Santos trolls longtime GOP critic

Daily Point

Santos tries to Twit-slap publisher Grant Lally

If you had any doubt that the fabulist Rep. George Santos is now fully committed to defensively hurling mud in evidence-free Twitter style, consider one of his latest broadsides.

“It’s rich to see the scam called Grant Lally coming after me,” Santos posted over the weekend. “He’s openly homophobic. He confessed in (sic) defrauding the FEC … He’s now fabricating and creating false narratives to continue the pile on, on me.”

Lally, who does not live his life in the Twittersphere, is a lawyer and longtime local Republican activist who has run for Congress himself in the past. More relevantly at the moment, he is the publisher of the North Shore Leader newspaper which has been widely credited with homing in early on the false image-creation of the now-incumbent. Lally has since been interviewed several times on national TV about Santos.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told The Point on Monday of Santos’ tweet, from Saturday, “It’s a sign of desperation.”

“I first met him about three years ago for lunch at the Carle Place Diner. We were introduced by a mutual friend,” Lally recalled. That was before Santos ran on the GOP line for CD3 in the 2020 election. “I caught him lying within the first three minutes. It wasn’t a hostile lunch but I thought he was shallow, a dilettante, and egotistical. I came away with the impression that he just wasn’t serious and was doing this for his own vanity, and not a serious challenger to Tom Suozzi” whom the paper endorsed as a result.

After that, Santos came up to Lally at an event at the New York Athletic Club and bitterly denounced then-Queens Republican chairwoman Joanne Ariola, using a slur that was “misogynist,” Lally said. “He was very angry about our endorsement of Suozzi. I put my hand out to shake it and he refused … He’s a very strange character.” Ariola, now in the City Council, was not available for comment Monday.

In 2022, the North Shore Leader endorsed Democrat Robert Zimmerman for the redrawn CD3 seat, saying in an editorial that while it “would like to endorse a Republican” in the district,” Santos “is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot.” Zimmerman, it said, was at least a “gentleman” who pledged to follow in Suozzi’s “bipartisan suburban footsteps.”

Speaking of “bizarre” and “sketchy,” Santos on Monday announced he has introduced the “Executive Mental Competency Protection Act of 2023,” requiring presidents to undergo an annual cognitive evaluation. Assessments would include memory retention, reasoning, and mood and personality.

Curiously, Santos and his colleagues in Congress — who many believe need their own heads examined as well — would get a pass under this stunt-as-proposal.

As for Santos’ Twitter slam, Lally doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge the FEC case, which is from 1998. As widely publicized back then, he accepted illegal amounts of campaign cash from his family, then falsely reported it, and ultimately agreed to pay a $280,000 fine to settle the case. At the time, Lally was running to unseat Rep. Gary Ackerman from Queens in the 5th Congressional District.

At this point, would the publisher and attorney seek a congressional seat again? “I don’t think so,” said Lally, now 61, citing family and professional obligations.

But he clearly doesn’t mind being judged according to the enemies he makes.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Talking Point

Suffolk’s hotel tax in context

In the debate over the proposal to increase Suffolk County’s hotel-motel tax, from 3% to 5.5%, it may help to put those numbers into some context.

In a 2017 study analyzing hotel-motel tax structures in other markets, Discover Long Island, the region’s tourism arm, found that Suffolk’s 3% was half the 6% average among competing markets. Only Valley Forge, Pennsylvania ranked lower. Since then, Valley Forge has upped its hotel tax to 4%. Norfolk, Virginia has gone from 8% in 2017 to 9% now. Communities ranging from Galveston, Texas (9%) to Newport, Rhode Island (6%) to Charleston, South Carolina (6%) remain higher than even the increased level being proposed for Suffolk.

Does New York’s relatively high sales tax even the playing field? Not quite. Statewide, too, Suffolk is on the low end. Buffalo, for instance, charges 5%, while Niagara and Albany now charge 6% and Syracuse stands at 7%. Elsewhere, Nashville offers a 6% hotel tax, on top of its 9.25% sales tax.

Some communities outside of New York, meanwhile, have created Tourism Improvement Districts, which assess fees to the hotels themselves, that are often passed on to guests and at times come above and beyond hotel taxes. Norfolk, Virginia, for instance, has its 9% bed tax on top of its 6% sales tax, adds on three different $1 surcharges, and is hoping to establish a TID, which would tack on another 1.5%. And Baltimore charges a 9.5% hotel tax and adds on 2.5% in a TID assessment.

That, so far, isn’t the plan in Suffolk. If the hotel tax increase is approved, some of it will support tourism across the county, with some earmarked for the East End. A portion of the funds will go toward a county infrastructure fund, in part to help fund the work needed to support a convention center at the Ronkonkoma Hub.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Crypto bets gone bust

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Final Point

Points of view

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went to Iowa last weekend, then laughed off the suggestion that it was to prep for a presidential run, instead saying he was there to promote his new book. Yes, because Iowa, the first state up in the primary season but 31st in the nation in population, has so many readers.
• Former Vice President Mike Pence said over the weekend, “History will hold Donald Trump accountable for January 6th. Make no mistake about it. What happened that day was a disgrace.” Is this the beginning of Pence finally holding Trump accountable?
• Officials in California knew for decades that a levee on the Pajaro River that failed over the weekend, flooding a town of migrant workers and trapping many of them, was weak but reportedly never prioritized repairing it over more affluent regions because the housing costs in the area were low. If that’s not a crime, it should be.
• Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said that released tapes from the Jan. 6 attack are not going to show “tourism at the Capitol” but a “dark, tragic day.” Nice to hear that a lot more these days from Republicans.
• South Korean workers are protesting a government proposal to increase the regular workweek cap to 69 hours while French workers are protesting a government proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. There’s a limit, in other words, to how much workers like to work.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie