The NPR Politics Podcast - N.Y. Dems Flip House Seat

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Former congressman Tom Suozzi won his House seat back in a special election Tuesday. The office was left vacant by disgraced Republican congressman George Santos, who was ousted from Congress for alleged financial wrongdoing. Suozzi's win is drawing attention from Dems wondering what this could mean for November races. This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and political correspondent Susan Davis.This podcast was produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. Speaking of campaigns, a Democrat won the congressional seat in New York's third district special election last night, flipping that seat from red to blue. Tom Suozzi won the seat that had been held by disgraced Republican Congressman George Santos until he was ousted for alleged financial wrongdoing. Now, Deidre, you've spent some time in that district this week. You were in Long Island and Queens. Tell us a little bit about the area. What should we know?

Well, the third district in New York is a suburb, basically, of New York City. And it stretches from one part of Queens along the North Shore of Long Island. There's sort of middle-class, working-class neighborhoods in the Queens area, more middle-class, wealthy suburbs out on the North Shore of Long Island. You know, this is a place that trended away from the Democrats in the 2022 midterms, and a big reason they lost control of the House. Several New York suburban districts flipped from blue to red, and this is going to be a big battleground for the House in 2024. I should let our audience know that my dog Bear has some opinions about the New York special election. You may hear him in the background. I do think that this district was an interesting test case. As Deirdre noted, this is an area where the Republican Party has been on the advance in recent years and have seen some wins.

Long Island is probably one of the brightest red spots in an otherwise blue state. But it's also suburban based mostly. And the Democratic Party's strength has grown in suburban areas, especially in the Trump era, as more sort of center right, traditional suburban voters have trended away from the party. So it was a little bit of a test case for sort of which party has the advantage in a terrain like this. It's become kind of a swingy area. Sure. And remember, this is a seat that Joe Biden did win in 2020. And also historically, it has more often been represented by Democrats than Republicans. But because it's so narrow, yeah, it certainly has swung in the past.

And one of those, Deirdre, is Tom Suozzi, right? I mean, he's held this seat before. Right. He's a former three-term House Democrat. Republicans were really trying to run against him as the sort of incumbent in this race, although this was a special election to fill the seat of the indicted George Santos, who was sort of a shadowy figure in the background. Swazi tried to paint his Republican candidate, Mazie Pillip, as sort of George Santos 2.0, comparing her to the indicted and disgraced former Republican who lied basically about virtually everything in his record. He said the difference was that Pillip was lying about everything in his record, Swazi's record. But really far and away, the

biggest issue I heard about from voters across the full stretch of the district I was in, early voting sites in Queens, in Plainview, supporters of Swazi, supporters of Phillips, all talked about border security. Joseph Karras is a sheet metal worker union volunteer for the Swazi campaign, and here's what he said about immigration. Immigration is a problem, obviously, because we see it every day. It's a huge issue right now. And not only that, the immigration is also taking work from union members as well. So that hurts our pockets as well. And Louis Mayer, who voted early for Pillip in Plainview, also talked about immigration being

his top issue. The southern border is crazy. And we'd like to see some kind of control there. Not that we don't want immigrants to be here, but we like to see some kind of process, some kind of control there. Not that we don't want immigrants to be here, but we like to see some kind of process, some kind of system, not just people coming here. You know, Deirdre, the Republican candidate in this race, Mazie Pillip, also talked about immigration, about her own background as an Ethiopian-Israeli immigrant to the U.S. And she talked about, as she put it, coming here the right way. How did her message resonate with voters? Well, this district in New York has a high percentage of Jewish voters. So the issue of the commitment to Israel was a huge issue in the race.

And Pillop tried over and over again to link Tom Swasey to much more progressive Democrats who've talked about conditioning aid to Israel. Swasey really fought back on that issue, talked about his own record, and he actually went and visited Israel in December and met with family members of hostages. So I think he tried to neutralize the issue and prove that she was sort of making politics out of something. What was interesting to me is that this is one of the issues where there really wasn't much daylight between the two candidates. They both ran on very strong pro-zero messages. What's interesting to me about within the Democratic Party look at an election like this and think a moderate centrist pro-Israel message is going to be a loser in November. So immigration is shaping up to be a big issue in the presidential election as well. We're hearing about it a lot already in the campaign. Sue,

