Just Because George Santos Wasn't In the Closet Doesn't Mean He Wasn't Hiding Stuff

Gay politicians are now so normal they can grift and lie like anyone else

Today, I address one of the strangest political stories of the 2022 midterms. Do you know someone who would be interested? Then please:

Image credit: screenshot by the author from a George Santos 2022 campaign commercial

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New York’s Third Congressional District, running along Long Island’s North Shore and into Queens, embraces the towns of Northport, Huntington, Hicksville, and Great Neck. A wealthy district, it is historically flippy. Although the Third swung to Biden by ten points in 2020, Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi was retiring, making the Third a logical GOP target. Furthermore, as election day 2022 approached, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin picked up steam, bringing voters to the polls who might be looking for a change.

And Santos won, bringing a much-needed seat to a party that had hoped to sweep the Democrats out of power and has instead been left with a fragile majority.

But one thing was evident before voters put the Third into the Republican column on November 8. Whether they voted red or blue, they would get a gay member of Congress. In what was perhaps a historic matchup for New York State, Republican George Santos and Democrat Robert Zimmerman were both out, gay men. 

It’s not an easy national environment to run as a gay Republican, but Santos ran as one might expect a conservative to run: he was a candidate who happened to be gay. The only reference to Santos’s sexuality on his campaign website is the final line of his biography: “George lives on Long Island with his Husband, Matt; and their 4 dogs.” Gay marriage was invented for people like George Santos!

But arguably, being gay was an advantage for a Republican candidate in the Third. Sheer politeness and consistency spared Santos from some of the uglier culture wars narratives that pervade the GOP but which might have turned off a district where many voters, regardless of party, like to think of themselves as open-minded. Calling important literary and young adult texts pornographic, restricting medical care and athletic participation for transgender children, thundering about border invasions, or ending legal abortion in New York State were all issues that Santos could logically leave to others.

Instead, as the New York Post reported after he was elected, Santos succeeded in this purple district by sticking to more conventional conservative talking points designed to appeal to white, liberal suburbanites. His platform emphasized “more funding for the NYPD and Nassau Police Department, supporting legislation banning individual stock transactions by members of Congress and advocating for oil drilling to help make America energy independent.”

In other words, Santos, the son of “legal” Brazilian immigrants, presented himself as something familiar to New York voters of a certain age: a Republican moderate and a pleasant contrast to crazies like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz. As the New York Post reported in a second piece, Santos wanted “no part of divisive investigations into the president’s son, the origins of COVID-19, Big Tech censorship, the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department’s memo on outspoken parents at school board meetings, or the crisis at the southern border.”

And the gay thing? Santos brushed it off as a detail, telling the Post reporter, “It’s a different world, and we’re better for it.”

Santos sounds like a nice guy. Right? According to my sources, this is why the New York Times decided to profile him after hte election. I can only imagine the conversation as the editorial team commissioned the story: Decent fellow! First gay Republican to be elected, not as an incumbent! Young! Cute! Moderate! First-generation American! Bonus round: It makes the Times look ecumenical in its approach to politics!

Not so fast. As anyone who has ever written for the Times knows, they fact-check, apparently, and they learned that much of what Santos had said about his past was untrue. Moreover, almost every fact that Santos listed in his biography was a lie.