PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 27. NO SANTOS? NO PROBLEM FOR N.Y. DEMS. Regardless of whether he announces an early exit from Congress during his planned press conference next week, George Santos won’t be on the ballot in 2024. Democrats are gearing up to make the scandal-plagued New Yorker into a campaign issue anyway. With New York a potential key to recapturing the House majority – particularly its six GOP-held districts that President Joe Biden won in 2020 – Democratic candidates are wasting no time in highlighting all links between their Republican opponents in purple districts and the indicted Santos. “Folks know Santos is a significant liability,” said Sarah Klee Hood, a Democratic hopeful running to take on Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) in an upstate New York district. She added that “whatever happens regarding Santos is going to negatively impact Brandon Williams, simply by association.” Translation: Even as support for expelling Santos early grows within the House GOP, evicting the infamous fabricator won’t solve Republicans’ core political problem. New York Democrats don’t plan to stop tying their rivals to Santos if he happens to get booted from Congress. And a Santos eviction, we should remind you, is far from guaranteed. After the House Ethics committee released an explosive report laying out Santos’ wrongdoing last week, the Republican chair of the panel filed a resolution to expel him. But it’s not yet clear whether the chair will force a vote on that resolution, and Speaker Mike Johnson is noncommittal on voluntarily calling up a Santos expulsion that would trim his already-thin House majority. Some Republican members of the New York delegation have strenuously tried to distance themselves from Santos and repeatedly called on him to resign. A number of them led the most recent effort to expel Santos from the House, though that push failed to reach the two-thirds threshold required to boot a member. Democrats aren’t letting them off the hook. “This is too little too late from self-interested House Republicans from New York,” said former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), who’s running to unseat GOP Santos critic Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) in a new district that largely overlaps with the one Jones previously represented. Jones, who served on the ethics panel during the last Congress, said he saw enough evidence to boot Santos earlier this year. Lawler countered that he’s long been ready to get rid of his ethically challenged colleague. “Unlike Mondaire Jones and the radical left, I'm willing to stand up to members of my own party and call for their resignation and expulsion when warranted. And that's what I did with George Santos,” Lawler told POLITICO. Other New York Democratic candidates argue that Santos plays into what they portray as an overall culture of “corruption” on the right. Former Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen, who’s angling for a rematch with Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) in his Long Island district, called Santos “a symbol of the corruption that has rocked politics in this area for a long time.” Gillen added that “I will continue to hold Anthony D’Esposito” – another home-state GOP critic of Santos – “and his cohorts responsible for perpetrating this fraud on the electorate.” She further pointed to reported connections between Santos and D’Esposito, including a past campaign treasurer that the two shared. National Democrats are echoing that approach. DCCC spokesperson Ellie Dougherty said in a statement that: “Whether it’s on Long Island or in the Hudson Valley or Central New York, we’ll make sure voters know who's responsible for enabling distrust and corruption ahead of next year’s elections – and that’s New York Republicans.” A Williams spokesperson pointed to his past cosponsorship of a Santos expulsion resolution, prior calls for Santos’ resignation and his vote to eject Santos. Spokespeople for Santos and D’Esposito did not respond to requests for comment. — Nicholas Wu
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