we've said this was a special election, but what might we be able to sort of telegraph about what's coming in November? What can we take away from it? Sure. I mean, I'm always hesitant to say that special elections are a very good bellwether of what's to come. But because I think the two parties often use these races as a test run for the messages they want to run on and the themes that they want to pick up. One of the other caveats here I would like to note is that Trump and Biden weren't on the ballot in this election. So I think it was easier to differentiate from the top of the ticket, which candidates in November are not going to have that luxury when the presidential is dominating everything else. And it's easier to tie candidates to their leaders. That being said, you know, the expectation going into this race was that Republicans could win it. You know, they had won the seat in 2022. There is a perception in polls that Biden's getting his butt kicked on the issues of immigration, that congressional Democrats are going to be taken down with it. So having a Democrat win this race, I think, has been very reassuring for Democrats and also likely to provide a roadmap for how Democrats are going to run on immigration in November, which is what?

They're going to run on wanting to secure the border, but also wanting to run on things like having secure legal pathways to citizenship. Swazi didn't shy away from this issue. He didn't run from it. If anything, as Richard Hudson, who's the Republican chairman of the House Republicans Campaign Committee, said this morning, he almost sounded like a Republican in some of his campaign messaging. So this was echoed by Senator Chris Murphy. He's a Democrat from Connecticut, but he helped shepherd that bipartisan Senate deal on the border that fell apart. And he wrote a memo based off of last night's election and said, like, look, we can win. This is how we do it.

We should message like Swazi did. I mean, the other big message from Swazi on immigration was he embraced, endorsed, hugged the Senate bipartisan border bill and said over and over again, people want us to work together to fix the crisis at the border. My opponent, Mazie Pillip, opposed that bill. Republicans derailed that bill. They don't want to even vote on it. Vote for Democrats and we'll get things done. I mean, to Sue's point about Trump and Biden, they really weren't a huge factor in this race. Swazi never really talked about Biden except when he was criticizing him and saying he should have acted on the border sooner. There should have been a bipartisan proposal sooner. And Mazie Pillip didn't even admit that she voted for Trump until days before the election.

She's actually a registered Democrat, was elected as a Republican to the county legislature, but really didn't talk at all about Trump and really just sort of echoed the Congressional Hill Republican message, which is also kind of a swingy area, a suburban area that held a statehouse election. And where a Democrat also won. Sue, what that these special elections were looking particularly on the left to test these ideas of is the left unenthused? Are they not going to show up? What's turnout going to look like? What are the issues about? And this is, again, a suburban district where the Democrat won comfortably and did focus particularly on messages that Democrats want to run on specifically on the issue of abortion. And that resonated in a district like that. So, again, when I talk about the terrain, I think the suburbs are where a lot of these swing seats are won and lost. And last night's elections for the Democratic Party were more reassuring that there is a pathway to win them, even with a president who is potentially historically unpopular going on the top of the ballot.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back. Here in D.C., the U.S. House voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last night. On this vote, the yeas are 214 and the nays are 213. The resolution is adopted. This is the first time a cabinet secretary has been impeached in over a century. And it was Speaker Mike Johnson's second time bringing the vote to the floor. This time, he got it passed only by a slim margin. So, Sue, what happened here and what were Republicans trying to achieve?

I think there are some Republicans who are asking themselves that very question. What are we trying to achieve with this? Look, Republicans have made the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration central focuses of their campaign. This is clear that this is what Donald Trump wants to run on. It's clear what Republicans down the ballot want to run on, that Joe Biden is weak, that he has allowed a border invasion to happen and that the Democratic Party can't be trusted. And the desire to impeach Mayorkas was to put a fine point on that. They essentially impeached him saying that he did not uphold the law as secretary to keep the border safe. Already you have constitutional scholars and many members, Republican members of the Senate saying

this did not meet the constitutional standard for impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors. This is not what impeachment is for. This is not what impeachment is for. I think this was a very partisan exercise. Obviously, no Democrats supported it. I don't think Republicans are going to run campaigns focused just on this impeachment effort, but I think they saw this as supporting a larger narrative about immigration and border security, that they are the tough on immigration party, that they will hold people to account who don't take it seriously, and that you need to vote for them in November. So where could this lead? I mean, how much of a risk is there of a slippery slope here for Congress to impeach cabinet members over political disputes? I think it's highly

