Democrats Demand Investigation Into Incoming Republican Congressman They Forgot to Do Any Opposition Research On
Had New York Democrats been anything north of functional in 2022, the House might not be in Republican hands come 2023. But the momentum that Lee Zeldin picked up during his campaign for governor helped drag Republicans across the finish line in several House districts while Democrats were still furious with each other for how they handled their congressional maps and party in-fighting.
One of the Republicans Zeldin’s campaign was able to help across the finish was a guy named George Santos, a man most of you may have never heard of except to hear that he had won a House race in New York a little over a month ago. The problem with Santos, however, is that his biography appears to be largely made up.
The New York Times had a lengthy breakdown of Santos’ biography, and almost all of it seems to be fake, if the Times reporting is anything to be believed. I have no reason to suspect it is a fake report, because while it does expose a Republican, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats were so unbelievably horrible at their jobs in this one that it makes them look worse than Santos.
The fact that the Times has unearthed all this information (which, for the record, Santos’ camp denies) is a hilarious indictment of the Democrats’ own opposition research capabilities. This is a guy whose entire biography seems to be fake, and no one in the Democrats’ camp had any clue? That’s amazing.
Well, now the Democrats are calling on someone to do the job their people didn’t do in the first place – investigate Santos.
The chairman of New York’s Democratic Party on Monday called for a House ethics investigation into George Santos, a Long Island Republican elected last month, following a report questioning whether he misled voters about key details in his background.
The story by the New York Times cast doubt on Santos’s claims that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and the basis of his reported wealth as he loaned his campaign more than $700,000 before notching a surprise win that helped provide the GOP with a slim majority.
“This is about one of the biggest messes I’ve ever seen from anyone who is about to become a member of the Congress,” said Jay Jacobs, the New York Democratic Party chairman, adding later, “I think that had voters seen this information, understood the ramifications and how egregious it really was, I don’t see how he would have won the race.”
They want a House ethics investigation into Santos because they failed to catch the fact that his entire backstory is (allegedly) made-up. “Please, do the job our campaigns didn’t do,” they are crying out.
Some Democrats expressed disbelief on Monday that questions about Santos’s background didn’t surface more clearly during the campaign. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Ethics Committee, noted his surprise that the issues hadn’t emerged in prior reporting and opposition research, particularly given that Santos had unsuccessfully run for Congress in 2020.
“As someone who’s had every case I’ve ever worked on vetted by opponents in both cycles, it’s difficult to overstate how many people would’ve had to drop the ball in not even verifying the mere fact of Congressman-elect Santos’ prior employment as he ran to flip a key House seat,” Jones tweeted. Jones’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The man Santos beat, Robert Zimmerman, actually admitted today that his campaign knew about all this, but that it was just “drowned out.”
Zimmerman said the allegations in the Times story are “not a shock to me.” He said his campaign learned about “many of these issues but were drowned out in the governor’s race where crimes was the focus and the media had other priorities.”
How do you let that message get “drowned out” exactly? Your opponent is a fake at every level and the media in your state largely support the Democratic Party. Surely someone would have run with that story for you had you just leaked it to them.
I am just astounded here. The story is that Santos’ biography is (again, allegedly) fake. But the far more hilarious story is that the entire Democratic Party missed it and this guy won a House seat. It’s just incredible.
Oh, and to make it all ten thousand percent better? This is the second election cycle where they failed to investigate this guy’s background.
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