Only eight?
IMHO the condition of the New York Democratic Party is a significant contributing factor. If the state party wasn’t so dysfunctional Santos would likely have lost.
It is not the job of the Democratic Party to vet Republican candidates. That is 100% the responsibility of Republicans and voters.
Vet, no. Opposition research, yes.
What an odd take on the situation. It’s the “responsibility” of the Democratic Party to get their candidates elected. A major component of that is identifying and exploiting their opponents’ weaknesses. Santos’ lies were damaging and relatively simple to uncover, so yes Democrats fell down on the job here.
Right. You do oppo research to find if there’s something about your opponent that the voters may not approve of if they find out about it – such as if his messaging about his own record is false. You then get as a bonus being able to point out that his party couldn’t even properly vet him, so who knows what else may be wrong with the rest of their candidates.
If the negatives are real and important it is no shame to “go negative”.
Still if the other party runs a lying putz advocating deplorable policies and the voters choose him, it’s still primarily on them for fooling this part of the people this part of the time.
When I worked in an intelligence agency, we used to joke about what single act would get a civil servant in the most trouble: holding a classified document up to a window, while standing on a too-steeply pitched ladder (OSHA), with no pants on (sexual harassment).
This Santos guy seems to be trying for the Republican politician’s equivalent of this. But he won’t get fired.
If they did actually know, but ignored it, I’m curious how they’d react to that statement. See if they can be forced to admit that they knew but chose to ignore it or admit that they actually do so little research on their own own candidates that they even missed the easy stuff like this.
From there (and probably even without starting there) they could accuse the republican party of not endorsing people based on their merits but rather endorsing people that are willing to be their puppets.
The Atlantic has a good analysis by Steve Israel, former Democratic Rep from Long Island.
(I hope that link isn’t paywalled.) The short version is that, even though the Democrats had some knowledge that Santos’s resume was hinky, nobody was taking him or the race very seriously at first. The previous rep from the district, Tom Suozzi, beat Santos by 12 points in 2022. And he hadn’t bothered to do much oppo research. By the time the race tightened, it was too late, and still nobody was really paying attention to the district.
Unfortunately, I’m in Santos’s district, and it seemed to be a surprise to everyone that he won and that the Republicans swept the LI districts.
He will eventually. He’ll either choose
to not run for re-election, get primaried, or lose to a Democrat in the general election. As for this term, I don’t see any realistic scenarios where he won’t serve out the term short of resignation. He won a fair election. We shouldn’t try to overturn that just because his lies were more egregious than those of most other politicians. That would make us no better than the Trumpists. We just have to resign ourselves to living with that.
His lies are one thing. The source of the $700,000 he loaned to his campaign is another. It’s possible that there was a campaign finance violation there, and I’m sure the authorities are going over the accounts with a fine-tooth comb.
Several investigations have been announced, including one by the local county DA, a Republican.
No cites handy but it seems that the Republicans may have known. The Republican national committees spent no money on his campaign even though they spent heavily in similarly competitive neighboring districts where they also picked up seats. This suggests that Santos was uniquely someone they didn’t want to help.
I’m not.
There’s also the matter of whether he meets the requirements of Article1 section 2 of the Constitution, which requires him to "be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen".
There’s some question about that.
He filed his investment company in Florida last year, and listed himself as a Florida resident. And no indication that he is a legal resident of New York since then – he is living with his sister in her house currently.
That residency requirement is a more serious legal matter – he could be removed from Congress because of it. And he can’t retroactively fix it – the Constitution requires that he be ‘an inhabitant’ when he runs for Congress.
I’ve wondered whether Congress would refuse to seat him. I don’t suppose it’s very likely, but it’s theoretically possible.
With his party in control of the House in the next Congress, I think it’s exceptionally unlikely.
Especially with Santos supporting McCarthy’s bid for Speaker. Ol’ Mackie needs every bit of support he can get, even if it’s from a criminal conman.
Nowadays it’s pretty common for members to be rich people with homes in multiple states. I don’t think it would be a good idea to overrule voter choices for something I personally consider fairly trivial and often subject to reasonable dispute.
As for the real issue, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution forbidding the seating of a lying crook.
Consider:
P.S. I didn’t post the last link to attack Adam Clayton Powell, but just to point out that someone being a lying crook is no reason to overrule the voters.
The Supreme Court has found (Powell v. McCormack) that Congress may only exclude a duly-elected member if he or she fails to meet the specifically enumerated Constitutional qualifications for office – i.e. being at least 25 years old, seven years a citizen of the US, and an inhabitant of his/her state at the time of election. The Federal Contested Elections Act governs how the House proceeds if the member’s election is contested, but that law requires the loser to file a notice of contest within 30 days of the election being certified.
edit: dammit, @PhillyGuy !