The race for New York’s congressional seat spanning Nassau and Queens counties is heading around the clubhouse turn and will be racing to the finish line on Tuesday, February 13. Whether it will be a photo finish with impounded ballots remains to be seen. This is a race where the two candidates, Democrat Tom Suozzi and Republican Mazi Pilip, are duking it out to win a seat left vacant by the ouster of fraudster George Santos, a Republican, who faked his way into this congressional seat in 2022. The campaign could cost upwards of $15 million.
During the campaign Suozzi has complained that Pilip will not confront him either at a community forum or a debate. Pilip finally acquiesced to one debate on February 8 at the Altice Long Island News12 studio based in Bethpage, Nassau County. The debate will be seen only in Nassau County and not in the Queens portion of the district.
“He has name ID, he has been here for a long time, he has a lot of money to attack me on TV ads; I don’t have as much money the way he has,” Pilip told The Jewish Press. “It’s going to cost $8 million for this race. Maybe more money will come in. He has the luxury of free time to debate. I’m out there. I’m meeting the voters and hearing their concerns. One debate is more than enough. It’s clear for all of us what the issues are. We’re going to be addressing the issues.”
At a community meeting in Whitestone, Queens, Suozzi was on fire, hammering Pilip for being two blocks away from the “We Love Whitestone” meeting yet did not face voters in the community. After Suozzi spoke, this reporter took a stroll down to the Pilip meeting to find that she had left what was essentially a fundraiser and meet and greet with a friendly crowd of supporters. Pilip had already left her event without stopping by the Whitestone community event, which hosted approximately 75 people.
Suozzi wasn’t having any of Pilip’s excuses of so-called scheduling conflicts.
“Don’t take it personally that my opponent has not shown up. Maybe she will show up. She’s only 2/10ths of a mile down the road I heard. How can you be my opponent in this race – after Santos – and you won’t do a debate? She won’t even come to meetings like this. How is that possible that you wouldn’t stand in front of people and tell people what the issues are?” Suozzi said to the audience. “She hasn’t shown up for anything yet. She’s been invited to at least a dozen different things. I started doing my first one at 7:30 this morning. She was invited to a Chamber of Commerce in Bethpage and she said she couldn’t go because there was a scheduling conflict. It’s like, 7:30 in the morning, scheduling conflict?”
“We can fix things and make it better but it has to be less of the attacking and more of trying to work together to do it. I’ll show up and stand in front of you and my opponent won’t,” Suozzi complained to the audience in Whitestone.
“She’s not going to come to the “We Love Whitestone” meeting? I don’t understand that. If she comes in the door right now, I promise you I’ll debate her. I’ll be very respectful. Ask any questions and we’ll go up against each other. I want Whitestone. I want Whitestone on my side because I feel like you’re my people and I want to represent you.”
Pilip countered Suozzi saying she would prefer having more time to campaign.
“Meeting the people is what I love the most. We’re going to be addressing the issues. The biggest obstacle in the campaign is time. I wish I had more time to campaign. It’s such a short time. That’s really the only thing,” Pilip said. “A lot of people are so motivated to go out and don’t want to see Suozzi there. They want a fresh voice. A fresh face. I understand what immigration is all about. I am not a career politician.”
For Pilip, the issues in this congressional race seem to be focused on “migrants, the border crisis, supporting safety, law enforcement, improving our economy and making us a strong country on the international stage, support Israel. These are the issues,” said Pilip, a resident of Great Neck on the north shore of Long Island.
For Suozzi, a Glen Cove resident, the border crisis takes centerstage in his campaign.
“On the southern border there are like a dozen facilities across the southern border. They were all built in the 1950s. They’re dilapidated. They can process maybe 40 people a day. There are thousands of people trying to come across every day,” Suozzi said. “I have proposed that we build an Ellis Island on the southern border. Let’s build a massive processing facility on the southern border. People will have to go through the door, you get your health checked, you get your background checked and an immigration judge does the case right there and then. Do you know what will happen? Twenty percent of the people will be accepted and 80 percent of the people will be sent back right there and then, which is what’s been happening for the past three decades. Right now, there is no system.”
Suozzi’s opponent had a different take on the immigration issue.
“It’s all about giving the opportunity to others. It has to be done correctly, protecting the country but it’s America first and being more responsible than the way Biden and Tom Suozzi did it when they decided to open the southern border. They irresponsibly opened the border without a plan in place and it causes issues. Everyone in the district knows about this.
“The border crisis has been out of control since Biden took office, illegal immigrants making their way into this country. We don’t know if the people entering the country are criminals or terrorists,” Pilip said. “The amount of drugs that are making its way across the border is very concerning [to the people] in the district. It’s not because we’re against migration, absolutely not. I think everybody has gone through this or their parents have gone through this or their grandparents.”
Pilip did not talk much about the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. Her roots bring that home clearly, having been a part of Operation Solomon, which brought Pilip from Ethiopia to Israel where she fought in the IDF. Later she moved to Great Neck. Suozzi most recently went to Israel in December.
“The attack in Israel. Just gruesome, awful,” Suozzi recalled. “I went to Israel. Came home on December 24. What I saw was just terrible, gruesome.”
Pilip hammered Suozzi for the perception that he’s soft on crime. When he was county executive of Nassau County, his police commissioner reported to him in 2008 that ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents, armed with warrants, were terrorizing little kids when they invaded homes inhabited by immigrants, wearing cowboy hats and big shotguns. His police commissioner reportedly told him, “We can’t work with them.” Suozzi agreed and told the police commissioner to kick out the ICE agents from the county.
“The people remember him for not supporting the police, the law enforcement. He refused to [condemn] the defund the police movement when he was in Congress,” Pilip said. “I’m the only candidate in this race who has been endorsed by seven police unions. There’s a reason for that. I’m all about supporting law enforcement and giving them the tools they need to keep our country safe. None of the police unions supported him [Suozzi]. None of them.”
One of Pilip’s supporters spoke to The Jewish Press about the campaign situation.
“She [Mazi] can say she has picked up arms when necessary to defend what she believes in, which I think is a particularly prudent point in the aftermath of October 7. I think it’s easy for Suozzi to say, ‘She won’t talk to me,’” said former US Senate hopeful Joe Pinion, who is now a surrogate for the state Republican Party.
“She’s talking to the voters every single day. If the voters think you need to have a sit down pow-wow then it is up to them to demand that and they can demand that when they cast their vote and we’ll figure out what that outcome is on the 13th. More than anything, voters crave knowing where people stand on the issues.
“Say what you want about Mazi, you certainly know where she stands on the issues that matter in NY-03 the most, namely, where she stands on the state of Israel, where she stands on making sure where we can have respect for law enforcement, making sure we can secure the border and not have the Chinese Communist party declaring pharmaceutical warfare on small towns with Fentanyl all over the United States.”
Another party leader showed his support of Pilip.
“We hear about that district being very Jewish and very Italian, but there are thousands among thousands of Asian American voters in that congressional seat,” State Conservative Party Chairman Jerry Kassar said. “He [Bob Chou, the Queens Conservative Party Chairman] has taken the lead to reach out to those voters to get them to vote on the Conservative and Republican lines, and it has been met with great welcome by the campaign, because, quite frankly, they didn’t have any idea about that aspect of politics and what they were going to do.”
This campaign won’t likely end on Tuesday. That will only be the first chapter. Both candidates are expected to be back at the starting gate to face off again in the November general election.
