Headline: Incoming GOP Rep Cops to Major Campaign Lies.
So what?Apparently candidate George Santos made up a bunch of stuff. His education. His work history. His source of income. His religion. Whether he made major contributions to a nonprofit or whether he pocketed the money other people gave to that nonprofit. Maybe his sexual orientation.
It doesn't matter. He will be seated in the House of Representatives on January 3. He doesn't owe his colleagues an apology or even an explanation. He won, and that makes him a U.S. Representative. Enough voters in New York were tired of the Democrats and they wanted a Republican so they got one. That's it. Candidate quality didn't matter that much in the campaign, and it likely won't matter in a future re-election. If he is a good Republican vote, and people in that New York district want a Republican, they will vote for him again. Maybe in 2024 there will be a few Republican voters who will think him a weak general election candidate and they will replace him in the primary. They would likely vote for him in the general election. He is a Republican. Possibly his scamming the nonprofit will cost him a few votes in a general election. Who really cares if he graduated from college or if he got promotions at Citibank and Goldman Sachs or whether he is Jewish, or as he explains, Jew-ish, because maybe he has a Jewish relative? He isn't sure.
People voted for the party, not the candidate's resume.
I recognize that this assertion contains an insult to candidates all across the country who won their elections because they did a good job. It is also an insult to campaign managers, to campaign volunteers, and to campaign donors. It insults voters who take time to read campaign material. It even disparages political observers like myself who write with know-it-all self confidence about the importance of message and branding. What matters is party. Everything else is irrelevant.
Or almost irrelevant. In close races--and there are some states and districts that are closely balanced--candidate quality matters on the margin. Herschel Walker lost. Kari Lake lost. Blake Masters lost. Dr. Oz lost. Those races were winnable. A better candidate or smarter campaign moves the needle a couple of points, and that is the margin of victory or loss. College classmate Jeff Golden won re-election to the Oregon state senate as a Democrat. He takes pride in his job in office. He ran an energetic campaign of door-to-door meetings with voters. He won. I have written here that the real dynamic in the campaign was that his Republican opponent lost. Randy Sparacino threw away two or three percentage points with a million-dollar campaign message that he was a loyal Republican and Trump-compliant caboose on the Republican train. A potentially strong candidate ran a stupid campaign. That message would have won in a Republican district, or even a 50-50 district in this red-wave election for downstate Oregon voters. But Golden's district is the portion of my county with a small Democratic voting edge. Having flooded the media to prove he represented the wrong party, Sparacino lost 48-52.
In 2022 people voted their party. In a U.S. Senate race, centrist Democrat Ron Wyden, the very powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, lost Jackson County to Republican Jo Rey Perkins 51-46%. Perkins ran no campaign at all, so voters had no idea that she was a Q-Anon supporting kook. Widen campaigned hard and spent millions on ads showing him fighting inflation and working on pocketbook issues. Meanwhile a newcomer Democrat, Joe Yetter, ran for Congress against the incumbent Republican Congressman, Cliff Bentz. I know Joe Yetter and held a fundraiser for him, but realistically, in a campaign with no real money, he was essentially unknown District-wide. Yetter got the baseline Democratic vote. He lost in Jackson county 43-57%. Wyden, unquestionably Oregon's most popular and generally acceptable officeholder, running against the weakest imaginable candidate, ran exactly three percent better than Yetter.
That's it-- the margin of candidate and campaign influence: three percent.
New York's new U.S. Representative will likely be an unusually weak candidate in 2024. In a partisan oscillation that brings that district back to partisan parity, his weakness may be dispositive. I think candidate quality matters a great deal. I think the future of our country depends on it. Apparently, though, it matters little toward electability. What matters a lot is political party.
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9 comments:
Ok confession, I voted strictly democrat. I was disappointed that the district attorney position was only one person listed as prefers Republican. If there was a canadate who listed prefers democrat, I would have voted for that person.
Something is happening on Long Island that has allowed Republicans to edge out some wins. It's probably complicated and a wake up call for Democrats in those counties and a cautionary tale elsewhere. Sometimes elections are decided by those who don't run, for instance.
Santos totally misrepresented himself to get elected and the party is fine with that. Whether they knew about the lies or not, it's telling.
As you say, who cares if George Santos lied? Not Republican voters. The Republican Party is currently predicated on a lie – the Big Lie, as it’s called. Their Supreme Leader lied about everything from the number of people at his inauguration to Russian election interference.
Yes, I know: some wag will say, “But what about blah blah blah.” It’s true that almost all politicians lie, but for most it’s a matter of presenting their goals as promises. Republicans have turned it into a primary qualification for office. According to analysts, their role model and party leader told over 30,000 lies while in office. The more pathological his lies, the better his followers liked him. If this remains the norm, George Santos could be president someday.
Candidate quality is something that Democrats think wins elections. With a few exceptions that you have noted, candidate quality means very little to Republican voting patterns (see Georgia runoff). What matters is what has always mattered. Turnout. Turnout. Turnout. Numbers. There will come a day when Jackson County goes blue and it will be because the demographics go that way.
The GOP-led House should vote to remove Santos from office since his lies were so significant.
Memory lane, anyone? I’ll bet several readers here besides myself can recall Southern Oregon’s own response to the recently posed query about Santos: could Republicans have possibly put forward a worse member of Congress?
The late, great Wes Cooley asserts his rights. Upon the retirement of Bob Smith, Cooley emerged from a pack of better-known (no shite!) candidates to succeed Smith in the Republican-lock seat in the House now held by Cliff Bentz.
Just after Cooley’s election to the House, pro forma after winning the nomination, and I if recall correctly with Bob Smith’s plum endorsement at the expense of Perry Atkinson, Jason’s father, some facts emerged akin to those about Santos.
Our new U.S. Rep. not only was not a Vietnam combat veteran after all, but had not set foot in country. It also turned out (how could we miss this?!) that there was no Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Cooley’s greater Los Angeles community college.
Almost every employer I know requires a formal application (besides resume or CV) that legally declares the applicant’s academic credentials and former employment. If at any time after they are hired (no time limit) it is found that any of that information is not true- it’s grounds for immediate termination. Period. I imagine the same is true for any government employment. Why not elected officials? Oh wait… lawmakers would have to pass a law which would put their position in jeopardy.
FRAUD
REp-elect Santos is not the first elected official to mislead and exagerate their resume.
This is not "what-aboutism".
Simply a recognition that campaigning alone does not always tell you everything about a candidate. Neither does party affiliation.
Someone in the opposition research department was asleep at the wheel. They simply tried to diminish Santos with Trumpisms.
As Peter wrote, there were enough people, Ds, Rs, and Is who were disatisfied with the other candidates and simply voted for the candidate with an R aftert their name.
It's too bad that the electorate is made up with too many voters who lack skills to better understand the good and bad for each candidate.
Santos is not the only elected official who misstates the truth about themselves and others.
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