House votes to expel Santos in historic vote
Nearly seven months after a federal indictment, embattled Republican congressman George Santos has been removed from his Long Island seat. In a 311-114 vote, almost all House Democrats and nearly half of House Republicans decided to take action, which hasn’t been done since 2002. The House easily reached the needed two-thirds majority, thus Santos joins history as becoming one of six members of Congress who have been expelled. The congressman is also only the third to have this drastic action taken against him for reasons other than supporting the Confederacy. “It’s over… They just set a dangerous new precedent for themselves," said the now former congressman.
An expulsion vote had initially been discussed in the lower chamber for weeks as a coalition of fellow New York Grand Old Party (GOP) congressmen had moved forward with an eventually failed resolution to expel Santos. Congressman Anthony D'Esposito, along with four Republican colleagues from the Empire State, filed the resolution in late October.
Tides started to turn against the scandal-plagued Santos when a scathing House report was released on Nov. 16. GOP Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) and other committee members found “substantial evidence” that he violated federal law. The committee found that Santos used campaign finances on his own expenses, including botox treatment and purchases at Hermès, Sephora and OnlyFans. Following the report, the formerly oppositional Santos reversed course on his own standing; He had previously been adamant about claiming his innocence, and even declared to run again in 2024 even if expelled. Yet,the Ethics Committee under Guest forced the congressman’s hand as Santos had announced that he would not run for a second term directly after the report’s release.
Even with momentum moving towards removing the New York congressman, the resolution was not met with unanimous support. Some leaders in Congress were against it due to the precedent that it could set. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson referred to the conditions of Santos’s expulsion as a “regrettable day.” Since the former congressman had not been convicted of any of the charges presented against him, Johnson believes that the expulsion went against his own values: “Our party believes in the rule of law and due process,” Speaker Johnson said in an interview with Fox News. Despite his own personal beliefs, Johnson still backed the 105 members of his delegation who had “a vote of conscience.”
Santos’s exit will further complicate matters for Speaker Johnson as his already-slim majority has just been made slimmer. The expulsion will also set up a competitive special election that state party officials expect to be held sometime in February. The race in the battleground district has already attracted some high-profile candidates, including Santos’s predecessor Tom Suozzi. The former Democratic congressman, who had served three terms in Santos’ former seat, had mounted an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid challenging Governor Hochul in 2022.
Still, Republicans remain optimistic and ready to continue the regional trend towards the right. “We saw a red wave on Long Island at the local level, so we’re very optimistic that we’ll have a strong candidate to join our Republican majority in February or March,” upstate New York GOP congresswoman Elise Stefanik said during a joint interview. Currently, banker and U.S. Air Force Veteran Kellen Curry and retired NYPD detective Mike Sapraicone have declared their candidacies for the Republican nomination in the upcoming special election.