NYC NOW - December 1, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

BREAKING: In its 3rd attempt, the House of Representatives has officially voted to expel Republican Representative George Santos from Congress. WNYC's Tifanny Hanssen and Brian Lehrer gets the latest from senior politics reporter Brigid Bergin.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, December 1st. Here's the midday news from Tiffany Hansen. A vote appears to have come in on the move to expel Representative George Santos from Congress. The embattled Republican, of course, represents parts of Long Island in Queens. We have WNYC's Bridget Bergen with us to talk about this. breaking news. Good morning, Bridget.

Hey, Tiffany. All right, so first of all, let's talk about this vote. What happened? Well, this is a vote on a resolution that was introduced shortly after the Ethics Committee report, which was just an scathing list of evidence that George Santos had misused campaign funds, had violated House Ethics Rules, was released just before Thanksgiving. The Republican Chair of the House Ethics Committee, Michael Gest, had introduced this resolution, just the day after the report was published. And then yesterday, a resolution, this resolution was debated. It was brought to the floor by Long Island Congressman, Anthony Diaspizito.

There was a lengthy debate between members who were calling for Santos's expulsion and a handful of those who were opposing it. And then the resolution was tabled for a vote this morning. There was no debate this morning. There was just a vote. And that resolution passed, making George Santos, this sixth member of Congress in history to be expelled from the body. Well, you mentioned that Ethics Committee report, Bridget, I'm wondering,

do you have any sense how it actually affected the vote? I mean, obviously he was expelled this time as opposed to previous attempts, but do you have any other sense that there was real movement? Well, absolutely. I mean, we have a sense that the numbers increased significantly among Democrats and Republicans. The charges in that ethics report were truly scathing. and to have the charge to expel Congressman Santos really led by the chair of the Ethics Committee, Michael Gast of Mississippi, who made a strong case on the House floor yesterday

that not only was it the series of mistruths that Santos has both admitted to, some of which, and also those that have been debunked in many reports over the past 11 months while he was in Congress, that it was also the fact that he had an opportunity to respond to the Ethics Committee, and he chose not to. And so Michael Guest said that Congressman Santos was given the due process that he deserved. He refused to participate fully in that process, and that members of Congress should be held to a higher standard. Bridget, are you able to see how the members of our local congressional delegation voted? It looks like the vote was fairly overwhelming, though there was a decent number of Republicans that did not vote to expel him.

I believe Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, voted against expulsion. Confirm that for me, if you know. But any of our local members from New York or New Jersey or nearby Connecticut, did any of them vote against expulsion, if you know? So what we know is that all of the House leadership, which includes New York Representative Elise Stefonic, voted against expulsion. However, I don't know the breakdown of all of our local members, but we know that going into the vote that many of the members who had said they opposed expulsion previously were going to vote in favor it. So that includes people like Congressmember

Nicole Melia Toccas, who in the past had said that she would not vote to expel Santos. She had said going into this vote that she would support expelling Congressman Santos. We also know that this expulsion measure was brought by many New York members, particularly freshmen members who really were feeling a drag on their district, on their re-election campaigns in 2024, having the Santos scandals just hanging over their head. As I mentioned, Congressman Diazpizito was one of the loudest voices in this fight, but he was joined on the floor yesterday by Nicola Loda, Michael Lawler, Mark Molanaro. So many of these freshmen members who were feeling particularly,

vulnerable and saw Santos as a drag on their ability to run in the upcoming election, they were among the most vocal calling for his expulsion. Bridget, I'm curious, I'm assuming we haven't heard yet from George Santos, have we? At this point, we haven't heard. Congressman Santos was on the floor during the vote. When the vote passed, you could see him walking and shaking hands with some of the members who had supported him and some of the members who had called for his expulsion. I think we will hear probably very soon some additional comments, but up until yesterday,

he had been adamant that he would not resign and he wanted to force members to vote on this measure. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, had expressed reservations about this and did vote against. We talked about this on yesterday's show because they didn't want to set the standard of easy expulsion from Congress. The only people who have been expelled in the past were three during the Civil War period who were sympathetic to the Confederacy, and two in the last 50 years have actually been convicted of bribery and other crimes. Santos has only been criminally charged, not convicted, even though the Ethics Committee found that he did so many things that were lies.

So that's just something to note for the future, whether there's going to put a potentially be now a rush by either party when they're in power to try to expel members who they will say the public should disapprove of and, you know, we'll see long term whether that's a dangerous president that got set today. No way to know that now. But Bridget, the race is on, right? The sweepstakes begin. Any idea when there will be a special election or yet who the leading candidates are Democrat or Republican. Well, we have a little information on that. We know that, you know, if for those who were listening into the vote live from the House

floor, Speaker Mike Johnson said they will now go ahead and notify the governor of the state of New York. That's, of course, Governor Kathy Hochel, who will now have to set the date for a special election. She has to issue a proclamation within 10 days. And then she will set a date for a special election. that has to fall more than 70 days and less than 80 days from when that proclamation is issued. So if you kind of do the back of the napkin math, that looks like a special election around mid-February.

There are several candidates who have already filed notices of their candidacy. Jay Jacobs, the head of the state Democratic Party, has told me yesterday that he, along with the chair of the, and Jay Jacobs, I should note, is also the chair of the NASA. County Democrats and the State Democratic Party. But he will be working alongside Governor Hokel, House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries. And then, of course, the Queens County Democratic leader, Greg Meeks, two screen candidates. That screening panel may be taking place as early as this afternoon. Tom Swazzi, the former congressman from the third congressional district, is someone who's already said he will run for this seat and has the potential for, you know, picking up a lot

of support some of the candidates who had been planning to run. Josh Lafazan, a Nassau County legislator, and Zach Malamad. Both have already dropped out of the race and thrown their support behind Swazi. However, former New York State Senator Anna Kaplan is also in the race. She's got about a million dollars that she's raised so far. And so she could be another contender as a potential Democratic candidate. On the Republican side, that will be a decision, again, among the the county party leaders. So that's Joe Cairo from the Nassau County Republican Party and then the Queens Republican Party. They will put their heads together and come up with some candidates. Again, already some candidates who have entered the race. There is former NYPD detective Michael

Sapericone, an army vet and businessman, Callan Curry. And another name that's getting some mention is a Nassau County legislator, Mazee, Melissa Pillop. So we'll see. But I think very soon, to your point, Brian, These parties want to get organized. They want to get themselves behind a candidate because this special election is going to move very quickly. That's WNYC's Bridget Berg. Hey, Bridget, thanks so much for your time this morning. Thank you. Thanks for listening.

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