US Rep. George Santos, D-New York, misled voters with elaborate lies about his past while on the campaign trail.
Santos, a Republican elected to an open seat in New York's 3rd Congressional District, admitted to fabricating large chunks of his resume, including where he went to college, his work history, and his real estate holdings. He too he misled voters about his heritage with false claims of Jewish origin.
But the walls seem to be closing in. Santos now faces local, state and federal investigations — and authorities in Brazil have revived a fraud case against him in Rio de Janeiro.
Still, the question on people's minds is: How did the Democrats not discover these glaring gaps in his resume over the years? “The biggest flaw in this situation is the failure of Democrats to expose and expose Santos' lies on the campaign trail,” he says. Kostas Panagopoulos, head of Northeastern's political science department. “That's exactly what campaigns are all about.”
Running unopposed for the Republican nomination, Santos' opponent in the general election was Democrat Robert Zimmerman, who had access to an 87-page opposition research file compiled by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee when Santos ran for office. same seat of Parliament in 2020, according to The New York Times.
The commission's investigation raised several other flags, including “multiple evictions. no IRS registration for an animal charity he claimed to have set up… and more recent suspicious business dealings,” the Times reported.
After Zimmerman won a relatively difficult primary last year, declined to spend what would have been “tens of thousands of dollars” to make a deep dive into Santos, using scarce funds instead of other campaign activities, according to the Times.
“Stripped of time and cash, Mr. Zimmerman concluded that his money would be better spent on advertising and research work,” the Times reported.
Given the magnitude of the deception, Panagopoulos says Democrats' failure to pursue information about Santos only further erodes voters' trust in the political process.
“This was a missed opportunity and a complete breakdown of effective opposition research by Democrats in this race,” he says.
There are institutional checks on politicians who lie about their background. but they fall to the party of a potential offender to enforce, says Panagopoulos. For example, Republicans could get together and decide to oust him from office.
So far, they have chosen not to.
“That may be an unrealistic expectation in such a hyper-polarized political climate and tightly divided Congress, and especially for a district that could easily fall into the hands of the opposition,” says Panagopoulos.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said this week that Santos will be on the committees assigned to him. Facing questions about his political future, the freshman lawmaker said he is it doesn't back down.
The GOP's indifference to Santos' audacious ploy is “shocking,” he says Michael Meltsnerthe George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern and author of the civil rights era novel Mosaic: Who Paid for the Bullet?
“Those who call it 'decoration' are trying to minimize its fraud,” he says. “The question is whether the chickens will come home to roost given the shocking indifference he's been told to go by the GOP leadership.”
Democratic lawmakers are now asking the Federal Election Commission to investigate how Santos financed his campaign.
“Mr. Santos either illegally coordinated an independent expenditure or illegally received a campaign contribution through a pastor. In either case, Mr. Santos likely violated campaign finance law.” said U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, DN.Y.
Tanner Stening is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email him at t.stening@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @tstening90.
