Disgraced Congressman George Santos (R-N.Y.) is facing greater heat from his own party, with local Republicans demanding that he resign.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Nassau County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph Cairo described Santos’s successful bid election for New York’s 3rd congressional district as “a campaign of deceit, lies, and fabrication.” He called for Santos’s “immediate resignation.”
Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena seconded Cairo’s call for Santos to step down, stating that the first-term congressman’s lies are “too numerous to count” and that he has “betrayed the public’s trust.”
After a failed bid against the then-incumbent Rep. Tom Suozzi in 2020, Santos defeated longtime Democratic consultant Robert Zimmerman by an eight-point margin in 2022.
But Santos has come under fire since December when The New York Times and other outlets exposed his professional and personal biography as largely fictional. Santos has conceded to lying about having graduated from Baruch College, admitting that he “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.”
George Santos a Liability for Republicans in Diverse Nassau County and Queens
Santos’s win last November was part of a red wave that swept Republican candidates to victory across Long Island and parts of Brooklyn and Queens, driven in part by concerns about rising crime.
New York’s Third Congressional District, which stretches across the north shore of Nassau County into Queens, is known for its affluence, but is also increasingly diverse. The district has a large Jewish population and, according to the Census Bureau, 19 percent of the district’s residents are Asian.
Santos’ alleged flashing of a white nationalist symbol last week and false claims that his grandparents “survived the Holocaust” are damaging for the Nassau Republican Party. Cairo, in his press conference on Wednesday, noted that “many groups were hurt” by Santos’s “fabrications,” including those “families who were touched by the horrors of the Holocaust.”
“He [George Santos] is not welcome here at [the] Republican headquarters…We do not consider him one of our congresspeople.”
Nassau County Republican Committee Chairman Joseph Cairo
Santos remains adamant, telling reporters that he will not resign. Later in the day, he took to Twitter to make the same declaration:
But Santos’s troubles are mounting. He faces a potential House Ethics Committee investigation related to his financial disclosure reports. The New York Times reported earlier this month that a Rio de Janeiro Court will revive an embezzlement case against him.
