In case you missed it, a centrist Democrat, Tom Suozzi, won the special election to replace disgraced U.S. congressman George Santos in New York District 3. Immigration was at the heart of the campaign.
Here is the editorial board of The Washington Post:
It’s only one election, for one House seat in New York, and an oddly-timed, low-turnout affair, on a snowy day at that. Still, both parties treated the race to replace expelled Republican George Santos as a real-world test of voter sentiment on immigration in the wake of Congress’s collapsed border deal. Echoing former president Donald Trump, whose opposition sabotaged the deal in the Senate, Republican candidate Mazi Pilip called the measure “an absolute non-starter because it simply puts into law the invasion currently happening at our southern border.” Democrat Tom Suozzi took a different tack, embracing the deal as “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border that we’ve had in decades.”
On Tuesday night, Mr. Suozzi — and sensible border reform — won by nearly eight points.
With record or near-record numbers of migrants still crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration is a top voter concern nationally: Twenty percent named it as the most important problem facing the country in a Gallup poll conducted in January, ahead of every other concern except “government/poor leadership.” The matter is especially acute in New York City, a sliver of which forms part of the Long Island-centered 3rd Congressional District, and which has seen an influx of more than 100,000 migrants since April 2022.Mr. Suozzi’s victory in a closely contested suburban district suggests there is a market for pragmatism. He argued on the stump that blocking the bill will only mean “more migrants coming,” while his campaign ads promised that he will “work with both parties to close illegal immigration routes but open paths to citizenship for those who follow the rules.”
In short, Mr. Suozzi ran on the kind of thinking that motivated the Senate deal. Characteristically, Mr. Trump appears immune to this obvious lesson. He blamed Ms. Pilip’s defeat on her unwillingness to fully support him, calling her a “foolish woman” on social media and saying his supporters “stayed home” because Ms. Pilip didn’t unequivocally endorse his presidential campaign. In truth, the former president has boasted repeatedly in recent days that he convinced congressional Republicans to kill the deal. Ms. Pilip suffered at the polls for supporting that.
Donald Trump may not like the recent bipartisan Senate immigration bill, but it seems like the people of New York 3 like it. Stay tuned. Immigration and the border is not going away as a political football this election year.