NY-03: DNC member and prominent party fundraiser Robert Zimmerman didn’t rule out a primary bid against Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi back in February, and he still seems very interested.
Newsday writes that there have been reports of a poll pitting Suozzi against Zimmerman, and the paper asked Zimmerman if he was considering running. Zimmerman didn’t take credit for the survey but instead responded, “Suozzi has been so supportive of Trump and the right wing that the only group not polling in the 3rd C.D. is the Republican Party.”
Suozzi has a long electoral history on Long Island, and he won this seat in a crowded and expensive 2016 primary almost seven years after he lost re-election as Nassau County executive. However, he pissed off some progressives last year when he defended ICE and called for "some physical structures on the border," a statement he made during an interview with "Fox and Friends" no less.
Zimmerman, who runs a public relations firm and often appears on cable news, has also been a fixture in Democratic politics for decades. After losing a trio of races on Long Island in the 1980s, Zimmerman became a major national party fundraiser in the 1992 presidential election. Zimmerman has remained an influential party bundler in the decades since then, and The New York Times even wrote back in 2004 that a Democratic operative dubbed him the “Pope of Long Island” due to his expansive connections and “ability to coax money from Democrats.”
However, Newsday notes that Zimmerman has his own potential primary liabilities. Back in 2014, Zimmerman hosted a fundraiser at his home for the re-election campaign of Republican state Sen. Jack Martins. Zimmerman, who was also on the DNC at the time, declared, “I’m a proud Democrat, but my community and Long Island come before partisanship.”
Martins won that campaign, but he lost the general election for the 3rd District two years later by a 53-47 margin to none other than Tom Suozzi. Martins was the GOP’s 2017 nominee for Nassau County executive, and during the close of that campaign, he launched a racist mailer featuring images of Latino gang members. Martins ended up narrowly losing that contest to Democrat Laura Curran. Zimmerman didn’t endorse Martin during either of those races, but Suozzi and his allies still might try to tie him to the high-profile Republican.
The 3rd District, which includes the Long Island towns of Huntington, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay along with a portion of Queens, backed Hillary Clinton by a modest 52-46 margin. However, while Republicans tried to flip this seat when it opened up in 2016, they didn’t make a serious effort to unseat Suozzi last year. According to Bloomberg's Greg Giroux, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo also carried the seat 57-41 during his 2018 re-election campaign.