If Rep. George Santos somehow manages to win the Republican Party nomination— very unlikely— he will be the first known drag performer to run for Congress on a major party line. Last time he ran— and won— no one knew about his alter ego and stage name Kitara. Nor did anyone know almost anything else about him, just that he was a MAGAt who told any audience he spoke to whatever he imagined they wanted to hear, a litany so long that it borders on dystopian science fiction. [By the way, if you want to make sure an open and proud drag performer-- not someone who hides it-- is in Congress, please consider contributing to Maebe A. Girl, who is running to replace Adam Schiff in Los Angeles.] Santos, or whatever their name is, made their announcement in this delusional statement Monday:
With the GOP and the Kremlin backing off from financing Santos the way they did last time— and with Sam Bankman Fried bankrupt— no one knows where he expects to get the money for the primary that is likely to include Republican establishment favorite, state Sen. Jack Martins, Nassau County Comptroller Elaine Phillips, Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip, former Assemblyman Mike LiPetri, Kellen Curry, an Afghanistan war veteran and former vice president at J.P. Morgan, conservative Josh Lafazan (pretending to be a Democrat) and at least half a dozen other people. Big list— but not as big as the law enforcement agencies actively investigating Santos’ criminal activities.
The vast majority of voters in the district— 78% according to one poll— want him to resign now, not run again. Reporting for the NY Times, Michael Gold and Grace Ashford reminded their readers that “Santos won his seat in Congress in part by deceiving voters with lies and exaggerations about his biography” and that those deceptions have now been exposed.
Though he has admitted to fabricating some parts of his résumé and biography, Santos has stood by other apparent falsehoods and insisted that the inquiries into him would find no criminal wrongdoing. Still, for months, he remained publicly ambivalent about whether he would run again.
Shortly before sharing his intention to run for re-election on social media, Mr. Santos declined to confirm the announcement, telling a New York Times reporter, “I’m not confirming anything for you.”
…While other first-term Republicans in New York battleground districts raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first three months of the year, Santos raised only $5,333.26. During that same period he refunded nearly $8,400, bringing his fund-raising total into the negative.
That is less than Santos raised during his first run for office in 2020, when he was virtually unknown and reported receiving about $7,000 in the same three-month period.
Around the same time Santos made his intentions public, Republicans filed paperwork to create a new joint fund-raising committee that will allow Speaker Kevin McCarthy and others to pour money into defending the party’s seats in New York. Santos was the only vulnerable Republican left out of the effort.
Even before he was mired in scandal, Santos was already expected to face a competitive race.
Democrats, eager to reverse losses in New York that cost them their hold on Congress, were eyeing Mr. Santos’s suburban district, which covers northern Nassau County on Long Island and a small section of northeast Queens.
But Santos’s seat became even more of a priority for Democrats after the New York Times and other news outlets published revelations that he had omitted key details from his financial disclosures and misled voters about his education, his professional background, his heritage and his ties to tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Subsequent reporting uncovered a number of irregularities in his campaign filings, including an unusual pattern of payments for $199.99, an unregistered fund that purported to be raising huge amounts for Santos and thousands of dollars in unexplained expenses.
The FBI, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the Nassau County district attorney’s office are now all investigating Santos’s campaign finances and how Santos operated his business, the Devolder Organization, about which he has disclosed little information.
The House Ethics Committee, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, is conducting an inquiry into whether Santos failed to properly fill out his financial disclosure forms, violated federal conflict of interest laws or engaged in other unlawful activity during his 2022 campaign.
McCarthy, who holds a slim majority in the House, has pinned Santos’s fate in Congress on that investigation. Yet the speaker, who supported Santos’s campaign in 2022, has also expressed reservations about a re-election bid, telling reporters in Washington earlier this year that he would “probably have a little difficulty” supporting one.
Santos temporarily removed himself from two congressional committees at the direction of House leadership, and many rank-and-file Republicans have said they would not work with him on legislation.
“From a political point of view, I don’t think there’s any future for him,” Edward Cox, the state Republican Party chairman in New York, said in an interview. He added that his organization would “clearly not” be helping Santos’s campaign.
Gerard Kassar, the chairman of the New York Conservative Party, a small but influential partner to the Republican Party, said in a statement that the Conservatives would not back Santos under any circumstances. “The party has called for his resignation and finds his pattern of deceit morally repugnant,” he said.
Closer to home, just days after Santos was sworn in, a score of Republican officials in Nassau County called on him to resign, said they would not endorse him in 2024 and would work to circumvent his office whenever possible.
Had Democrats nominated Melanie D'Arrigo in 2022, no one would know George Santos' name today except the victims of his tawdry rip-off schemes. Yesterday, Melanie told me that he "tells more lies than truths. Anyone who thought he would not seek re-election has not been paying attention. He is a disgrace. But what is even more disgraceful is Congress’ refusal to address the broken campaign finance system that gave us George Santos. Unfortunately we have a Republican cosplaying as a Democrat to try and face George Santos in the general. The real kicker is he is almost as big of a fraud as Santos himself. Democrats in NY-03 should beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing otherwise they might elect the Democratic version of Santos— Josh Lafazan."