Long Island Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi lost the backing of police in his own hometown of Glen Cove, who switched their endorsement to Republican challenger Mike LiPetri over his public-safety record.
NY Post reported that the Glen Cove City Police Benevolent Association has endorsed Republican Mike LiPetri for Congress in New York’s Third District rather than the incumbent Democrat who grew up there and once ran the city.
The same local union backed Suozzi against LiPetri two years ago. The switch hands the Republican a high-profile law-enforcement seal in the Democrat’s backyard while Suozzi seeks another term representing Nassau’s North Shore, parts of Queens, and Huntington in Suffolk County.
Glen Cove maintains its own city police force, separate from the county. That makes the local PBA’s choice especially pointed for a former mayor who built his career in the same community.
Glen Cove PBA President Chris Pascucci framed the endorsement as a direct judgment on who shows up for cops.
"When it mattered most and others turned their back on us and let us down, Mike LiPetri stood with Law Enforcement 100%,"
Pascucci added a second plain line for the union’s members and the district.
"The Glen Cove PBA is proud to endorse Mike LiPetri for Congress."
LiPetri, a former state Assembly member, treated the move as proof that the officers who know Suozzi’s record best had finally drawn a hard line. He said the hometown department could no longer count on the incumbent when backing the blue actually counts.
"The one Police Department who knows Suozzi best, his hometown of Glen Cove, is supporting us because they know the truth about his record and know they can’t count on him to back the blue when it counts,"
The Republican went further on public safety, linking Suozzi to Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s bail changes that local officers have long criticized. He also cited Suozzi’s vote for the George Floyd Act, which he said stripped officers of qualified immunity.
"When it comes to public safety, Tom Suozzi is in bed with ‘Horrible’ [Gov. Kathy] Hochul who has unleashed the failed bail reform policies and stood in the way of local law enforcement from helping rid our communities of criminal illegal migrants."
Those are LiPetri’s claims about the vote and the governor’s record. Suozzi’s campaign offered no immediate comment on the endorsement switch or the accusations.
Voters in the district have watched similar fights over crime policy and progressive priorities play out in other races, including moments when AOC called early woke politics crazy while distancing herself from the left’s more extreme record.
Suozzi’s roots in Glen Cove run deep. He grew up there and served as mayor from 1994 to 2001. He later became Nassau County executive and served in the House from 2017 to 2023 before giving up the seat to run for governor in 2022. He lost that Democratic primary to Hochul.
After scandal-scarred Republican Rep. George Santos was expelled, Suozzi won a special election in February 2024 to reclaim the seat. He then beat LiPetri by three percentage points in the Nov. 24 election. Congress pays members $174,000 a year for two-year terms, and Suozzi is again on the ballot in the same competitive Long Island district.
Party fractures and primary shocks have become familiar terrain for Democrats elsewhere, the kind of upheaval seen when a Wisconsin Democrat’s primary upset drew sharp left-wing backlash. Suozzi’s problem here is more local and more concrete: the cops who patrol his hometown streets chose the other guy.
The Glen Cove snub does not leave Suozzi empty-handed with labor. He recently secured endorsements from the Nassau County PBA and the New York City Uniformed Firefighters Association. Those larger groups give him cover on public safety messaging even as his own city’s officers peel away.
Money has poured into the rematch. A Super PAC tied to President Trump and other Republican groups has spent some $10 million this year to help LiPetri. GOP funds have slowed in recent weeks, according to the same reporting. Trump carried the district during the presidential race, adding another layer of pressure on the Democrat in a seat that remains within reach for both parties.
National Republicans have treated law-enforcement support as a core test in tight suburban districts, much as they have framed other accountability fights, including when Trump warned about fair treatment under a Letitia James-led probe. LiPetri’s camp is betting Glen Cove’s choice will resonate with voters tired of soft-on-crime governance.
Suozzi has tried to hold a moderate lane inside a party that often pulls left on policing and prosecution. That balancing act grows harder when the officers who once backed him decide the record no longer matches the rhetoric. Progressive leadership fights, from Senate primaries to ideological purity tests, keep reminding Democrats how quickly local credibility can slip; even Ocasio-Cortez’s choice to back Markey showed the party’s internal fault lines.
LiPetri has reveled in the shift and kept the focus on qualified immunity, bail rules, and illegal immigration enforcement. Suozzi still holds recent endorsements from the county PBA and city firefighters, and he has won this seat before. The Glen Cove PBA’s reversal, however, hands Republicans a clean, local contrast heading into the next round.
When a congressman’s own hometown cops decide they cannot count on him, voters notice. Public safety is not a press release. It is the officers who show up every shift, and they just picked a side.