The Special Election That Could Give Democrats Hope for November

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In late 2021, Tom Suozzi made an announcement that exasperated Democratic Party leaders: The third-term representative would give up a reelection bid for his highly competitive New York House district to mount a long-shot primary challenge against Governor Kathy Hochul.

Suozzi got trounced, but the ripple effects of his ill-fated run extended far beyond his Long Island district. Democrats ended up losing their narrow majority in the House, in part because the seat Suozzi vacated went to a little-known Republican named George Santos. He’s not so little-known anymore. Nor is he in Congress, having been expelled in December after his colleagues discovered that his stated biography was a fiction and that his campaign was an alleged criminal enterprise.

[Steve Israel: How a perfectly normal New York suburb elected a con man]

In a special election next week, Suozzi will try to reclaim the seat he abandoned—and bring the Democrats one step closer to recapturing the), but he’s not apologizing. “I don’t regret any of my decisions,” Suozzi told me recently. “When things don’t work out, that’s the way it is.”