Democrat Tom Suozzi won the New York congressional seat vacated by the disgraced Republican George Santos on Tuesday night, in a boost for Joe Biden ahead of the presidential election.
The victory narrows the slim Republican majority in the House and gives Democrats a much-needed win in New York City’s Long Island suburbs, where Republican candidates have shown strength in recent elections.
The Associated Press called the result after 52% of votes were counted, with Suozzi on 59% compared with 41% for Republican candidate Mazi Pilip.
“The people of Queens and Long Island are sick and tired of political bickering,” Suozzi said during a victory speech. “They want us to come together and solve problems.”
In what had become an increasingly bitter campaign, the inexperienced Pilip attempted to tie Suozzi to the immigration situation at the US-Mexico border.
Pilip conceded the race and said she congratulated Suozzi in a phone call on Tuesday night. “Yes we lost, but it doesn’t mean we are going to end here,” Pilip told supporters at her election watch party.
The seat, in Long Island, was seen as a key indicator of voter sentiment before the expected Biden-Donald Trump election in November. Biden won the district in 2020, but the area swung Republican in the 2022 midterm elections, when Santos was elected.
However, forecasting for November could be complicated given that turnout was potentially hampered by a storm that dumped several inches of snow on the district on election day. Both campaigns offered voters free rides to the polls as plows cleared slush from the roads.
The result leaves Republicans with a 219-213 majority that has already proved hard to manage, illustrated by the chamber’s failure last week to pass a measure to impeach Biden’s top border official, Alejandro Mayorkas, which fell short by one vote when a few Republicans voted no. The House approved the measure on Tuesday, after Republican Steve Scalise returned from cancer treatment to cast a decisive vote.
Santos was expelled from Congress in December after he was charged with more than 20 counts of fraud, sparking a special election. Even before the charges, Santos had proved an intense source of embarrassment for Republicans, after it emerged he had fabricated huge chunks of his personal history.
Suozzi, who previously spent six years in the House of Representatives before quitting to run, unsuccessfully, for New York governor, will have to run again for the seat in the nationwide congressional elections in November.
The demographic of New York’s third congressional district had made this a closely watched election nationwide. The district, seen as a political bellwether, is largely suburban and was one of 18 districts that Biden won in 2020, but which then went on to vote for a Republican House representative in 2022.
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Immigration, abortion and aid to Israel featured heavily in both Suozzi and Pilip’s election campaigns, issues which are likely to remain important later this year.
Pilip, a relatively unknown local politician who was criticized for avoiding the press during the campaign, sought to tie Suozzi to Biden, claiming the pair had “created the migrant crisis”.
Suozzi tried to distance himself from the left of the Democratic party by promising to “battle” progressive members of Congress. He accused Pilip of being anti-abortion – Pilip said she is “pro-life”, but would not support a national abortion ban.
Both Pilip, an Orthodox Jew who was born in Ethiopia before moving to Israel and who served in the Israel Defense Forces before coming to the US, and Suozzi are fervent supporters of continued aid, which became a key issue in a district which the Jewish Democratic Council of America estimates has one of the largest Jewish populations of anywhere in the country.
The Associated Press contributed to this report