New York’s special election in the third district this month following the ouster of George Santos from the House of Representatives has become the subject of raging controversy.
That is due in large part to the candidate the Republican Party selected to take his place as a candidate for the open seat.
A registered Democrat.
Mazi Pilip, an Egyptian-born immigrant who served in the Israeli Defense Forces, admitted the Democratic Party registration issue.
In the interview with PIX 11 in New York, Pilip readily conceded her Democratic Party registration and claimed that there was a technical reason she could not yet switch it.
Mazi Pilip, the Republican nominee for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, has served as a legislator in Nassau County for two years. As the Queens Chronicle notes, she is registered as a Democrat.
“A registered Democrat who caucuses with the Republicans in the Legislature, Pilip emerged as the GOP candidate for the Feb. 13 special election after former Rep. George Santos was expelled on Dec. 1, in light of his falsified resume and questionable financial history,” the Chronicle reports.
The Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives is tenuous due to the abrupt departure of three Congressmen: Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), and Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who was expelled by the House.
As Ballotpedia notes, “The outcome of the election will help determine the balance of members in the U.S. House of Representatives. As of January 21, 2024, there were 219 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the House, giving Republicans a seven-member advantage with New York’s 3rd as one of three vacancies.”
City & State New York in a short biopic also divulged that Pilip has a powerful billionaire backer by the name of Ronald Lauder, the heir to the Estee Lauder family fortune.
“Although Pilip won reelection to the Nassau County Legislature in 2023 on the Republican and Conservative Party lines, it turns out that she has been a registered Democrat since 2012,” the piece notes. “The information didn’t faze Republican officials who picked her, and the other front-runners for the nomination had their own connections to the Democratic Party. Conservative donor Ronald Lauder was undeterred by her party affiliation. The billionaire contributed her biggest single donation during her county legislature race.”
Ronald Lauder is worth an estimated $4.6 billion. He is also the president of the World Jewish Congress and a Trump donor who has informally advised the White House on Israel.
The City & State piece also notes Pilip’s “staunch” support for Israel.
“Pilip is an Orthodox Jew and has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s action in Gaza since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war,” the piece reports. “She told Fox Business News on Oct. 31 that the Israeli Defense Forces, “do what they need to do” in response to protests against civilian casualties in Palestine. Pilip lived in Israel and was a paratrooper in the IDF prior to coming to the U.S. The Great Neck lawmaker has also attended fundraisers for Israel and is the vice president of her synagogue Kol Yisrael Achim.”
Laura Loomer, a Jewish woman and rock-solid Trump supporter, found discrepancies in Pilip’s voter registration records.
“I have obtained the voter registration of fake “Republican” NY3 Congressional candidate Mazi Pilip, which proves that she is still an active registered Democrat even though she’s running as a ‘Republican’ and has the support of RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney,” Loomer stated.
“Why does Mazi use two different birthdays on her voter documents?” she asked. “I discovered that she uses a date for October 1979 and the other is November 1979. It’s a form of fraud to use fake dates on voter documents.”
The Politics Brief reached out to Mazi for Congress about the report and will publish any response from the campaign.
“Mazi’s Wikipedia says she was born in 1978 or 1979,” Laura Loomer continued. “She never publicly says when she was born, and it appears that she’s doing this on purpose because she is intentionally trying to obfuscate her Democrat Registration which is seen in the way that she gave two birthdays on her voter registration forms within the NY State Division of Elections.”
“Her Wikipedia page also says that she was once a Republican,” she adds. “That is not true. As you can see from the documents I have pulled, Mazi Pilip has never once been registered as a Republican despite saying that she is, and despite the RNC investing resources into her.”
“The RNC has been backing a full blown Democrat migrant who has been lying to voters about being a Republican,” she continues. “If she wins, and even if she doesn’t win, this screw up by the RNC will give Democrats back control of the House since her election loss or win will.”
“Guarantee a Democrat gets another seat in Congress,” she claimed. “As I have reported before, that means the Democrats will gain control of the House before the 2024 election and we will get Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.”
In another X post, Loomer excoriated RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for the nomination debacle.
“Ronna Romney knows she’s a Democrat and is still wasting resources to help her,” Loomer stated. “This is all being done on purpose. Mazi Pilip is being propped up in NY so that Republicans can be duped and regardless of whether Mazi or Tom Suozzi wins, the Dems will get another seat in Congress.”
Early voting began Saturday in parts of Queens and on Long Island and will run until February 11. The special election is slated to be held for in-person voting on February 13. There are no requirements for early voting or to show identification beyond the first voter registration and ballot cast in New York state.
As Politico reported on Thursday, the Democratic candidate Suozzi was “crushing” the nominally Republican candidate Pilip with campaign cash.
“The Democrat in this month’s closely watched New York special election for Congress has outraised and outspent his GOP opponent by a more than three-to-one margin in the race to replace expelled former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.)., according to new filings late Thursday,” Politico reported.
“Former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), raised $4.5 million from Oct. 1 of last year through Jan. 24, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission,” the report added. “That’s more than triple the $1.3 million GOP nominee Mazi Pilip raised over the same period, and it’s helped to give Suozzi and Democrats a leg up on the pricey New York airwaves in the run-up to the Feb. 13 special election.”
In the 2022 election, Santos defeated Robert Zimmerman (D) 53.7%-46.2%. Suozzi led Pilip by a margin of 45% to 42% in a mid-January Emerson/Pix 11 poll with a margin of error of three percentage points, thus making the race “neck-in-neck.”
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