New York Times: Tom Suozzi Returns to Congress With 2 Words for House: ‘Wake Up’
Mr. Suozzi, a Democrat, sought to use his return to Washington after a closely watched special election to push both parties toward the middle.
It took three frantic months for Tom Suozzi to fight his way back to Congress. On Wednesday, after taking the oath of office, Mr. Suozzi waited just moments to excoriate the place.
“Wake up!” Mr. Suozzi, an outspoken New York Democrat who just won a special election for a Long Island swing seat, bellowed at his new colleagues in a packed House chamber.
“The people are sick and tired of finger-pointing and petty partisan politics,” he said, chastising Republicans and Democrats alike for “letting ourselves be bullied by our base” on issues like inflation and “the chaos at the border.”
He challenged the House, fresh off one of its least productive years in modern history, to get into “the solutions business,” starting with a vote on a bipartisan border bill Republicans demanded, then abruptly abandoned.
With a potential government shutdown looming, Mr. Suozzi immediately assumed an unusual amount of power in a closely divided House. After his swearing-in to replace George Santos, the disgraced ex-congressman, Republicans can now only afford to lose two votes on any partisan measure.
But as his combative re-entry speech showed, Mr. Suozzi, a centrist former congressman, is determined to seize a fleeting platform to turn his victory into a lesson about the electoral possibilities of bipartisanship.
Even with three terms under his belt, Mr. Suozzi is hardly guaranteed to have much sway over the Capitol. Still, Democrats from President Biden on down have closely studied his victory in the face of ripping headwinds on inflation, crime and the nation’s migrant crisis as they prepare for a difficult election season.
In a phone interview earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Suozzi said that his approach could be replicated if Democrats were willing to tune out “the sentiment of the bomb throwers” on the party’s left flank.
“My playbook is to try to meet the people where they are,” he said, addressing his victory for the first time since election night. “I just say what I think.”
On the campaign trail, that meant breaking from party orthodoxy on crime, tax policy and above all immigration even as he promoted abortion rights and greater restrictions on guns.
Republicans spent millions of dollars on ads trying to link Mr. Suozzi to Mr. Biden and blaming him for the record number of illegal border crossings. But rather than concede the issue to Republicans, Mr. Suozzi threw himself into the middle of it, calling for a lockdown of the frontier and attacking his Republican opponent when she voiced opposition to the bipartisan border bill.
In the interview, Mr. Suozzi argued that he succeeded in neutralizing the issue not by talking like a Republican, but by talking about the issue at all.
“There are plenty of people who said, ‘Tom, you shouldn’t be talking about immigration, it’s the Republicans’ issue,’” he said. “I don’t buy that. It’s not a Republican issue. It’s an American issue that needs to be addressed.”
Mr. Suozzi, the son of an Italian immigrant, pointed out that he had long supported a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented residents, for instance. He also calls himself a “dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.”
“But just because I’m a strong believer in immigration doesn't mean I’m in favor of chaos,” he said, adding that the status quo was “unfair” both to Americans and migrants trying to enter the country. “This is real-life stuff.”
As he settled back in this week, Mr. Suozzi said he had been taken aback, even only a year after he left office, by how “discouraged” other House members sounded. “They’re all just very very like, why are you coming back? Nothing’s working,” he said.
It was a cathartic homecoming for Mr. Suozzi, a lifelong politician whose political career looked as if it might be over just a year ago. After serving as mayor, Nassau County executive and congressman, he had given up his House seat in 2022 in a fit of ambition to challenge the sitting governor of New York. It ended badly, and then he watched Mr. Santos win his old seat.
He was Democratic leaders’ first choice to run again, when Mr. Santos was expelled in December, but even that experience was humbling: Gov. Kathy Hochul, his old rival, forced him to drive to Albany to all but grovel for her support.
This week, Mr. Suozzi watched his name go back up outside his congressional office. He had lined up cable TV interviews and a media breakfast hosted by Third Way, the center-left group, to press his case.
More good news arrived Wednesday afternoon, when Democrats in New York adopted a new House map that will make his seat more aligned to their party ahead of November’s election.
Later, in his speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Suozzi credited another force he said was on his side.
“Mr. Speaker, I never thought I’d be back here,” he said to applause. “But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and God made a way when there was no way.”
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fando