In today’s episode of The Depolarizers, I’m in conversation with Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents New York’s third congressional district (aka the district of former Republican Rep. George Santos).
Rep. Suozzi served in Congress from 2017-2022 after a career of public service and was re-elected in 2024 in a special election in a district Biden won in 2020 by 11 points and Trump won in 2024 by 4 points.
Suozzi was recently appointed co-chair of the bipartisan Problems Solvers Caucus alongside Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01).
His win in NY-03 in 2024 in a Biden-to-Trump district highlights evidence of where Democrats have ample opportunity: winning over voters by talking about and having solutions for the issues that matter most to them.
“Let’s try something different in how we deal with Trump.”
In our discussion, I quote a New York Times op-ed Rep. Suozzi authored at the top of this year titled, “Let’s try something different in how we deal with Trump.”
“As a Democratic member of Congress, I know my party will be tempted to hold fast against Mr. Trump at every turn…That would be a mistake. Only by working together to find compromise on parts of the [President’s] agenda can we make progress for Americans who are clearly demanding change in the economy, immigration, crime and other top issues…Democrats should meet him halfway rather than be the party of no.”
Winning a Biden to Trump District
As I noted earlier, Suozzi’s district flipped from being a Biden district to a Trump district over the span of four years, even with changes in the district’s lines taken into consideration. Suozzi remarked about the changes:
I won by 11 points. Trump won by five and a half points… The Democratic brand is not good. It's bad in New York generally. You saw a lot of big moves, even though they stayed Democratic, a lot of big moves from Democratic to Republican. And that's related to public safety back in 2022 elections, bail reform, stuff like that. Then Republicans effectively weaponized crime. Now they're effectively weaponizing immigration. And Democrats have not responded to that. And I think that, generally, people are like, “how could you vote for Donald Trump?”
Don't ask, “how is that possible?” Ask, “why did you vote for Donald Trump?”
I think people were more afraid of the Democrats and the far left than they were of what Donald Trump's going to do. So we got a problem and we have to be willing to speak up about things that we disagree with in our base. Because most Democrats and I think most Republicans are normal people. The problem is everybody's afraid on both sides to stand up to their base. So they happen to win this time, but they've got the same problem. We have to be willing to stand up to some of the more extreme things we're hearing from our base.
Immigration, Immigration, Immigration
You can tell Rep. Suozzi is passionate about creating solutions on immigration. To note, he was one of only 46 Democrats who supported the Laken Riley Act. Here’s one snippet from his remarks on immigration.
We need to give a modernization to our legal immigration system so that we protect the DREAMers and the temporary protective status folks that we invited to America after their earthquake, or their flood, or their civil war. We said, “come to America.” We need to give them some status. And our farm workers — 50 percent of our farm workers in America are probably undocumented. We need to take this energy behind immigration to finally, after 30 years of everybody pointing fingers at each other, to finally secure the border for real, fix the broken asylum system, treat people like human beings, and fix some of these broken systems.
Working with the Elephants in the Room
As co-chair of the Problems Solvers Caucus, Rep. Suozzi is committed to bipartisan collaboration and solution creation in Congress. I asked him about what issues his Republican colleagues in the caucus seem most committed to tackling with their Democratic peers.
We just did a questionnaire to ask everybody what they want to work on. A lot of people came back with permitting reform. I can't believe how many people want to work on permitting reform!
And, a lot of people want to work on the on the budget — on deficits and things like that. And there's all kinds of laws about individual one off things. There's so much bipartisan stuff that actually happens in Congress every week. We start the week by voting on what are called suspension bills, where you suspend the rules. But to pass the bill, it has to pass by like three quarters. We do that every week, and you never hear about that stuff. Sometimes it's important stuff.
I want to start promoting more of the bipartisan stuff that happens just so the American people can realize that there is stuff that people are working on. You said something earlier about, “stop thinking of everybody on the other side as being somebody evil.” I mean, there are bad guys or bad women on the Republican side. And there's people that they would say are bad on our side. But most people are in elected office because they want to make the world a better place to live in. And they want to do the right thing. And we've got to stop this whole holding people in contempt. You can disagree with people without thinking they're evil or they're your enemy.
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