If Republican candidate Mazi Pilip wins the February 13 special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, she’ll send shockwaves across the nation and help maintain the Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House.
She’s defied the odds before. In 2020 she flipped a state legislative seat from blue to red and she could do that again in a district that Biden won by eight points. All the issues are going her way and a recent Emerson College poll had her at 42 to 45 points against her Democratic opponent Tom Suozzi. Illegal immigration was polling ahead of crime and the economy.
History shows that Pilip can win this seat. A remarkably similar 2011 special election took place in a neighboring congressional district, featuring a largely unknown and underfunded Republican named Bob Turner against a popular incumbent Democrat Assemblyman. Turner nationalized the election off the bat, turning a local race into a referendum on then-President Barack Obama’s shaky stance toward Israel. Turner, a devout Roman Catholic, defeated his genial Jewish opponent by eight points in the most Jewish congressional district in the nation. His victory marked the first time in 90 years that a Republican won that seat.
Pilip, who is running against perennial Democrat candidate Tom Suozzi, would be wise to nationalize her race as well. In her case, I’d work to make the race a referendum on the Democrat Party itself. Pilip should invite moderate Democrats in the district to send a clear message to their party: Progressivism has made this state and nation less safe, more divided, and categorically unaffordable. Its insane open-borders policies threaten the entire American experiment. (RELATED: WILLIAM O’REILLY: Joe Biden Takes A Bite Out Of The Big Apple)
Republicans, independents, and moderate Democrats all know what progressivism has done to New York. Pilip hardly needs to educate them. The top three issues in almost all New York polling I’ve seen are cost-of-living, crime, and runaway illegal immigration. On all three, Pilip is on the right side. Suozzi is all over the map. And does he even want the job? He’s already retired from Congress once to run for a different seat.
One doesn’t see a Mazi Pilip come along often. She’s a 44-year-old Black, Jewish, Ethiopian refugee — and a conservative.
Who she is thunders so loudly that voters of all parties simply must take notice of her. Raised in a squalid refugee camp without running water, Pilip has never even known her true birthdate. She was so grateful to the Israeli nation that saved her from the camps that she joined the IDF at age 18. And as soon as she came to the U.S., and became an American citizen, she showed her love for this country by becoming civically engaged.
Democrat leaders love to paint Republicans as anti-immigrant when nothing could be further from the truth. What we are is pro-legal immigrant — pro rule of law — and that’s what Pilip represents.
Democrat leaders falsely claim that Republicans are anti-Black and anti-women. Pilip makes mincemeat of that narrative, which has never been true. Remember Lincoln? Susan B. Anthony?
Democrat leaders think that someone like Pilip should reflexively support no-cash-bail, police defunding, sanctuary cities, big government, and higher taxes. She fiercely opposes them all. Pilip is the worst possible nightmare for today’s Democratic Party, simply because of who she is and how she sees the world.
It’s often said that conservatism is the politics of reality, something Pilip knows something about. She’s seen first-hand what the world can look like when ideologies run wild. Voters in NY-3 would be wise to listen to what she has to say. Republicans nationwide would be wise to support her.
William F. B. O’Reilly is a Republican strategist from New York.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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