George Santos is the congressman America deserves

WHY do the many lies of George Santos matter? Maybe some of Santos’ constituents, in a district stretching along the North Shore of Long Island, voted for him in November because they were impressed he was a volleyball star at Baruch College and worked at Goldman Sachs, though none of that is so. Maybe they voted for him because he claimed to be Jewish, though he says now, with Seinfeldian sangfroid, that he meant only that he was “Jew-ish”. If such qualities did in fact seem like reasons enough to cast a ballot for someone, well, the voters deserve what they got.

But those qualities were probably not why most voters supported him. During the campaign his opponent raised doubts about his biography, as did a local newspaper, the North Shore Leader, which noted an “inexplicable” leap in his reported assets from zero to about US$11 million in two years. The national press exposed some of his shady business dealings, and Democrats branded him a “flat-out liar”. The Leader went on to endorse the Democratic candidate, saying it wanted to support a Republican but that Santos “is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot”.

What seems certain is that, unlike the Leader, the majority of voters in New York’s third district, which includes part of Donald Trump’s home borough of Queens, did prefer a Republican regardless of how sketchy he might be. They were swept up in a wave of discontent that washed through the Democrat-dominated, troubled state of New York. The Republican agenda appealed to them, and Santos, in his first votes, has supported it.