New York Republicans chose Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Orthodox Jew, as their nominee for the special election for George Santos’s seat.
The special election will happen on February 13, 2024.
The House of Representatives expelled Santos due to numerous allegations and indictments. Still no word on what the Senate will do to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).
Pilip was born in the late 1970s in Ethiopia. Her family moved to Israel when she was 12. She’d later become an elite paratrooper in the IDF.
PJ Media’s Stephen Green mentioned how Jerusalem brought in thousands of Ethiopian Jews in the past 40 years. Operation Solomon airlift in 1991 carried Pilip and almost 20,000 Jews to Israel.
Pilip earned a degree in occupational therapy at the University of Haifa and a master’s in diplomacy at the University of Tel Aviv.
Pilip met Adalbert Pilip, a Ukrainian-American, at the University of Haifa. They are married and have seven kids.
This is where it gets interesting. Pilip is a registered Democrat but has run for political office as a Republican.
The Nassau Republicans don’t consider Pilip’s Democratic registration: “We endorse the best candidate, we don’t endorse on political registration.”
Pilip has said her affiliation doesn’t matter because her work “has been nonpartisan or local in scope.” She has a point. From The New York Post:
Two years ago, Pilip decided to enter politics (“You can’t just complain from outside,” she said) and ran for Nassau County Legislature in the Great Neck area, defeating a four-term Democratic incumbent by 7 points.She still found time to give birth to twin daughters (her sixth and seventh children) just weeks before the election.She was re-elected to a second term last month with 60% percent of the vote.Pete King, a congressman from Nassau County for 28 years, is full of praise for Pilip’s candidacy: “She’s really the American success story, the American dream.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY