A pro-Israel group closely aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is putting tens of thousands of dollars into Tom Suozzi’s race to win back his old seat in Congress.
The political action committee of Democratic Majority for Israel has spent $40,000 on Suozzi’s campaign, mostly on ads, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Suozzi is running in a February 13 special election to fill the House seat in New York’s 3rd Congressional District vacated by former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., who was expelled from Congress after receiving a federal indictment for fraud and money laundering.
Suozzi, a mainstay of centrist Democratic Party politics, gave up his House seat in 2021 to run for governor of New York, making enemies along the way and leaving a solidly blue seat open for Santos, who won a surprise victory.
DMFI is one of several pro-Israel groups that has spent millions to fight progressives in congressional elections in recent cycles. In November, the group ran ads attacking Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., for criticizing Israel’s human rights abuses, voting against additional funding for weapons to Israel, and opposing a resolution to support Israel after the October 7 attack without mentioning Palestinians killed in the retaliation.
Suozzi is a staunch supporter of Israel and is leaning into his pro-Israel bona fides. His opponent, Republican candidate Mazi Pilip, also has pro-Israel credentials: She served in the Israel Defense Forces. On Tuesday, Suozzi bucked President Joe Biden and Democratic Party leaders when he announced his support for a House Republican bill that would give additional assistance to Israel.
“DMFI PAC is working hard to help Tom Suozzi defeat his Republican opponent. Democratic Majority for Israel’s chair hosted him on a trip to Israel in December. DMFI PAC is running an ad campaign for him and is undertaking other efforts as well,” said Rachel Rosen, chief communications officer for DMFI PAC.
As Santos’s story started to unravel and Suozzi and other Democrats tested the district’s waters, others voiced concerns about welcoming a conservative Democrat who had cozied up to Republicans and already cost the party a key House seat.
Suozzi’s conservative backers argue that he has the best shot at winning back the district and helping Democrats regain seats they lost unexpectedly in 2022. Other Democrats, however, are worried that Suozzi would vote with Republicans anyway. He has supported positions opposing abortion rights and flirted with conservative positions on issues like criminal justice reform, LGBTQ+ issues, and immigration.
“With the platform Suozzi is running on, the Republicans will win even if they lose.”
“The best way to beat an opponent in an election is to offer an alternative vision and Suozzi has chosen to campaign as a weaker version of the Republican candidate,” said Will Bailey, an organizer with New York Communities for Change, who handles the group’s Long Island work. (Suozzi’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Suozzi’s campaign declined support from the left-leaning Working Families Party and sent out mailers picturing him with former New York Republican Rep. Peter King. That’s a losing strategy for Democrats in the long term, Bailey said: “With the platform Suozzi is running on, the Republicans will win even if they lose.”
Centrist Stalwart
Suozzi’s career has been inseparable from his centrism; he was, for instance, the vice chair of the House Problem Solvers Caucus during his last stint in Congress. Those positions have helped win him support from the mainstream of the Democratic Party: His name was added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue plan last month.
Suozzi has the support of key moderate Democratic leaders, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who appeared beside Suozzi during a campaign event on Saturday, and New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, who also chairs the Nassau County Democratic Party.
The centrist group No Labels, which has attracted Democrats’ ire for its perceived Republican bent, said that Suozzi was the best pick in the New York special election. In December, Santos became the first Republican House member to be expelled from Congress. Three days later, No Labels — which has courted Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and is preparing to run a third-party candidate in the 2024 presidential election — held a call with Suozzi about winning his seat back.
The former Representative had to work to mend fences with other Democrats after his gubernatorial primary bid against Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022. He had ignored pleas from party leaders to keep his House seat and help Democrats keep their majority in Washington and ended up coming in third place in the gubernatorial primary, behind New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who ran to Suozzi’s left.
Biden had carried Suozzi’s former district by 8 percentage points in 2020, but in the 2022 general election the seat flipped red and helped Republicans retake the House. Santos, a Republican who lied about much of his biography and resume, won by about the same margin Biden had two years earlier, before being expelled.
Hochul turned out to be a key obstacle to Suozzi’s attempted return to the House. She had considered trying to block Suozzi’s nomination to run in the special election, but he eventually won her blessing by promising not to waver on support for abortion rights or to attack the party in campaign ads.
After losing the 2022 gubernatorial race, Suozzi became co-chair of the lobbying firm Actum in February. The firm’s clients include many Democrats but have also numbered among right-wing world leaders including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The group’s managing director helped orchestrate the antisemitic global conspiracy theory attacking billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Actum is led by Republicans, including Mick Mulvaney, who was chief of staff and budget director for former President Donald Trump, and Mike McKeon, a Republican who was senior communications adviser for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. (Suozzi is not a registered lobbyist in his role at Actum.)
Flirting With Conservative Lines
Suozzi’s positions on issues like abortion rights and LGBTQ+ issues have caused consternation among Democrats.
Abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America had opposed Suozzi in his 2013 campaign for Nassau County executive but endorsed him last week under its new name, Reproductive Freedom for All. While he says he supports the right to abortion and had a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Congress, Suozzi previously sought to curtail abortions as county executive and supported banning federal funding for abortions in the Hyde Amendment.
Suozzi is endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund. He has also attacked his GOP opponent for refusing to promise to codify Roe v. Wade.
Other Democrats were wary of positions Suozzi had taken during the gubernatorial primary against Hochul, when he attacked the Democratic Party and aligned himself with Republicans. Suozzi ran a conservative campaign that included personal attacks on Hochul and echoes of Republican attacks on crime, criminal justice reforms, and corruption, including promises to remove rogue district attorneys and roll back bail reforms.
At one point, he described Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans classroom talk about sexual orientation and gender identity for children in kindergarten through the third grade, as “reasonable.” After uproar over his comments, Suozzi backtracked and said he opposed the bill and supported LGBT families.
Suozzi has also come under fire for hundreds of violations of a federal law designed to prevent insider trading. He has since said he would favor banning state officials from trading stocks.
In his new campaign for the House, Suozzi is focused on lowering the cost of living, fixing the “immigration crisis,” addressing climate change in the Long Island Sound, public safety, reproductive rights, and support for Israel and Ukraine. He has won endorsements from several labor, environmental, abortion rights, and gun control groups, including Communication Workers of America, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, Moms Demand Action, and the Human Rights Campaign PAC.
The post Pro-Israel DMFI Backs Centrist Democrat Who Progressives Fear Will Side With GOP appeared first on The Intercept.
This post was originally published on The Intercept.
