George Santos Represents Me in Congress

Like most of my readers, I reside in New York’s Third Congressional District. In some ways, it’s a regular suburban place: a mixture of strip malls and fancy shopping malls and town centers, of wooded subdivisions and public parks and train stations. But in other ways, it is not that unexceptional at all. The residents of our district, for example, collectively have the highest median income in the state. (In the entire nation, only California Congressional District 17, which includes most of Silicon Valley; California Congressional District 18, which includes Palo Alto and Mountain View; and Virginia Congressional District 10, which lies just to the west of Washington, D.C., have higher median incomes.) Nor are we average in terms of our racial mix: our district has a higher percentage of white people than the American average (69.5% as opposed to 57.8% nationally), a dramatically lower percentage of Black people (3.1% as opposed to 13.6% nationally), a lower, but less dramatically so, percentage of Hispanic residents (10.6% as opposed to 18.9% nationally), and a much higher percentage of Asian-Americans than the national average (14.6% as opposed to 5.9% nationally). A mere 0.7% of the population of our district is constituted of people who do not self-define as belonging to any of the above groups.

We have sent many representatives to the House over the years. Egbert Benson, a jurist who had previously represented New York State in the Continental Congress, was elected in 1789 and then re-elected in 1790.

He was replaced by Philip van Cortlandt, who had previously served in the Continental Army, and who was re-elected four times after his initial victory in 1793. Van Cortlandt was replaced by Samuel Mitchill, who resigned to become a United States Senator and who in turn was replaced by George Clinton, Jr., an unfortunate fellow who died as a young man of thirty-eight after serving in the House for just four years.

Most of our representatives have been long since forgotten by all. Or almost all. Perhaps some might recall Henry Warner Slocum, Jr., a Union general in the Civil War who fought at Bull Run, Antietam, and many other battles, and who later represented our district in Congress. Or perhaps some might recall that we were once represented in the Congress by James Monroe, nephew of President James Monroe, or by James I. Roosevelt, grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt. For the most part, though, the names of the people who have represented our district in the House in days gone by would be unfamiliar to most—which is a shame, because among them were men—and they were all men—of great renown.  The more recent, on the other hand, would surely be known to all: between them, Robert J. Mrazek, Peter T. King, Steve Israel, and Thomas Suozzi have represented our district for the last forty years! (Mrazek was re-elected four times after his first win in 1982; King was re-elected ten times. Israel and Suozzi were re-elected once and twice respectively.)

And now we have somehow sent George Santos, or whatever his name really is, to Congress. How can we have come to this? It’s a good question!

We actually know more about who George Santos isn’t than about who he is. Contrary to his own press releases and campaign literature, he apparently

·       did not attend Horace Mann Preparator School,

·       did not attend Baruch College,

·       did not attend New York University,

·       did not work for Citigroup,

·       did not work for Goldman Sachs,

·       does not actually own any of the eleven properties he claimed to own,

·       was not the grandson of Shoah survivors from Ukraine via Belgium,

·       is not Jewish (or even really Jew-ish, whatever that means; maybe Jew-ish-ish-by-self-definition a little, but probably not even that),

·       did not found Friends of Pets United, which alleged charity the IRS says is unknown to them,

·       did not lose his mother in the 9/11 attacks, although she apparently was present in one of the towers when the planes struck,

·       had no employees who were killed in the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando,

·       is not married, at least not officially, and

·       is not biracial.

So that’s a lot of things not to be. And what does that leave him being? That, at least, is easy to answer, at least with respect to his new day job: he represents us in Congress. God help us all! Even his name isn’t all that clear: he appears legally to be George Anthony Devolder Santos, but has also used the name Anthony Zabrovsky and Anthony Devolder as aliases. Oy. (Special note to Jew-ish-ish readers: oy is a word in widespread use among actual Jewish people to denote extreme dismay.)

Nor is mopping up after his own mess the sole problem Representative Santos is facing. The government of Brazil has re-opened a 2008 investigation regarding a stolen checkbook our Congressman allegedly used to steal clothing from a store in Niterói, a town near Rio de Janeiro. Nassau County D.A. Anne Donnely has announced an investigation to determine if Congressman Santos has committed any actual crimes by lying to the people he hoped those lies would get to vote for him. A few days later, the State Attorney General launched a separate investigation into the matter. And then, finally, it was revealed that a federal investigation into the whole affair had been undertaken by the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney.  The Republican Jewish Coalition, which under other circumstances would have welcomed Representative Santos with open arms, has instead barred him from future meetings. Leading Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries have been merciless in their condemnatory rhetoric. A few Republicans have followed suit. Marjorie Taylor Greene, on the other hand, said that she didn’t see why voters shouldn’t at least give the man a chance. I suppose I see her point: it’s not like lying has ever disqualified politicians from plying their trade! But, even so, this seems beyond the pale in terms of its acceptability to normal people…and particularly to the normal people whom he is now employed to represent, including most definitely myself. (Congressman Santos won 54.1% of the vote, as opposed to Democrat Robert Zimmerman who ended up with 45.9%.) Jerry Kassar, the chair of the Conservative Party of New York, summed things up nicely: “His entire life seems to be made up,” he said. “Everything about him is fraudulent.”

Is it a crime to lie to would-be constituents? It turns out to be more complicated a question than I would have thought, although the Supreme Court ruling of 2014 known as Susan B. Anthony list v. Driehaus seems to have determined that campaign lies are protected speech under the First Amendment. (To read more, click here.) In belated response, Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has announced a proposed bill specifically to make it a crime for candidates for federal office to lie about the details of their own past history, a bill he has whimsically named after none other than our own George Santos: The Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker Act. You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

But although lying to constituents may be permitted, the U.S. attorney definitely has the right to investigate and prosecute violations of federal campaign laws. And that too seems to be an issue for Santos, who has yet to explain where the $700,000 he lent his own campaign came from exactly.

And where does that leave any of us? In a not good place! The chances of Santos being able to crawl safely out from any of this seem slim. But what seems certain is that this guy’s personal woes are going to take up a lot of the time he should be spending representing us in Congress. At this point, the most dignified path forward would be to make a full public confession, to agree to seek professional help from a trained mental-health professional, to give up his seat, and to call personally for a new election to find a replacement worthy of representing our district. Will that happen? Given the razor-thin Republican majority in the House, I doubt it. And, yes, some of the blame certainly must fall on the rest of everybody: the news media who swallowed his story whole without investigating, his opponent who failed to see through the smoke at the actual man facing him, the public who swallowed his story hook, line, and sinker as though none of us could imagine a politician fibbing to get him or herself elected. So this debacle touches all of us. But as I write these words, the only two real questions of the day yet remain unanswered: what is there to do about all this and who is going to do it?