Previously Published in The Messenger
By Matt Meduri
Last Friday’s convention of the Suffolk County Republican Committee at their Medford headquarters saw the GOP nominate their official slate of candidates at the congressional, state, and local levels.
Chief among those picks were the overwhelming nominations of incumbent Congressmen Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) for this year’s midterm elections.
The stakes for both parties couldn’t be higher. For the Republicans, defending their already-tenuous House majority to continue President Donald Trump’s (R-FL) agenda in earnest; for the Democrats, clawing back that majority to deny a lame-duck Trump his legislative platform for the final two years of his term.
For Suffolk County, a plausible path to that majority for both parties is on the table, as it was in 2022, when the GOP rode the coattails of then-Congressman Lee Zeldin’s (R-Shirley) near-upset bid for governor that single-handedly delivered control of the House to the Party of Lincoln. While not in the eye of the hurricane this year, the nation’s largest suburban county will likely yet again make its presence known on the national stage this November.
The string of victories is also credited to GOP Chairman Jesse Garcia (R-Ridge), who rose to the position of Chairman in 2019 and has since brought the long-dormant Suffolk GOP out of extinction. Republicans had been a minority in the County Legislature for nearly fifteen years, until the red wave of 2021, which also saw Ray Tierney (R) elected the county’s first Republican District Attorney in about the same amount of time.
In 2023, Ed Romaine (R-Center Moriches) was elected the ninth Suffolk County Executive, the first Republican in that position this century.
Under Garcia’s leadership, Suffolk County backed President Trump in all three of his White House runs, the largest county by population in the country to do so.
Congress: NY-01
The First District includes the entire towns of East Hampton, Riverhead, Shelter Island, Smithtown, Southampton, most of Huntington, and the northern half of Brookhaven.
LaLota notched his first term in Congress in 2022, replacing Zeldin and quickly solidifying himself as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress. In 2023, the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index tracked LaLota as the 65th-most bipartisan member of the House and the 15th-most bipartisan freshman of either party.
A Navy Veteran, LaLota defeated then-Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming (D-Noyac) by an eleven-point margin, despite the district having gotten bluer after the 2020 redistricting cycle. LaLota was re-elected by a similar margin in 2024 over John Avlon (D-Gramercy Park).
Eyeing a third term, LaLota was recently appointed to the House Appropriations Committee, becoming the first New York Republican to serve on the body since 2009. LaLota has also staked his tenure on delivering hundreds of millions of federal dollars to Suffolk for infrastructure, safety, and research, preserving Plum Island, working on behalf of Veterans, and working across the aisle to protect the Long Island Sound.
“We govern in a manner that’s responsible,” said LaLota, accepting his nomination. “But in 2026, after we’ve won a lot, it’s time that we protect those seats.”
LaLota added that the Democratic Party will be “coming after” the GOP-held seats and that “it’s time to protect” those seats. He called the since-2022 GOP House majority a “commonsense, conservative firewall” against the “lunacy that’s going on in Washington,” and that he was part of a five-member group of Republicans who had won seats carried by then-President Joe Biden (D-DE) just two years prior.
“[In 2024] Republicans won the trifecta and put this country on a much better path. We have zero illegal border crossings. Inflation is down from Biden’s 4.95% to Trump’s 2.5%,” said LaLota. “America’s presence overseas is stronger than it’s ever been and we are on the right track right now as a party and as a country.”
Congress: NY-02
NY-02 includes the entire towns of Islip and Babylon, the southern half of Brookhaven, and parts of Oyster Bay.
A rising star in the national party, Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) is eyeing a fourth term.
Elected in 2020 to succeed the legendary Congressman Peter King (R-Seaford), Garbarino, then a State Assembly since 2013, had big shoes to fill. This past summer, Garbarino rose to national prominence by earning the gavel of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee. Garbarino has also earned high bipartisan rankings, with the Lugar Center’s 2023 report clocking him as the 23rd-most bipartisan member of the House.
