Embattled incumbent Rep. George Santos (R-NY) announced on Monday that he would seek reelection to Congress. Santos’s announcement, posted on Twitter, came after the New York Republican has faced months of scandals following a series of revelations about his past. The revelations ranged from Santos lying about having Jewish heritage, to lies about his professional background, to false claims he received a college degree, to allegations that the first-term member of Congress had defrauded Amish dog breeders in 2017.
The result has been that Santos has become both a national figure and a national laughingstock seemingly overnight. He currently faces multiple investigations from the House Ethics Committee and law enforcement and does not have any committee assignments at present. Santos, who described himself as a “diligent legislator” in his announcement Monday, also said “good isn’t good enough and I’m not shy about doing what it takes to get the job done.”
Santos faces significant obstacles to winning reelection. A number of his fellow Republicans have called on him to resign, including the chair of the Nassau County Republican Party and every other first-term Republican elected from the Empire State in 2022. In his most recent fundraising report filed over the weekend, Santos raised just over $5,000 in the first quarter of 2023 and has only $25,000 on hand. He also owes over $715,000 in debts to himself for loans he made to his campaign in 2022.
Even before Santos’s announcement, his district was considered perhaps the most likely House seat for Democrats to pick up in 2024. Joe Biden won his district by nearly 10 points in 2020, and Santos benefited from a historically poor performance from New York Democrats in 2022. Santos lost his first bid for Congress in 2020 against then-incumbent Tom Suozzi. He then went to Washington, DC, to participate in former President Donald Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, and insisted that…
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