Santos is out and a special election looms. How it will work.

NEW YORK — Start the clock to replace expelled Rep. George Santos. The impact will be huge.

A special election to succeed Santos, expected in February, will kick off the critical 2024 contests for control of the House and will be the first Republican-Democrat matchup in a New York battleground.

The national attention — and campaign spending — will be outsized. The Long Island seat will be highly coveted and a clear bellwether in a moderate, suburban district of the campaign messages to come across the nation.

“This is gonna be a very well-covered, well-funded and highly interesting special election,” New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs said in an interview. “I think turnout will be substantially up for both parties.”

First, what happens now: Gov. Kathy Hochul has 10 days to schedule a special election that must take place 70 to 80 days later.

And since the move to expel Santos has been in the works for months, both parties have been laying the groundwork to pick his successor since Santos’ fabricated backstory first came to light nearly a year ago and ended with his expulsion Friday.

Party bosses — who will pick the candidates for the special election — are hot out of the gates now that he’s officially ousted following a damning House Ethics Committee report and a 23-count criminal indictment on fraud charges.

Jacobs is wasting no time. He told POLITICO that the Democrats will announce their candidate Tuesday.

How the process will work

The special election is likely to be set for a Tuesday in February. Local party leaders have more influence in this faceoff because they designate the candidates who go before voters — Republican, Democrat and independent.

The winner of the special election might have to then win two more times next year to get seated in 2025 — a primary in June, if there are intraparty opponents, and then again on Election Day.

The Democrats’ pick for the special election is expected to be Tom Suozzi, who formerly represented the 3rd Congressional District in Congress and whose path to the nomination was smoothed after Zak Malamed and Josh Lafazan bowed out and endorsed him.

Jacobs declined to speak about specific candidates, saying the choice will be made in consultation with Queens Democratic Party Chair Rep. Gregory Meeks, Hochul and other party bigwigs.

The Republicans are being more guarded, and they have a wider field to choose from.

Nassau County GOP Chair Joe Cairo — who will confer with his executive board and others — is expected to pick from likely finalists Nassau County Legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip, former NYPD detective Mike Sapraicone, Afghanistan War veteran Kellen Curry and state Sen. Jack Martins.

“Chairman Cairo has interviewed at least 10 potential candidates, and he has a few more left to interview,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, said in an interview.

“And I will tell you that all of their backgrounds will be extensively vetted,” Blakeman added, a clear reference to the lapse in checking when it came to nominating Santos in 2022 and also two years earlier.

The parties' chances

Recent regional election gains on Long Island leave the GOP confident about its chances. Republicans hold every other House seat in suburbs east of New York City; majorities in the Nassau and Suffolk county legislatures: and come January, both county executive seats.

“New York Republicans are in a strong position after notching wins in the Empire State the past two election cycles,” National Republican Campaign Committee spokesperson Savannah Viar said in a statement.

And cash is expected to flood the candidates’ war chests.

“I don’t think there’s any ceiling. It’s the only show in town. You’ll have a lot of outside organizations getting involved,” Western New York Rep. Nick Langworthy, the former state GOP chair, said in an interview. “It will be in the eight figures for sure.”

This isn’t the first time in recent years New York political leaders have been down this road. Democrats seeking to flip the seat have a road map in Rep. Pat Ryan’s 2022 special election win over Marc Molinaro in the Hudson Valley.

And Ryan said the message should be explicit. The congressman, who’s facing his own competitive race in 2024, said looking backward, including at Santos, won’t inspire voters.

“It’s an incredible opportunity to lay out a clear, stark contrast with the far-right extreme,” Ryan said in an interview, “and in my mind — and this is where we rooted our special election — a proactive forward-looking message about freedom and defending and protecting and advancing freedom from reproductive freedom to economic freedom.”

Dave Catalfamo, a Republican consultant and Molinaro adviser who helped on the 2022 special election, predicted an uphill climb on Long Island for his party given Joe Biden’s 10-percentage-point defeat of Donald Trump in the district.

“I don’t know if it’s a slam-dunk that a Republican can win the special election there,” Catalfamo said.

A hot race coming

Democrats had held the seat between Suozzi and former Rep. Steve Israel for the past decade prior to Santos, and the last Republican presidential pick there was George W. Bush in 2004.

Conservative Party Chair Gerry Kassar called Suozzi a strong candidate for the Democrats, but the district as it’s now drawn “is not anything close to the seat Suozzi used to hold. Nassau is showing very solid Republican trends.”

Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, predicted a “fair fight” and views it as a toss-up. The district was redrawn in 2022, and it could be recrafted again in time for the June primary if Democrats win a redistricting lawsuit now in the hands of the state’s top court.

Republicans swept all four House seats on Long Island last year with a tough-on-crime message coupled with criticizing the high taxes in one of the most expensive places to live in the country.

“If you were going to give a slight advantage, I would give it to the Republican candidate because the issues have not changed,” he said. “It's still about inflation, a high cost of living, peace and prosperity and, in all of those areas, the Democrats have failed.”

Nassau County Democrats have quietly worried about Pilip as the Republican candidate for the special election. She has a compelling backstory: She is an Ethiopian-born former member of the Israeli Defense Forces — a profile fitting for the political moment.

“This is a much-needed step in our journey to repair a broken system,” Suozzi said as part of a brief statement that didn’t address his candidacy. “We must move beyond our petty, partisan, performative finger-pointing and address the real problems Americans face.”

Pilip did not return a request for comment.

But Democrats believe they will benefit in a special election from Republicans’ embarrassment over Santos and the GOP turmoil in Washington.

“This is very much going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and an environment that brought us the humiliated George Santos,” said Israel, who represented much of the district for 16 years and led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for four years.

“So candidate quality counts, but in a special election, there is an energy and fundraising resources that actually can transcend the candidates.”