Hello everyone, my name is Frank Driscoll and welcome to Driscoll's Election Dissection,
your election analysis for Across the Circus.
I hope you all are doing well today wherever you are.
I hope you've had a good start to the year.
I hope you're having a great February.
On our last program, we kind of did a look ahead as to what's coming up.
And if you've been following the presidential primaries, which as you may have heard in
our last show, we're not going to go into big detail on on this program, but you see
things are going as anticipated.
Donald Trump is cruising toward election victory in the Republican side and incumbent President
Joe Biden is cruising on the Democratic side.
So yeah, just as many pundits expected.
But you know, the Super Tuesday is coming up and that should be a really fascinating
day in the primary calendar.
It could be the final straw for Nikki Haley's campaign or Dean Phillips's campaign, for
all we know in their primaries respectively.
But we'll just have to wait and see.
However, on today's show, the focus is the first special election in the U.S. House of
Representatives for the 2024 calendar year.
And as you know, I love to talk special elections because it really shows you a snapshot of
what goes on in certain areas of this great country.
That's why I enjoy it.
So for this, we are heading to the Empire State, the state of New York, specifically
New York's third congressional district.
Now, this district represents a good chunk of New York City, mostly Queens, and also
part of Long Island into northern Nassau County.
And according to an article from Forbes, this is actually the wealthiest congressional district
in the state of New York and the fourth wealthiest in the country.
Bet you didn't know that.
So there's a lot going into this special election and it's being looked at a lot by many election
pundits and experts and really political fans at large on both sides of the aisle.
Not only because this is actually one of the closest districts in terms of Republicans
and Democrats.
According to the Cook BVI, the Democrats have an advantage of two points.
So this election could go either way.
But people are also looking at this election for another reason.
And that's because this district has gotten a lot of attention over the last calendar
year and that can mainly be attributed to the person who represented the district for
most of that year, a gentleman named George Santos.
You may have heard of him.
Well to bring a long, long story short, George Santos was expelled from the US House of Representatives
on December 1st, 2023, becoming the first person to have that distinction in nearly
20 years.
So the seat is vacant and as a result a special election has been called.
So you're probably thinking, oh well if it's a special election so the parties will each
have a primary to decide their nominees, right?
Wrong.
You see in the state of New York they do things a little different.
In the state of New York, in a special election for the US House of Representatives and for
other offices as well, the party officials of the counties in which the district is in
come together and decide on a nominee.
So kind of an old school convention type thing.
You know, kind of similar to the Utah Convention model which you may remember from one of our
episodes back in September, but it's a little different.
It's really the elite of the party within the county.
So the two counties came together, this being Queens County and Nassau County, party officials
from both parties came together to decide on a nominee.
The Democrats have chosen Tom Swasey.
Now for those who are listening, who live in New York's 3rd congressional district,
first of all, hi.
And second, the name Tom Swasey might sound familiar.
Well that's because Tom Swasey actually used to be New York's 3rd district representative.
He was elected to the seat in 2016 and re-elected in 2018 and 2020, decided not to run for re-election
in 2022, and decided to run in the Democratic primary for governor instead, which he lost
to Kathy Hochul.
So he's vying for his old job back, and the Democrats of both Nassau County and Queens
County think with a recognizable name, they might have a good chance.
Well the Republicans know that this is a very, very close district, and they want to elect
one of their strongest members throughout the community.
And they have chosen on Mazzee Pillip.
Mazzee Pillip is currently a legislator in the Nassau County Legislature.
She also served in the Israeli Defense Forces in her youth.
She was elected to the Nassau County Legislature in 2022.
And despite running as a Republican and being elected as a Republican to the Nassau County
Legislature, she has been a registered Democrat since 2012, which is rather interesting.
However, the Republican Party of Nassau County and the Republican Party of Queens County
are going full force with her.
Now they know she's a current legislator, a current elected official of their party,
and they know that in an election like this, a close election, they need someone like that,
just like Tom Swazee, a recognizable name that voters would know.
And as expected, this election has been very close in polls so far.
The most recent poll we have here has Tom Swazee leading by four points.
However, the margin of error in that poll is 4.2%.
So literally this election is a coin flip.
Both candidates have well-known endorsements, and a lot of analysts say this is going to
be very competitive and very expensive.
Both candidates have already raised millions of dollars so far.
And nearly all the rating forecasts, Cook Political Report, Sabato's Crystal Ball, all
that stuff, nearly all of them have this race as a toss-up.
And plus, with the House majority very slim as it is, this truly is make or break for
both parties.
And it could be a bellwether as to what happens for the rest of the year.
We don't know.
With a district this close together in Republicans and Democrats, it could show where the country
may be headed.
Election will take place on February the 13th.
And lastly, if you are a registered voter in New York's third congressional district,
I truly don't care who you vote for.
But I do care that you vote.
So please do.
Thank you for listening to Driscoll's Election Dissection.
If you'd like to learn more about the show, go online to algidproductions.com slash across
the circus and be sure to listen to us on any podcasting form you like.
Thank you all for listening.
I'll see you all very soon.
Driscoll's Election Dissection was brought you by Algid Productions LLC. Thank you for listening!