Republican Congressman George Santos, son of a Brazilian immigrant, secured his seat in the U.S. Congress with a campaign full of lies and exaggerations about his biography. Now, even with the lies exposed by the press, Santos plans to test his luck with voters again. On Monday (17), he formally announced that he was running for reelection in 2024.
The announcement comes after months of speculation about Santos’s political future, with fellow Republican lawmakers calling for his resignation and federal and state prosecutors investigating his lies during the campaign.
Although he has admitted to fabricating some parts of his resume and biography, Santos argues that the investigations into him will not uncover any criminal wrongdoing.
Santos enters the race with significant challenges. Polls show that he is unpopular in his district, with 78% of voters believing he should resign.
He is also facing a cash crisis: at the end of last month, his campaign had just over $25,000 on hand, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
While other first-term Republicans in New York raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first three months of the year, Santos raised only $5,333.26. During the same period, he refunded nearly $8,400, resulting in a negative total fundraising balance.
This amount is less than Santos raised during his first campaign in 2020, when he was virtually unknown and reported receiving about $7,000 in the same three-month period.
McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House with a slim majority, attributed Santos’s fate in Congress to the investigations being conducted into his campaign. However, he also expressed reservations about a reelection bid, saying he would likely have some difficulty supporting a new candidacy from Santos.
Gerard Kassar, president of the New York Conservative Party, a small but influential partner of the Republican Party, stated in a statement that conservatives would not support Santos under any circumstances. “The party has called for his resignation and considers his pattern of fraud morally repugnant,” he said.
Source: The New York Times