Special election winner could face altered terrain in November 

Democrat Tom Suozzi launched his campaign Dec. 9 from a makeshift stage in front of a classic Levittown Cape strung with old-fashioned, multicolor Christmas lights.  

Republican-backed Mazi Melesa Pilip kicked hers off Friday with a raucous rally at a crammed American Legion post in nearby Massapequa.

In the closely watched special election to replace expelled Rep. George Santos, Suozzi and Pilip signaled something with their backdrops.

Each chose arguably the Third Congressional District’s reddest swath. It’s an area Suozzi never represented in the House, despite serving three terms in the seat.

And it’s one the winner of the Feb. 13 special election, be it Suozzi or Pilip, may not represent for long.

The importance of redistricting — both a 2022 court decision that benefited the GOP, and Democrats’ possible redo for the 2024 general election — looms large in a condensed, eight-week race expected to see outsized national attention and spending.

In the special election, Republicans who are clinging to a narrow House majority will get at least one more shot in the current Third District. It’s a more-favorable landscape than state Democrats first had drawn last year in the once-a-decade redistricting process.

But the GOP also might be looking at altered terrain in November — potentially without their newly added strongholds of Levittown and Massapequa.

“It just adds more uncertainty,” David Hopkins, a Boston College political science professor, told Newsday.

Santos (R-Nassau/Queens), whom the House expelled on Dec. 1 after a House Ethics report accused him of defrauding campaign donors for personal profit, was elected in 2022 as part of a red wave that swept Long Island’s congressional districts and helped the GOP win back the House.

His historic expulsion has created the opening for Suozzi, a former Nassau County executive from Glen Cove who held the Third District seat from 2017 through 2022 — when he ran an unsuccessful campaign for…