From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, February 6th.

Early voting began on Saturday and runs through this Sunday in the high-stakes race to replace George Santos in Congress.

This matters in its own right, of course, for the people in the Queens and Nassau County District.

And more than that, all of political America seems to be watching this election as an early

swing district bellwether for how to run in November for control of Congress

and the presidency too. We have Democrat Tom Swazi with us for a candidate interview. We have also

invited Republican Mazzi Pilip. Tom Swazi, as many of you will recall, held the seat for three

terms before deciding not to run for

re-election in 2022, and primary Kathy Hokel for the Democratic nomination for governor instead.

Obviously, he lost that race and is now vying to win his old seat in Congress back.

Previously, Swazi was the Nassau County Executive and the mayor of Glencove.

And there's some breaking news in this race in the last day. The two candidates have come out

on different sides of the bipartisan Senate bill on the border. Swazi is for it. Pillop is against it.

So that will be one of our topics to be sure. And Tom Swazzi,

as I said, we'll take some questions from you as well as from me, 212-433. WNYC, call or text.

We just ask questions, not speeches, please. Tom, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Brian, it's always good to be on your show. Would you like to start by introducing or reintroducing

yourself to the voters? I never like to assume that even though I follow politics closely and I've

interviewed you various times in your various roles

that the average listener out there really knows who anybody in your kind of position is.

So you can't give a long speech, but take about a minute, if you like, and just tell the

listeners who you are according to you and why you want your old job back.

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