I'm aware I normally do these on Wednesday's, the morning after the election, but this week I'm on vacation...I did however have some time to sneak in a bit of writing in the hotel room, and figured that it'd be a great idea to have my thoughts on the most important special election before November (unless something crazy happens). So, here are my regular five thoughts article (a few days late) for the Long Island flip.
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| Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) |
The biggest headline from this week, and sometimes that gets lost in these conversations, is that Tom Suozzi won. We'll get into why below, but let's be very clear: Tuesday night was a very good day for the Democrats and a very bad one for the Republicans. Suozzi, a former congressman first elected to Congress in 2016, but who retired in 2022 to run for governor (hence why George Santos became a thing to begin with), will hold the seat for the remainder of the year, meaning that (at full capacity) Mike Johnson's majority is now down to just 4 seats...and that's assuming he gets to full capacity again this Congress, as several openings already exist (including his predecessor Kevin McCarthy), and the House is always a revolving door.
It's also the end of the Santos Era, a period the GOP would like to forget, but one that indicated just how desperate they were to hold to power, even with a guy not named Trump. Santos was clearly a charlatan, a criminal, and someone who had no business in Congress from the second he won. It was (to be fair) an embarrassment to the New York Democratic Party that he won in the first place, but for months a known criminal was allowed to walk the halls of Congress, vote & be party to sensitive information before they eventually let him leave office. It is unlikely that we won't hear more rumblings from Santos in the future, but he's yet another good example going forward of a man whom the GOP let be in office that had no business there.
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| Rep. George Santos (R-NY) |
That being said, this race is not super-telling for the future. Suozzi is about as good of a challenger as you can get-former congressman, moderate, well-liked in his district, and a strong fundraiser. Compared to Mazi Pilip, a local officeholder but one who lied about her record (which made comparisons to George Santos easy), and who was out-raised by Suozzi 3:1, this was always a losing prospect. Throw in that this is the one of the bluest districts in the country held by a Republican (Biden won it by 8-points, roughly in-line with what Suozzi won it by), this was always a tough hold, and that's likely why the NRCC didn't spend much to defend it. When Pilip clearly started losing, they may well have assumed that this was a lost cause either now or in November, and figured they'd cut their losses. It's a bit bleak for the Republicans (as we'll talk about in a second), but I will caution against assuming that this is a great situation for Biden. It's more that this is what was expected for the Democrats, and they met expectations...expectations that would, however, line up with a blue House majority this fall if they are met again.
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| Speaker Mike Johnson (R-NY) |
That being said, Mike Johnson's majority just got slimmer. On the same night he impeached Alejandro Mayorkas by one-vote (while Congresswoman Lois Frankel was stuck at an airport, with Mayorkas essentially impeached by a winter storm), Johnson got a closer election. It's unlikely that any legislation he passes going forward will be able to get through with just Republican support...indeed that wasn't the case before this. It's worth noting that of the three remaining safe seats that are still open and scheduled for special elections later this year, the first one that will be filled (that of former Rep. Brian Higgins) will be first, and is the only Democratic seat. So we are in a situation where Johnson will have 219 seats and Jeffries will have 214 seats. With a looming government shutdown and Mitch McConnell pushing hard for an aid package for Taiwan-Israel-Ukraine, it's impossible to see how someone who has been so inept in his job so far like Johnson will make it past an even closer election. And that assumes he doesn't have another vote to vacate the chair, which with these margins he'd almost certainly lose.
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| Rep. Brandon Williams (R-NY) |
This week was a busy one for New York Republicans. In 2022, six men (including George Santos) won districts that were won by Joe Biden two years prior. Given that Republicans won the House majority by 5 seats in 2022, that means that basically the current majority resides in New York, and a big part of who wins the majority in November comes from who can control these seats (one of which the Democrats have now already won back). This week, in addition to the Suozzi pickup, the New York congressional lines were redrawn, and while they didn't include as big of a shift as expected (the "Hochulmander" did not materialize for the second cycle in a row), it does give us an indication of what is to come, and for at least some of the incumbents in these districts, that leaves them very vulnerable.
Looking at the map, the biggest changes happen for Brandon Williams, who will now represent at double-digit Biden district, and Marc Molinaro (who gets a much easier district) going from Biden +5 to Biden +1. Williams, along with Mike Lawler & Anthony D'Esposito now all represent districts that Biden won by double-digits. One of the tea leaves we can't really read from Tuesday is if this was good news for Biden or whether or not Biden would've won on the same ticket with Suozzi. Upstate New York & Long Island tends to act of its own accord. But Suozzi's win can't feel comforting for men like Lawler, Williams, & D'Esposito, all of whom know that they not only have to defend double-digit Biden districts, but the first chance voters had to underline the GOP victories of 2022, they reverted back to the norm. Make no mistake-the future of these three men's districts are the stuff that make up House majorities.
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| Nate Cohn |
If you go on Elections Twitter these days, you're going to find a lot of conversations about polling. While much of last year showed polls with Donald Trump having a marked, perhaps even insurmountable lead over Joe Biden, Biden has regained footing in polls, and most polls now show him with roughly tied or 1-3 point margin (up or down) nationally or in the seven swing states (NC, NV, MI, WI, PA, AZ, & GA) that will decide the next president. The media has been adamant about making this sound like a horserace, or a Trump-favored race, and figures like Nate Cohn of The New York Times and Steve Kornacki of MSNBC have been criticized for focusing too much on Trump's numbers in polls, particularly when the demographic crosstabs feel off compared to historical elections (i.e. they show young voters, Black voters, & Latino voters far more favorable to Trump than would normally be possible for a Republican, indicating 2024 as a political realignment election, or that polling is wrong).
It has to be noted, then, that polling was off here. While Suozzi won within the margin-of-error of some polls (he'll end with just shy of an 8-point win), every single poll underestimated his strength. Most polls showed him leading between 1-4 points which is far south of what actually happened. It's impossible to extrapolate this further because this is one race, but if polling is underestimating Democrats, that can only be good news for Joe Biden, particularly as Suozzi's support amongst Black voters in the district didn't look to have dropped at all, which is what we've seen in a lot of polling for Biden. Not all candidates are the same (Suozzi is clearly better liked than Biden based on most polling in the district), but any pollster not going "hmm" maybe should be a little less confident that their unusual crosstabs data is reality.
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