George Santos might not be the only House Republican who doesn’t make it
How poorly are things going for House Republicans? They’re afraid to expel George Santos, no matter how badly he drags down their messaging, for fear that without Santos’ vote they might not be able to keep a Speaker in place. But the reality is that even if Santos does resign or get indicted and it does plunge House Republicans into chaos, they’ll still technically have a majority – unless four other House Republicans are also booted.
We’re still waiting to see if George Santos gets indicted in any of the local, federal, and international criminal probes that are looking into his life of lies. But even as we wait to see which if any House Republicans end up criminally indicted in DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe, it turns out House Republicans may have the makings of another George Santos on their hands.
The Washington Post is reporting that newly elected House Republican Anna Paulina Luna has – stop us if you’ve heard this before – changed her name and lied about being Jewish. This is literally the same thing that happened with George Santos. The kicker is that Luna, whose last name used to be Mayerhofer, is allegedly the descendant of a Nazi solider named Heinrich Mayerhofer. That horrifying fact is not her fault, of course. But if she lied about it while running for office, and changed her last name and falsely claimed to be Jewish in order to throw people off the trail, then that would be a major scandal.
Lying about these kinds of things while running for office is not a crime under the law. But the interesting part about the George Santos saga is that his scandal also started off as merely a series of lies about his background, and later turned out to be a lifelong pattern of fraud with a suspicious money trail. So now we wait to see whether Anna Paulina Luna, or whatever her name is, has merely told the lies we know about or also has more skeletons in her closet.
In the meantime, Santos is now backed into such a corner, he’s already vowing not to seek reelection – and Cook Political Report has preliminarily classified his seat as “Lean Democrat” in 2024. Luna is (for now) listed as “Likely Republican” but it’ll be interesting to see how this ugly scandal might impact her viability. Keep in mind that Luna’s seat was formerly occupied by Democrat Charlie Crist, who retired in order to run for Governor. Crist is still popular in his district, and could turn around and run for the House again in 2024. Even if Luna survives this scandal, it could weaken her to the point that she doesn’t survive reelection.