Garbarino won the open seat in 2020 by a narrow seven-point margin over Jackie Gordon (D-Copiague). He defeated Gordon in a rematch in 2022, this time, however, by a landslide twenty-point victory. Garbarino repeated that margin in 2024 over Rob Lubin (D-Lindenhurst).
“We’ve done a lot of great things down in Washington, and there’s still a lot left to do,” said Garbarino, warning that electoral history portends spending and energy from the opposition party. If Democrats take back the House, Garbarino predicts that their “first” objective will be to impeach Trump a third time.
“They’re going to open our borders again. They’re going to go against every right that we have gotten back,” said Garbarino. “We need to keep the majority.”
With the three Republicans running for the House in Suffolk, Garbarino said that the House majority was effectively in the room. Democrats only need a net gain of three seats nationwide to gain the Speaker’s gavel.
“Democrats have the enthusiasm right now. They think they’re going to win; they feel great,” said Garbarino. “But there’s two things they don’t have: they don’t have the issues; we own the issues. And they don’t have the Suffolk County Republican Committee.”
Congress: NY-03
NY-03 contains the City of Glen Cove, the Town of North Hempstead, most of the Town of Oyster Bay, a portion of the Town of Hempstead, a portion of northeast Queens, and the Huntington communities of Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington, Huntington Bay, Huntington Station, Halesite, and Lloyd Harbor.
The Suffolk GOP Committee is going with former Assemblyman Mike LiPetri (R-Farmingdale) to take on the political titan of Nassau County, current Congressman Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove). The stage is set for a rematch, as LiPetri only narrowly lost to Suozzi in 2024. Suozzi had won the special election in February 2024 to fill the vacancy left after George Santos’ (R-Queens) historic expulsion from Congress. Previous studies published by The Messenger found that had the 2022 district lines been used, LiPetri would have defeated Suozzi in 2024.
But Suozzi finds himself in a more challenging political environment. The rapid rightward shift of Long Island and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s (R-Atlantic Beach) coterminous bid for governor might not provide Suozzi with the local insulation to which he’s typically accustomed. Moreover, Suozzi is facing mounting public backlash from liberal constituents who do not believe he’s doing enough to stand up to the Trump Administration.
The rock-and-a-hard-place scenario for the entrenched Democrat provides a possible opening for LiPetri, 35, who served just one stint in the New York State Assembly from 2019 to 2021.
“We have two percentage points that we need to flip, two percentage points to make sure we protect America,” said LiPetri, referencing the surprisingly-close margin in the 2024 contest. “Right here, we get to grow the House. This November will be a day of reckoning. We will create a safer America, a stronger America, a better America, and it all starts with the Suffolk County Republican Committee.”
Here’s the Count
The stage in Suffolk is now set for the Republican ticket to defend the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives. The two incumbents also have considerable defense strategies in the corner.
For LaLota, NY-01 has been red since flipped by Zeldin in 2014, and he boasts a $2.5 million war chest as of December 31, 2025, FEC filings. Only three Democrats have filed to run, including air traffic controller Army National Guardsman Chris Gallant (D) and Lukas Ventouras, a member of the Huntington Democratic Committee.
For Garbarino, he has an ancestrally red part of the county that has shifted even more to the right in local and federal races since 2020. He also has $2.3 million cash on hand as of December 31.
Garbarino has two prominent Democratic challengers: former Suffolk County Executive Pat Halpin (D-Oak Beach) – who has not held elected office since leaving that position in 1991 – and Garrett Petersen (D-East Islip), Vice Chair of the Islip Democratic Committee and candidate for New York State Assembly in 2024.
For LiPetri, his race is much more challenging. Suozzi has a territorial advantage in having been the Mayor of Glen Cove and the twice-elected Nassau County Executive. He’s run twice unsuccessfully for governor, but he’s been elected to two separate stints in Congress. LiPetri, however, has the endorsements of President Trump, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), Nassau County Executive Blakeman, and the Nassau and Suffolk GOP Committees.