzi, someone they knew, was the one
It was about abortion, gun safety and Israel. It was always about immigration.
But in the end, after two months of furious campaigning and fundraising and unique national attention fixed on a sliver of Queens and swaths of Long Island, the frantic special election battle for the House seat vacated by George Santos may have boiled down to another element that defies easy policy categorization.
At the ballot box, voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District — an area that was seen as turning increasingly red over the years — decided to pick a seasoned veteran over a mostly unknown newcomer.
Tom Suozzi, a Democratic former Nassau County executive and three-term House representative for the district, won the race Tuesday, besting Mazi Melesa Pilip, the Republican nominee and registered Democrat plucked out of the Nassau County Legislature to run for the seat.
Incomplete results showed Suozzi winning by nearly 8 percentage points.
Pilip, 44, had some clear advantages. Voters were frustrated about the migrant crisis that has stressed the city’s finances and planted a sprawling tent-style shelter in the Queens portion of the district.
The Nassau County Republican
Party was humming like a formidable machine. The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, visited Long Island to buoy Pilip.
And the Ethiopian-born Pilip seemed to have the perfect biography: She was an immigrant herself, and could tout her past as a veteran of the Israeli armed forces at a time when many district voters were distressed by the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Suozzi had his own challenges on immigration; as recently as 2022, he bragged about having kicked Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of Nassau County during his time as the county executive.
None of it mattered.
Suozzi, carrying high name recognition, staged a confident, freewheeling campaign, convening frequent news conferences, and even showing up at Pilip’s.
Pilip, meanwhile, was strikingly cautious, gingerly avoiding media contact, offering restrained and occasionally self-contradictory positions, and acknowledging her limited public speaking skills by saying she was a doer rather than talker.
She waffled on reproductive rights, dodged questions about gun control and proved cagey about whom she voted for in the 2020 presidential election.
Ultimately, she said that she is “pro-life,” avoided endorsing an assault weapons ban and acknowledged supporting former President Donald Trump.
Voters may have had an easier time figuring out where Suozzi, 61, stood — regardless of whether they liked his positions.
The Long Island lifer has long been an avowed centrist, and he staked his campaign on support for gun control, abortion protections and Israel.
On the issue of immigration, Suozzi surprised some by going on the attack, presenting himself as a commonsense advocate for border security.
He declared that he — not Pilip — would be a stronger voice to close the border.
The GOP offered him a possible gift when, at Trump’s urging,
Republicans refused to sign on to a bipartisan border security compromise. Suozzi called the Republican opposition “appalling” and hammered Pilip for not backing the deal.
The contrast between Suozzi and Pilip was never more clear than in the election’s lone debate, aired by News12 last week. Suozzi appeared wellversed on the issues and clear in his positions, moving deftly to parry attacks on his shift on immigration and putting Pilip on the defensive.
At one point, he backed her into a corner on reproductive rights, pressing her to articulate a position on whether Roe v. Wade should be enshrined into law by federal legislators after the Supreme Court erased the right to abortion in 2022.
Pilip accused Suozzi of lying about her record, but never gave a clear answer on abortion.
Suozzi, satisfied that he had won the debate, posted the entire tilt on his campaign website and implored district voters to watch it.
The campaign between Suozzi and Pilip was often seen as a test of national political winds. And the race certainly centered on issues that will return to the fore in November. Long Island has long been a valuable bellwether for suburban areas across the U.S.
At the same time, Tuesday’s election was also a unique local race.
Pilip’s campaign worked hard to make the campaign a referendum on national Democrats, describing Suozzi as “Joe Biden’s accomplice” and trying to tie him to the progressive “Squad” in the House.
She insisted the race was not about “Mazi or Suozzi.” Voters did not seem convinced.
“After Santos there were people — at least a group of people — who thought: ‘Let’s get somebody in here who is familiar to us,’” said Steven Cohen, a professor of public affairs at Columbia University. “It’s always about the candidates. No matter what they say.”
Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg is bankrolling a new high school where students graduate with the credentials and network to go right into jobs at the city’s largest health care provider.
The Northwell School of Health Sciences will open in Woodside, Queens, for the 202526 school year. It’s expected to serve up to 900 students and offer unique learning tools — from lifelike interactive mannequins to simulation technology that captures the “sights, sounds and smells” of working in health care, education officials said.
City Schools Chancellor David Banks has often described career education as one of his two main priorities, alongside literacy programs. Two years into his tenure, those plans are coming into focus with the forthcoming school, as well as new career programming at existing schools and the city’s signature summer youth employment program.
“I want every child who graduates,” Banks said last fall of his vision for the public schools, “[to] have the skills that they need to be successful, so that they can go on and have a wonderful career for themselves and get off of Mommy and Daddy’s payroll. I think that would be a wonderful thing, if we can make that happen. I raised four children, and they’re all grown now and every one of them has a college degree. Every one of them is gainfully employed. They don’t ask to even borrow any money from me — hallelujah!”
The Northwell School is receiving $24.9 million over five years from a national Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative to open 10 health care-focused high schools, including eight in cities and two in rural areas. The investment is earmarked for major startup costs, such as teacher recruitment, curriculum development, internship stipends and classroom and lab materials and renovations.
Bloomberg Philanthropies will track graduation rates and success landing a job after graduation.
“Just graduating kids who are not college-bound with no skills is doing them a tremendous disservice,” said Howard Wolfson, the education program lead of Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Northwell’s programming, credentials and certifications will focus on four health care fields: diagnostic medicine, physical therapy, mental health and nursing. Students can use those skills to enter the workforce or earn at least seven college credits before graduation.
“If I do this right, I’m creating a future workforce,” said Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health.
In the early grades, students will learn about different health care careers and shadow professionals, until choosing one of the four career paths in the 10th grade. As they get older, those opportunities will grow into health care internships that pay minimum wage and offer mentorship.
“They’re going to get to be engaged in work-based learning experiences, some of those which are paid, so putting money in their pockets before they’ve left school,” said Jade Grieve, chief of student pathways at the city school system.
About 100 to 200 students can enroll in the school’s inaugural year; education officials declined to explain the admissions process.
Banks first teased the new school at a state hearing on the education budget, where he also promoted a new location of Bard High School Early College in Brooklyn and Motion Picture Technical High School in Queens.
“We don’t want them to just graduate with a diploma, and we say congratulations,” Banks said at the hearing. “But they’re actually on a track and a path to a real rewarding career and a real job.”
The focus on career and technical education follows a national trend. Over the past decade, dozens of states have increased funding for such programs by an average of $182 million, according to a recent analysis by the group Advance CTE.
Wolfson, of Bloomberg Philanthropies, said there used to be many career and technical programs across the country. But systems moved away from vocational schools when they did not prepare students for high-paying careers and “tracked” children, often in deeply problematic ways based on class and race.
“Now, there’s a growing recognition that we need to do this better,” Wolfson said, “but that it is essential to be doing.”