Meet the Totally Badass Republican Mom of Seven Running for that Santos Seat

Mazi Melesa Pilip is not your typical Long Island Republican. She is not, in fact, your typical anything.

Currently serving as a Nassau County legislator from Great Neck, Pilip has been nominated by local Republicans to run in the February 13 special election to fill the congressional seat vacated earlier this month when the House voted to oust serial fabulist George Santos (R-Nowheresville).

Pilip might not bring much legislative experience to what's expected to be a tight race, but she does bring the badassery.

Born into extreme poverty in Ethiopia in 1978 or '79, Pilip emigrated with her family to Israel at the age of 12. It isn't often appreciated but for all the talk of Israeli "racism," Jerusalem has rescued tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from that country's violent troubles over the last 40 years. She and her family were part of Operation Solomon, a clandestine airlift in 1991 that brought more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in a remarkable 36 hours.

Operation Solomon would make a helluva movie, and maybe sometime I'll devote a full history column to it.

But back to Mazi Melesa Pilip who, when she came of age, served a stint with the IDF's elite paratroopers. She told JTA back in January that as a college student, she headed up the Ethiopian Student Union for two years. "I was a voice of so many young kids who wanted equal opportunity and really my main focus was especially education, because I do believe through education, you can achieve a lot and you can integrate into the society."

While at the University of Haifa, she met an American-Ukrainian medical student named Adalbert Pilip. He's now a successful cardiologist, she's in politics, and together they have a huge family.

She's been registered as a Democrat but has served in Nassau as a Republican. Donald Trump can dig it.

Lefties are practically wetting themselves because Pilip is an Orthodox Jewish Woman of Color Onetime Synagogue Vice President Former Machine-Gun Toting Paratrooper Mom of Seven. Any two of those items together is enough to make their heads explode, and she has four of five of them going on.

If Long Island Republicans think Grillo, a Queens GOP leader, who refers to himself as the "Republican Messiah," is too extreme, there's always Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Orthodox Ethiopian Jew who seems obsessed with Israel, not with Westbury, Mineola, Glen Cove, Roslyn, Manhasset... https://t.co/TeHZeJgfsE pic.twitter.com/sSylBSq1DE
— Howie Klein (@downwithtyranny) December 7, 2023

See what I mean?

Gun nuts — my kind of people — reacted a bit differently. "Like having a full hand of wild cards in Uno. With a grenade launcher," quipped Dana Loesch.

Pilip won her office in 2021, defeating four-term incumbent Democrat Ellen Birnbaum by seven points. Now I might not know much about Nassau County politics, but I know what I like. She'll square off against former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove).

The GOP's Congressional Campaign Committee (NRCC) Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) said that Pilip "is a formidable candidate with a unique biography: a former IDF paratrooper and mother of seven." My grandfather would have called her, with all due respect, "one tough broad." That's one reason I prefer to quote my grandfather over anyone at the NRCC.

I'm with my friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser that the razor-thin GOP majority stripping Santos of his seat was a terrible self-own. If not the GOP's worst, then certainly the most recent in a long string of self-owns. But if Pilip manages to pull off a win in the February special election, then I'll be filled with all kinds of forgiveness.

It's almost enough to make you wonder if Republicans had her candidacy lined up before they decided to give Santos the heave-ho.

Nah, today's congressional Republicans could never be that clever... or could they?