Senate border negotiator calls on Democrats to go on ‘offense’ after Suozzi win

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday called on fellow Democrats to “go on offense” on border issues after former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) won back his old seat in a closely-watched race.

“While I am angry that Republicans killed our carefully crafted bipartisan bill to bring better control to our border, Democrats now have an obligation and an opportunity to expose Republicans’ hypocrisy,” Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator on the recently failed bipartisan border deal said in a memo obtained by NBC News, addressed to “Interested Democrats.”

“Tom Suozzi’s victory last night – due in part to his decision to go on offense on the border and attack his opponents’ opposition to the bipartisan border deal – is proof that the politics of the border are changing before our eyes,” Murphy continued.

Suozzi flipped former Rep. George Santos’ (R-N.Y.) seat back into Democratic hands Tuesday night, shrinking an already-tight Republican majority in the House.

Immigration was a key issue throughout the campaign. An Emerson College poll released last month found more voters in the district considered it their top issue than any other priority.

Republican Mazi Pilip made border policy a key part of her attacks on Suozzi. The New York Democrat responded by defending his record and declaring his support for the bipartisan border deal that Murphy helped negotiate and conservative Republicans in both chambers quickly killed.

“By voting against a tough, bipartisan border security bill, prompted solely by Donald Trump’s desire to keep the border chaotic ahead of the 2024 election, the GOP has presented Democrats with a unique, unprecedented opening to go on the offensive on border security and immigration, an issue that may decide the fall election,” Murphy wrote in the memo.

Former President Trump, who strongly opposed the bipartisan border deal, went after Pilip in the wake of her failure to keep the seat for Republicans. He called her a “very foolish woman” and criticized her for distancing herself from him.

“Republicans just don’t learn, but maybe she was still a Democrat?” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “I have an almost 99% Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections, as well, but just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to ‘straddle the fence,’ when she would have easily WON if she understood anything about MODERN DAY politics in America.”