Tom Suozzi Makes the Democrats Look Good for a New York Minute

Hey, Tom Suozzi beat Mazi Pilip. Are you excited?

OK, I know it was only a congressional race in the New York suburbs. But he stomped her! The Democrats had been truly afraid that voters would be too cranky about the border and Biden Boredom to rally around a career politician whose greatest claim to fame was quite possibly his time as Nassau County executive.

Suozzi hardly super-embraced Biden. (“The bottom line is he’s old.”) But he was certainly less standoffish about his party’s leader than Pilip, a Republican who spent most of the campaign declining to say who she’d voted for in 2020.

And this was, truly, a big Biden win. Congressional races are mainly about the party and its leaders. The candidates are sometimes very, very colorful. Or very, very scary. But the only thing that really matters is which side has the most votes. Thanks to the folks in New York’s Third Congressional District, the Republican edge in the House is now even itsy-bitsier — a mere three irritable members are enough to ruin any plan.

Feel free to dwell on this. We’ve got nine months of presidential politics to get through. Nine months of Joe Biden’s age and Donald Trump’s … well, you pick your favorite. For now let’s go with his comments on NATO — encouraging Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member states that don’t pay up. Or his recent insistence that Taylor Swift is bound to come over to his side because he made her a lot of money. Or — OK, I know you really don’t want to go on.

Suozzi is not exactly a romantic figure. He’s a career politician who chose to not seek re-election to run unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, a decision that very temporarily gave America an unexpected gift: Representative George Santos.

Remember that? It was the first time Republicans elected an openly gay non-incumbent to the House. Very exciting for a minute or two, until we discovered Santos had lied about pretty much everything else: education, jobs, criminal history, kindness to animals. He did, however, make history on one front, becoming only the sixth member of the House to be kicked out of office by his comrades since the founding of the Republic.