What George Santos told us in 2020, the first time he sought the House

Daily Point

In George Santos' words …

Republican George Santos, who is headed to the House of Representatives after winning in his second attempt to earn the CD3 seat, provided little detail during his recent campaign about his focus and ideas.

While he did not sit down with the Newsday editorial board this year, Santos did meet with us over Zoom in 2020 during his campaign against Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi.

It was a different time — still relatively early in the pandemic, before a vaccine was available, before former President Donald Trump lost his reelection bid, before the Stop the Steal rally that Santos attended on Jan. 6, 2021 or the insurrection that followed. Nonetheless, these excerpts from Santos’ comments during the start of his political career shed light on what he cares about and his views on some still-critical issues. They also contain his revelation that he is an “Ikea freak.”

On his background:

I grew up in a middle-class family in Jackson Heights, first generation born American. I don't come from a wealthy family. My father is a blue-collar guy and my mom, may God rest her soul, worked really hard to achieve as far as she did in her education and in her career, but we were never, you know, for lack of a better term, rich. We were hardworking people. I built my career doing the same thing, you know, waking up early, going to school, I worked, I went to school at the same time. My parents filed bankruptcy … Unless we continue with the society of understanding that you need to have merit in order to attain certain things or work hard and you'll have everything that you need or that you seek.

You shouldn't expect it to come from government. You should go to work. You should dedicate your time and effort, educate yourself. And I know that a lot of people look at it as a selfish way, I just think … I worked hard and I think I did a fairly good job, through my own merits.

Student debt:

I think there should be stricter regulations. I think there should be more direct communication between the institution lending money [and] the school … The budgeting and disbursement of funds should be done in increments … I mean, a lot of these kids … they're very irresponsible, they're very young, they don't have the maturity to handle that kind of finances. So we need to fix the root problem. And in order to alleviate the burden, I believe we should extend the moratorium, specifically now with the pandemic, we should look into moratorium. I don’t believe, essentially, in wiping out student loans but maybe we can cut a deal and we can give them a discount of some sort …

On infrastructure:

“I’ve always been a Nassau County patron, North Hempstead specifically. Hicksville and Oyster Bay. For those who know Ikea, I’m an Ikea fanatic, what can I say? … Traffic is uncontrollable. And I can’t tell you right now I have the perfect solution to fixing the traffic issue … I think we should create more appealing tax incentives for commuters, for people who commute either in carpools … Simply bettering our infrastructure in our public transportation so people can have faith again in the LIRR. A lot of people lost faith in the LIRR due to its chronic mismanagement. That's more of a state issue. But again, that's when the federal government and the state government should be talking to … legislate something at the federal level that would create a tax incentive to decongest the roads … And then number two on infrastructure, our electrical grid. It's embarrassing, right? We're one of the highest tax regions in the country … and we have a third-world electrical grid system. I mean, tropical storm Isaias went by not too long ago, and initially 430,000 people were powerless … The infrastructure is decaying … It needs to be upgraded.

On the economy:

I believe that empowering an economy generates more tax revenue regardless. So we're not going to tax ourselves out of this one. We're going to grow ourselves out of this one. We need to grow the economy, grow the local economy, grow the country's economy, and that's going to generate … organic tax revenue …

Immigration:

I’m pro-DACA. It’s my most controversial stance. I think they've been here … since they were children. They were bought here. They had no decision or say in their commuting or migration to the United States … So long story short, I support DACA. I think we should start putting these young men and women in some cases, not so young, I know a couple of them older than me, but we should start putting them on a path to permanent residency … I think they would be more of an asset to our society to keep them here as a permanent status. In exchange for that, I do believe we need to tighten up our laws on illegal immigration, the type that you see happening … [by] crossing the border illegally through a non-port-of-entry.

I have something that I crafted, it’s not publicized yet. But it's called the Legacy Act that I would introduce to Congress. We would have to halt legal immigration completely with a few exceptions. I would stop visas at large … We would institute a program very similar to DACA … We would put these in all these undocumented aliens, we lift them from the shadows by essentially putting them on this temporary status for 10 years, right … After 10 years, they're eligible for the traditional green card process, which is another five years, right, until they become citizens … So it’s a 15-year path to citizenship … It would kill chain migration … We’re stopping legal immigration to fix the problem we have internally … And I would stop student visas … because we know a lot of people who come with a student visa and take advantage of the program.

On getting rid of the SALT cap and the Trump tax cuts:

“I still hold firm a position that yes, I would repeal [the limits on deductions of state and local taxes.] [On tax cuts] I come from the corporate world … Corporations generate jobs. And if they're paying less taxes, that means they can expand more. And if they can expand more, they'll hire more, and they'll create more jobs …

Climate change:

“I’m an animal lover. You need to respect the environment if you like animals. Essentially, I am pro nuclear energy because it is zero emission … I think we’ve come a long way in containment and understanding how to respect and treat nuclear. It’s less difficult to dispose of than solar panels … I believe in protecting the environment and I believe in respecting the environment … I also prefer people to understand. There are climate cycles … We've gone through ice ages before. I'm not saying we're not contributing to make the climate cycle faster. Sure. Earth is exceedingly populated at the moment, and yes, we might be contributing towards accelerating the cycle. As a young man, I heard Al Gore tell me that in 2012, I would die. I heard that. It scared me. And it wasn’t true … I would really like if we can start realistically talking about how to work together as a society to respect the environment. But I don't believe that pushing a doomsday agenda is the solution.

