New York’s Third Congressional District, which is having a special election on February 13th, has been on my mind. Although the race has received little coverage ( part of the long, slow death of local news), it is something of a bellwether for November’s national election. New York sent seven new GOP House members to Washington in the 2022 midterms, despite the “red wave” that never actually emerged. Among those members was one George Santos, who represented NY3 until he was the sixth member of the House expelled in that legislative body’s history in December. And despite the fact that the Republican party acquitted itself terribly in the whole Santos imbroglio, the NY3 race is still astonishingly close. And that is largely because of the border issue. Who would have thought that America’s border issue would come to Queens and Nassau County, but here we are.
I say “astonishingly” close because, quite frankly, it should not, in fact, even be a race. It should be a reaction to a fraudulence perpetrated by the Nassau and Queens Republican Parties upon this district in which I used to live. And yet, it isn’t. This largely middle-class district that combines northeastern Queens with parts of Long Island has generally been a safe Democrat seat for as long as I can remember, though now is veering rightwards. The former holder of the seat, with as close to 100% name recognition in the district as is possible, Tom Suozzi, is running again. Still the race is astonishingly, disturbingly close. What does this have to do with immigration, you might ask? Well, everything, dear reader.
The NY3 special election is a makeshift laboratory for immigration and border messaging in November. Of the district, I wrote in September:
The median property value in NY3 is over $633,000, which is a source of great pride to many residents, regardless of from whence they originally came from. 22.6% of NY3 residents are foreign-born and many more are related to someone foreign-born, nearly twice the national average. So, can the Republicans thread the needle on that argument? Interestingly, they are using the some of the same arguments that the New Right made against busing, nationally, and in the borough against blacks moving in to homes in the age of Archie Bunker, 50 years ago. Will the Archie Bunker argument work on the Southeast Asian, Korean, Latino and Caribbean immigrants of Queens?
Which is the perfect demographic for the new MAGA Republican party, which is trying, desperately, to reach out beyond white bros. The mother’s milk of MAGA messaging would be a way to translate border xenophobia to middle and working class people of color, to better secure the party’s future of hate. Are we not, after all, all capable of a greater unified, concentrated hatred of migrants?
All of that having been said, the road to a Democrat House goes right through NY3. Also, the road to a Republican House goes right through that same district. Which brings us back to immigration, which is an issue in this district largely because of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, which Mayor Adams repurposed, now housing over 1,000 immigrants. Who among us does not care about her property values? Archie Bunker’s house, in Astoria, would be worth about $600,000 today, roughly the median price for a house in NY3.
The party will be looking at what works and what doesn’t in this race as well as how to replicate any successes made on the ground here on a national level. The Republican candidate for NY3, Mazi Pilip, an Ethiopian-American immigrant as well as an Orthodox Jew, provides the perfect face for the Republican Party’s hyper-aggressive attack on immigrants of color. Her resume is quite curious — Israeli military, mother of seven. Ultra-conservative on immigration, and yet she herself benefitted magnificently from Operation Solomon, in which the Israeli military airlifted Ethiopian Jews in dire peril to Israel.
There is, it should be noted, no mention of Ethiopia on her legislative biography. Coincidence? This is understandable, perhaps, considering that her district is the end destination of a lot of the Queens “white flight” of the 1970s (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment). Stressing one’s Israeli military service and erasing ties to Ethiopia is, to be sure, an opportunistic approach to resume creation. Also curious: her lack of actual campaigning.
That the race is close is surprising. Suozzi, who has been a Mayor, a Nassau county legislator as well as a former holder of this Congressional seat, should technically be far ahead of his novice opposition. Again, his opponent remains largely unseen, attacking Suozzi on immigration from the margins. “Two weekends before the election, and as early voting kicked off, Suozzi was crisscrossing the district holding rallies and appeared with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow New Yorker,” writes Ryan Schwach for the Queens Eagle. “Pilip’s campaign didn’t announce any public events, but she hosted Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday and appeared with the New York State Young Republicans, according to a social media post.” Also — Suozzi is dominating Pilip in fundraising. He is also running against a Republican Party that humiliated itself by failing to remove George Santos for his — how does one put this nicely? — fabulism. Which, once again, brings us back to immigration …
Or, to be more precise, the border bill and national politics. Enter: Trump. The Senate border security deal, which the Biden administration hoped would take immigration off the table in the ‘24 election, was declared “dead on arrival” by the House leadership. The Speaker then added, disingenuously, that it would “make things worse.” And, yes, this was the same Speaker who appeared with migrant-obsessed Mazi Pilip last Friday.
If the border — according to Pilip, according to House leadership, according to the Speaker — is indeed the most important national security issue, then why torpedo it? We won’t entertain the possibility that it gives Trump a central issue in his campaign to avoid prison by regaining the White House. We simply won’t. Asha Rangappa on X, Tweeted: “Passing a border bill would convey to MAGA voters that 1) the government can work, and be bipartisan; and 2) the ‘existential threat’ is being dealt with. Both of these are Kryptonite for a would-be authoritarian: Trump needs his supporters to be disillusioned and afraid.” Which sounds here just about right.