likely as you see Washington has become more partisan and more divided and when base politics demand these kind of actions. Certainly in a Donald Trump led Republican Party, Donald Trump made very clear and has for months that he not only wants to see this impeachment move forward, but don't forget, Republicans are also pursuing impeachment of President Biden. I think impeachment politics, at least for the Republican base, are good politics. You know, Trumpian, the Trumpian moment is very revenge oriented. It's very much about going after and punishing your enemies. And I think that for again, for a base voter, I think it is like the red meat that they look forward to. Look, I'm just a skeptical person that this plays big in November or in swing

districts, that this is a thing that resonates with people who don't exist in the day to day life of political churn in Washington, D.C. And in some ways, look, I think the reverse. I think it can feed some ammunition to the Democratic Party to say, look, like we're trying to be serious about these issues. We've put we've actually come up with bipartisan solutions. Republicans walk away from the table. They're pursuing partisan things like impeachment. Like, these people aren't serious. And I think that what Republicans backhandedly did in walking away from a bipartisan border deal in recent days was finally give Democrats a positive message to run on about the border, which is something, frankly, they have not had for the last couple of years. And what's next for this

impeachment effort, Deirdre? I mean, I'm guessing this is going nowhere in the Senate. Right. Impeachment is a privileged resolution. It goes over to the Senate and it takes precedent. So the Senate's out right now. But when they get back after their recess, they're going to be sworn in as jurors to start a trial on the two charges, ignoring Congress and breaching the public's trust. As Sue mentioned, several Senate Republicans have said this is a policy difference. This is not an impeachment case against the Homeland Security Secretary. Biden sets the administration's immigration policies. Mayorkas carries them out. So there could be a motion to dismiss the charges. That could get bipartisan support. I would expect that Senate Democrats would want to dispose of this issue

fairly quickly. There's a lot of other issues happening in the Congress. They have to avoid another government shutdown in early March. There's sort of two rolling deadlines on that. I do think that Democrats, though, may want to take the political moment coming after Republicans derailing the immigration bill, Democrats winning a special election, largely on the border message of working together on a bipartisan proposal. And that could sort of be something they highlight as this trial starts. I also don't know how far into the future House Republicans look at this as a political tactic, but everyone knew it was doomed to fail in the Senate. I think James Lankford, the Republican from Oklahoma who helped write the bipartisan border deal, used Speaker

Johnson's language and said it was dead on arrival in the Senate. But what is that going to prove in the end? It's going to prove that Democrats are united. There's no Senate Democrat that's going to vote to impeach Mayorkas. I think that's a pretty safe bet today. But there's going to be a bunch of Republicans that don't vote to find him guilty. And that's going to show a Republican Party split on this question too. And again, that's going to muddy a message that the Republican Party is trying to set on the border. I also think the other reason why House Republicans move forward with impeaching Mayorkas is they're having trouble inside their own ranks impeaching President Biden, which is another thing the Republican base really wants. You know, big picture question. We've alluded a couple of times to that immigration package that failed after Senate Republicans

rejected a deal that would have attached border security provisions to military aid for Israel and Ukraine. As we know, the Senate instead wound up passing a standalone military aid package without those border security provisions. But House Speaker Mike Johnson says he will not bring it to the floor. The messages on this issue seem so mixed. You know, first Republicans want border security, then they refuse in the Senate this package. And now the standalone package is going nowhere, it looks like. Sue, what happened here and why isn't it moving forward in the House? It's not moving forward in the House because Donald Trump doesn't want it to move forward in the House. I really think it's that simple.

Donald Trump wants to run on this issue and giving Joe Biden a big win on the border going into November would in some ways inoculate him from these attacks on the issue and certainly give Republicans more buy-in to solving the actual problem. What I don't know and what's going to be tested in November is did Republicans overreach? You know, they define this as a big problem. They got Democrats to the table after kicking their teeth in on the issue for a long time. Democrats actually put up solutions. They agreed to a lot of things their party doesn't historically support. They agreed to a lot of things that didn't have any pathways for legal citizenship, which had always been sort of a must for Democrats in these immigration negotiations in the past. And Republicans walked away. So what does that

give Democrats? It actually gives them something to point to proactively to say they would have done actual policies that could have began to attempt to fix a very complicated problem. And I think it will feed into their broader narrative of like, look, this Republican Party can't govern. They're not serious people. They're not doing serious things. They walk away from serious solutions-oriented things for politics, and they put Donald Trump over you. Now, if Republicans had won this special election last night, I would think that they would have been much more empowered by walking away from this deal. But I think Republicans have some soul searching to do right now about how they message this issue in the places that are going to decide things like control the House. That is our show for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign.

I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.