 | BY CALDER MCHUGH | | 
Mazi Pilip arrives to vote early at a polling station in Massapequa, New York. | Adam Gray/POOL/AFP via Getty Images | SNOW MACHINE — It’s a snow day across much of Long Island’s Nassau County today. But as the kids stayed home, voters — at least those who remain motivated enough — headed to the polls for a nationally watched special election in New York’s 3rd District. Multiple inches of snow have dumped on the North Shore, and turnout this morning appeared considerably lower than usual , though it picked up this afternoon as the storm abated and polls remain open. The race pits former three-term Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) against a little known, Republican one-term member of the Nassau County legislature, Mazi Pilip. But the real question today, in light of the snow hammering the district, is how much juice does the Nassau Republican machine have? In the decades after World War II, this was the nation’s preeminent suburban political operation. It was a place where Republicans successfully replicated big-city, machine politics (the operation owned a printing plant for candidate mailers) and even GOP presidents came here to pay their respects. The zenith of the Nassau machine’s power came when an unknown town supervisor from Hempstead named Al D’Amato sent shockwaves through the political world when he defeated the iconic Jacob Javits in the Republican Senate primary — and then went on to squeak by Democrat Elizabeth Holzman — in 1980. D’Amato served for three terms until Chuck Schumer bested him in 1998. While much of the luster has come off the machine in recent decades as the county became more competitive, Nassau Republican party boss Joseph Cairo Jr., who’s served in the post since 2018, has it humming again, leading to big wins in 2022. In response to getting stunned last cycle, Democrats have redoubled their organizational efforts. It has paid off with a solid advantage in the early vote totals that could prove key if Election Day turnout is lower than expected due to the storm. Another reason for Democratic hope: After years of doing better with low-propensity voters and worse during off-year or special elections, Democrats nationwide now appear to have a special election advantage . The airwaves have been blanketed with ads; the parties combined have spent $22 million on advertisements according to ad tracker AdImpact, with Dems holding a $13.8 million to $8.1 million advantage. Ad buys are expensive on Long Island because of the pricey New York media market, but those numbers are still astounding for a special election. Cairo’s plan to run a hand-picked county legislator against a well-funded Democrat with experience and a familiar local name is a test of just how much sway he has and how well-oiled his machine is. It’s a complex system of old-school patronage that doles out government posts and expects thousands of local officials to do their part as hard-charging volunteers. That local system is up against a national Democratic effort led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who sees the Long Island seats that Democrats lost in 2022 as a key to regaining the House majority next year. As the snow poured down this morning, national Republicans brought in their big guns, too. The Republican-affiliated Congressional Leadership Fund hired snow plowing companies to clear the streets in the 3rd District, making it easier to get to the Election Day polling locations that dot the district. Now, it’s up to Cairo’s GOP army to stage the upset. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh .
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| | YOUR VIP PASS TO THE MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE : Dive into the heart of global security with POLITICO's Global Playbook at the 2024 Munich Security Conference. Gain exclusive insights and in-depth analysis as author Suzanne Lynch navigates the crucial discussions, key players and emerging trends that will shape the international security landscape. Subscribe now to Global Playbook and stay informed . | | | | | | | — Chief justice gives Jack Smith one week to respond to Trump’s bid to stave off trial: Chief Justice John Roberts is giving prosecutors a week to respond to former President Donald Trump’s request to keep his federal criminal election-subversion trial on hold while he tries to persuade the Supreme Court to scuttle it entirely on the grounds of presidential immunity. A brief docket entry from the court today morning said special counsel Jack Smith has until next Tuesday at 4 p.m. to address the emergency application Trump’s lawyers filed at the high court Monday. — Senate passes $95B aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan despite Trump attacks: The Senate approved $95 billion in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan aid by a 70-29 vote early this morning, sending the bill to an uncertain fate in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson is giving the legislation a frosty reception. Despite a last-ditch effort from conservative opponents of the bill, Johnson‘s cold water and former President Donald Trump’s attempts to kill the legislation, Republican support for the deal actually grew overnight, with 22 GOP senators voting in favor of the package — a kind of rejection of those in the party, like Trump, who argued any aid should be structured as a loan. — Blinken spoke to Paul Whelan, American detained in Russia, on Monday: Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently spoke with Paul Whelan , the former Marine who has been jailed in Russia for more than five years, Blinken said today. Blinken spoke on the phone with Whelan on Monday, he said during an event on hostage diplomacy in Washington D.C. But he provided few details about what he discussed with Whelan. The U.S. government, Whelan and his family maintain that he was unjustly accused and convicted after being arrested on espionage charges in Russia in 2018 and later sentenced to 16 years in prison.