On his plans:

I'll make a pledge … If I'm unable to at least secure funding or a program to better the infrastructure on the electrical grid, and I'll start from there, within my first term, I will not seek your endorsement the next time around, out of respect, because I'll be too embarrassed to come in front of you again. That's really a big passion I have, to go to DC and start somewhere and that's where I've chosen to start. I want to start with the electrical grid and infrastructure improvements across the country but one that would benefit my district, my constituents … Burying them when appropriate, reinforcing them when appropriate. Potentially, a very unpopular idea is taking down some older trees … clearing out some vegetation … It’s a mix. I don’t think we can bury the entire electrical grid within the next 10 years. But we can start.

On why he seeks public office:

It is something I really aspired to do. I think I've learned so much in the private sector, that I would really like to apply my knowledge and my way of doing business into the public sector. I think the people have a lot to yield and gain from my different way of thinking … I do believe in … being a fiscal conservative. And I know that I am a little more socially moderate than the average Republican … It's not about Rs and Ds. It's more about ideas and ideology.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Talking Point

Political déjà vu

Seth Cohen was in a hotel in Hauppauge Tuesday night, getting ready to watch results in his capacity as Democrat Bridget Fleming’s campaign manager for her run in CD1. Then, word came down about the Suffolk Board of Elections having issues processing the results.

“Oh God, here we go,” Cohen thought — because he had some familiarity with this kind of mishap.

“I was the Iowa caucus director for the Democratic Party,” Cohen explained to The Point on Thursday. That was back in 2020, when a series of now-semi-legendary foul-ups on various fronts meant that the state party couldn’t report a winner on caucus night, leading to both Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg claiming forms of victory.

Cohen, who spent months working on Fleming’s unsuccessful campaign this cycle, says he had a “very similar feeling to the caucuses” regarding the processing problems.

He said he had “complete confidence” Tuesday that the process was “under control” and the results would ultimately come out, as was true in 2020. But in the moment, the question becomes how long will this all take?

The county election commissioners said in a Wednesday news release that new features like secured Wi-Fi and firewalls meant to protect the board’s systems helped to “overtax and slow the Board’s older operating system, which is pending replacement upon certification of a new operating system by the New York State Board of Elections.”

The county had recently been hit by a cyberattack, detected in September, which jumbled some of the election board’s procedures.

Ultimately the results started coming online a little after midnight, and they weren’t good news for Fleming, who lost her congressional bid to Republican Nick LaLota by more than 11 points. In the interim, though, Cohen said he, like others, was anxiously awaiting results and a light at the end of the tunnel. It had been a 23-hour day, and a long slog of a campaign.

“You’ve been dealing with this kind of unknown for so long,” Cohen said.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

Campaign dirt

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Reference Point

Forever wrong?

A taut election, a fraught vote count, a blown result call.

It’s all so very now. But it also happened back in 1960 when the principals were John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and the prognosticator was a computer called Univac.

Newsday’s editorial board addressed the situation in the presidential election in a Nov. 10, 1960, editorial called “For All the People.”

“When we wrote yesterday’s editorial about the election of John F. Kennedy as President, it was about 3 in the morning, and it still seemed he might win big,” the board wrote. “Univac said so; the trend appeared to be in that direction; he appeared to have a clear-cut mandate from the voters.”

Kennedy ended up winning the popular vote by 0.17% — or, as the board put it, “a margin of only two votes per each precinct.”

But the board’s pique was stirred by Univac, one of the world’s first commercial computers which was being used to predict the winner based on early returns. And when Kennedy opened a big early lead based on voting in large Northeastern and Midwestern cities, Univac went along with what looked like a trend and predicted a Kennedy rout.

But Nixon began closing that gap as returns were reported from the rural and suburban Midwest, the Rocky Mountain states, and the West Coast. Kennedy’s victory wasn’t certain until later on Wednesday. “The one lesson this election has taught us all is that when voting is close, machines are just as fallible as man,” the board wrote of the 1960 race. “Univac and its counterparts on the TV networks made a miserable botch of forecasting the eventual result.”

But there is more to this story. That beleaguered Univac computer had made its debut in the 1952 election between Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democrat Adlai Stevenson, the first nationwide TV broadcast of a presidential election and the first election night broadcast for Walter Cronkite.

CBS reporter Charles Collingwood was assigned to Univac, and explained to viewers how the “fabulous electronic machine” would be used. But the first few times Cronkite turned to Collingwood for a prediction from Univac, the machine did not respond — no doubt leaving viewers unimpressed.

As it turned out, though, Univac had responded — with a prediction so preposterous that someone held it back. The race between Eisenhower and Stevenson had seemed close during the campaign, but around 8:30 p.m. with only 3.4 million votes counted, Univac had predicted a big Eisenhower win and said the odds were 100 to 1 for a victory by the World War II hero.

When its computer printout was revealed hours later, it read, “It’s awfully early, but I’ll go out on a limb,” and predicted a 438-93 Electoral College win for Ike. The final tally: 442-89.

After midnight, a representative of Remington Rand, Univac’s maker, appeared on the CBS broadcast.

“As more votes came in, the odds came back and it was obviously evident that we should have had the nerve enough to believe the machine in the first place,” he said. “It was right. We were wrong. Next year we’ll believe it.”

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie and Amanda Fiscina-Wells @adfiscina