Democrats were willing to give away the store to move us away from an immigration election. But it does not seem to be in the cards. It was the best chance the right-wing had to get a comprehensive border security bill passed immediately. Instead, falling in line behind their Dark Lord, they would rather kick the border security can down the road on the possibility that Trump wins the White House largely on this issue. Which means, alas, a Spring and Summer of a worsening migrant situation in urban centers. Further, the Heritage Foundation — another one of those creepy right-wing “think tanks” — just flipped the script on this, proving, once again, that the border crisis outrage on the part of the Republican House leadership is just performative. If they really and truly cared about the issue, they would have accepted the bipartisan Senate border deal (along with aid packages to Ukraine and Israel), which was actually negotiated in good faith. The differences between the Senate and the House — hint: longer election cycles — has never been more evident.
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma gave up the game on Fox News Sunday, according to Greg Sargent of TNR:
“Now, it’s interesting, a few months later, when we’re finally getting to the end, they’re like, ‘Just kidding, I actually don’t want a change in law because it’s a presidential election year,’” Lankford said, alluding to the open declaration from some Republicans that any compromise will deny Trump a weapon against Biden.
That alone is revealing enough. But it gets more interesting when viewed alongside what Lankford said on CBS’s Face the Nation. Anchor Margaret Brennan aired video of Trump urging Republicans to sink the deal, declaring: “I’d rather have no bill than a bad bill.”
And everyone on the MAGA right now seems to be on the same page after those naive Senate Republicans, with their six-year terms, went off-script. "It is imperative for the future of our nation that New Yorkers on Long Island and in Queens turn out to support Republican Mazi Pilip," writes Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and, as it happens, husband of Trump’s former Ambassador to the Holy See. And, of course, a bad border security bill for Trump, a libidinal child, is any border security bill that he is not in office to sign and take credit for. And a bad border security bill in the Machiavellian calculations of Speaker Johnson is one that does not bring him NY3.
“This past week, Tucker Carlson, the American subscription vlogging tycoon, has been visiting Russia, where he has been sighted at an airport, at a fancy restaurant, and taking in a ballet at the Bolshoi Theater. He told a local journalist—in a weird, shaky video that at least appeared to have been shot surreptitiously—that Moscow is “beautiful,” adding that he was in the city to ‘look around, and see how it’s doing…and it’s doing very well.’ Speculation soon swelled that Carlson was actually in the city to conduct a sit-down interview with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president—something that no Western journalist has done since Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago. Asked about this by the local journalist, Carlson was coy (‘We’ll see,’ he said, with a signature smirk); so was a spokesperson for the Kremlin, who said that while ‘many foreign journalists come to the Russian Federation every day,’ he had ‘nothing to report’ on any presidential interview. Yesterday, Russian state media did report that a van supposedly transporting Carlson had turned up at Putin’s offices, then driven away an hour later.” (Jon Alsop/CJR)
“As Nikki Haley is the last woman standing against the inevitable nomination of Trump, Big-money Republican donors who had played around with non-Trump candidacies are getting in line behind the Fat Man. Last week the New York Times covered a meeting of the American Opportunity Alliance, a network of some of the country’s wealthiest Republican donors in Florida, and headlined its reportage ‘Some Major Republican Donors Begin a Slow Turn Toward Trump.’ Among the men admitting they were now feeling Trumpy with their money was billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who had given Haley $5 million, and a Las Vegas developer who gave Ron DeSantis $20 million, but who is now giving the same amount to Trump. ‘The bridge has never been burned,’ a senior Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, told the Times about the Trump campaign’s attitude toward major Republican donors like Paul Singer and Mr. Griffin, who have resisted Mr. Trump. The donor turn toward Trump this year is no surprise. After Charlottesville and again after January 6, 2021, the American business community condemned and briefly fled from the Big Lie MAGA wing of the Republican Party. But the money has returned: since the insurrection, corporate PACs have given $108 million to election-denying politicians.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“But here's the thing: being able to say, ‘wherever you get your podcasts’ is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.” (Anil Dash)
“President Joe Biden will be sitting on the sidelines this Sunday as the campaign for the 2024 election heats up. The White House recently informed CBS News that Biden had chosen not to participate in the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview, the second consecutive year that the president has declined an offer to speak directly to the country's largest assembled live audience. Biden's advisers have said that the decision to skip the interview was because they wanted to give the already fatigued public a break from politics during the big game. A White House official underscored that argument to me on Monday, adding that they believe the value of the interview has dropped, given it has over the years shifted from a more lighthearted media opportunity to a politics-focused affair. Regardless, the Super Bowl snub reflects a larger Biden strategy: The president is leaning far less than his predecessors on the traditional media apparatus to get his message out, opting instead for alternative mediums to address the American people. ‘We are being more creative,’ a Biden campaign adviser told me Monday, ‘and relying less on formulas of the past.’” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)