| | NIKKI THE KNIFE — With less than two weeks to go until the South Carolina primary, and with early voting already underway, Nikki Haley is attacking Donald Trump harder than ever before, escalating her criticisms of his character and behavior , reports the New York Times. Barnstorming in South Carolina on Monday, Haley said that Trump, the dominant front-runner for the Republican nomination, had disrespected U.S. troops with his comments insinuating that her husband, a National Guardsmen, deployed overseas to escape her, and for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe that had not paid the money they owed to the military alliance. “The most harm he’s ever come across is whether a golf ball hits him on a golf cart, and you’re going to go and mock our men and women in the military?” Haley said in Elgin, S.C., remarks that kept up her steady drumbeat of criticism on the matter. She also sent a fund-raising text on Sunday and released a digital ad on Monday. HOME STYLE — Nikki Haley made a campaign stop today in her hometown of Bamberg , a reliably Democratic rural town that she has described as instrumental to the values that guide her presidential bid, as well as a place where she and her family experienced discrimination. The Associated Press reports Haley’s hometown was her first stop as she barnstormed across the state in the closing days ahead of South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary, aiming to cut into Donald Trump’s popularity in the state. The former president plans to hold a rally Wednesday in North Charleston; Haley, meanwhile, is heading to Texas later this week for fundraising and campaigning in the Super Tuesday state. RETURN TO SENDER — The super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. padded its war chest with millions of dollars in contributions from one of the best-known private security executives in the country — Gavin de Becker — writes POLITICO. And then it did something remarkable: it returned nearly all of the funds, making his contributions effectively a loan. The move shocked campaign finance watchdogs who said they’ve never seen such an arrangement before. De Becker’s contributions helped the PAC report a high fundraising total that can, in turn, be seen as a sign of legitimacy for the committee. All told, de Becker made $10 million in donations to the super PAC; $9.65 million of which was returned.
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Palestinians mourn relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Rafah on Feb. 12, 2024. | Fatima Shbair/AP | PROGRESS REPORT — Israel and Hamas are making progress toward another cease-fire and hostage-release deal , officials said today, as negotiations went on and Israel threatened to expand its offensive to Gaza’s southern edge, where some 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge. The talks continued in Egypt a day after Israeli forces rescued two captives in Rafah, the packed southern town along the Egyptian border, in a raid that killed at least 74 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and caused heavy destruction. The operation offered a glimpse of what a full-blown ground advance might look like. A senior Egyptian official said mediators have achieved “relatively significant” progress ahead of the Cairo meeting between representatives from Qatar, the U.S. and Israel. The official said the meeting would focus on “crafting a final draft” of a six-week cease-fire deal, with guarantees that the parties would continue negotiations toward a permanent cease-fire. CIA chief William Burns and David Barnea, head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, attended the Cairo talks. Both men played a key role in brokering the previous cease-fire. FORCED LABOR FOUND — The Chinese region of Xinjiang continues to subject members of the Uyghur ethnic group to forced labor two years after a damning U.N. report detailed the abusive practice, according to new research previewed exclusively by POLITICO EU. The findings will likely pressure Western lawmakers to further restrict imports of products from the region. According to a report by Beijing-sanctioned academic Adrian Zenz, due to be published this week in the Jamestown Foundation China Brief, “forced labor transfers” of the Uyghur Muslim workforce in 2023 “exceeded those from the previous year and surpassed state-mandated quotas.” The study, which focuses on 2023 and early this year, adds to a growing body of evidence that Beijing is using forced labor and mass internment camps to control the Uyghurs — and ramps up pressure on the European Union to finalize plans for a bloc-wide ban on imports of products made with forced labor. Such a ban, currently in the hot phase of negotiations, would allow customs authorities in EU countries to take products off the market if they are found to have been made using forced labor.
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Over 1 million The number of New York City students and staff who — after switching to remote learning for the day due to school closures in a snowstorm — were affected by a crash in the city’s remote learning software. |
| | | GUEST AT YOUR OWN FUNERAL — Deborah Vankin, an arts and culture writer for the Los Angeles Times, discovered she was the victim of an AI death hoax, which spread fake news online about her supposed death. It was part of an elaborate phishing scheme, created by anonymous scammers, that used her name as clickbait. You can read more about the surreal experience of what it’s like to read your own obituary here .
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On this date in 1990: Workers carry absorbent pom-poms and large plastic bag with mini-booms as they head for the surf at Bolsa Chica State Beach near Huntington Beach, Calif.. Waves of gooey brown foam and sludge came ashore after an oil spill that sent more than 416,000 gallons of oil into the ocean. | Alan Greth/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | |
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