Lafazan’s GEORGE package to prevent electoral deceit

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As every day new stories and allegations come to light regarding fabulist Representative of New York’s 3rd Congressional District George Santos, politicians at both the local and state level have continued to call for his resignation or expulsion. On Wednesday morning Nassau County Legislator Josh Lafazan, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully in the Congressional Democratic primary, paid yet another visit to Santos’ district headquarters in Douglaston, Queens, to announce his new legislation, the G.E.O.R.G.E. package.

The Get Egregious Officials Removed from Government Elections package, named to create an anagram of Santos’ first name, is a series of laws designed to prevent future politicians from deceiving local voters with a fabricated background. In addition to requiring mandatory background checks for all electoral candidates for Nassau County offices, it would also bar anyone with open foreign arrest warrants from holding office and make it a misdemeanor to lie about a candidate’s education, employment history, address and income source. 

“It is not normal to have a member of Congress who is so caught up in keeping himself out of jail that he’s unable to actually serve the district which he was elected to represent,” Lafazan said. “With the litany of lies he has told, he is the biggest fraudster in modern political history in this country.”

Part of the G.E.O.R.G.E. package will also prevent people running for elected office in Nassau County government from running if they hold outstanding warrants from other countries. This is a direct reference to accusations by the Brazilian government that Santos is wanted for allegedly stealing a checkbook from an elderly man his mother was caring for as a nurse back in 2008. 

This news conference marked the first time that people could be seen working inside Santos’ office, although when Lafazan went to hand them the G.E.O.R.G.E. package the doors were locked. There was also a sign on the door demanding that no photos, video or audio recording in his office. 

One attendee of the protest against Santos, Issy Weisfelder, spoke about how offended he was by Santos’ usurpation of Jewish heritage. As a child of Holocaust survivors, Weisfelder condemned the congressman’s lies as offensive and a sign that he could not be trusted by the Jewish or gentile residents of the 3rd District.

“I find the most egregious thing that Santos did was lying about his grandparents fleeing the Holocaust and concentration camps,” Weisfelder said. “Mr. Santos, please resign as our congressman, because you do not deserve the word ‘congressman’ in front of your name.”

Ravin Chetram, vice president of the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Chamber of Commerce, expressed his disgust at both Santos’ lies and the failure by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for not censuring or removing the 3rd District’s representative. Chetram, who has attended several previous protests outside of Santos’ Queens office, maintained that Santos has made his constituents the laughingstock of the country.

“What happened to integrity, what happened to honest?” Chetram asked rhetorically. “Where are we going with this, where we have to beg and plead for proper representation?”