Santos seeks American dream for everyone

Of the more than 600 members setting up shop in the U.S. House, just 40 or so are children of at least one immigrant parent. And then, most of them are typically Democrats.

George Santos doesn’t plan to be a typical member of Congress if elected in November. In fact, he’s not even a typical Republican. First-generation, born in Queens, and openly gay. Yet for Santos, this could be the perfect mix of ingredients to not only win over more moderate voters, but also provide some much-needed representation to communities that many times are under-represented by both parties.

“That same American dream that my parents came in search of — that I live today — I see withering away for the next generation,” Santos told reporters during a Herald Roundtable event. “That’s due to bad leadership across the board. So, I want to stand up for us. I want to work to deliver a better, fairer country for the next generation through opportunity.”

Santos has achieved his American dream through finance and investment, but felt that very dream threatened when he first started looking to start his career in lower Manhattan’s famous Financial District. 

“When I got a diploma, it was in the midst of a recession,” Santos said. “And then Occupy Wall Street took place. I had a degree in finance, but there were no jobs available. Do you know how many doors I knocked on? How many resumes I had to put out there? I don’t want that for the next generation.”

Instead, Santos seeks what he describes as a “sound country,” focused primarily on fiscal responsibility.

“Washington’s broken,” he said. “We’re running our government on continuing resolutions every five years. It’s embarrassing. It needs to stop.”

In fact, it’s those very issues Santos prefers to spend the most time on when he’s out campaigning. But more often than not, media gets distracted not on what he stands for, but who he is.

Yes, Santos is a member of the LGBTQ community, and he says he’s very much for the rights his community has obtained in recent years. But they aren’t issues he believes needs to be dwelled on. 

“I don’t make this campaign about issues that I know are not at risk,” Santos said. “I make this campaign based on issues that are at-hand for everybody in this room. Everybody’s taking a 10 percent pay cut through inflation. Everybody’s experiencing record high cost of energy. And everybody is experiencing the dangers and threats of crime. That’s what’s at stake. That’s what’s happening out there.”

Although he doesn’t believe his own marriage or his desire to adopt is threatened by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court, Santos does say that if he’s wrong, he’ll “fight like hell in Congress to make sure that doesn’t happen — not only to me and my family, but to everyone’s family.”

If he wins, Santos would be the first Republican to hold the seat since Peter King was redistricted in 2013. A victory, however, could make him the newest member of a GOP majority in a midterm dominated by the economy and the battle over reproductive rights.

The current Democratic majority is slim, and Republicans would only need to flip a handful of seats to get control.

No matter which way the political winds blow in November, Santos says him representing the district would mean building consensus.

“When there’s gridlock in Washington, the biggest losers are the American people,” he said. “I have no interest to go and be part of the problem. I want to be part of the solution.”

And the current officeholder — Tom Suozzi — might already have the right idea. The outgoing congressman has long championed a bipartisan congressional group known as the Problem Solvers Caucus. It’s 58 House members — separated equally by political party — that formed in 2017 with the hopes of providing some political unity in what has been overall polarizing times.

“I have no issue working with Democrats, so long as we’re working on common sense solutions to give the people a better quality of life,” Santos said. “To make sure that we’re mitigating inflation to make sure we’re delivering results.

“Life should be simpler, not more complicated. And Congress tends to make life more complicated when it works in a very ultra-partisan manner. That’s just not what I’m for.”

One of those issues that could — and should — get support from both sides of the aisle is inflation. Although the rate itself has slowed in recent months, with expectations by a number of financial experts it will stabilize over the next couple years, Santos believes the federal government isn’t doing enough — or at least enough of the right thing — to curb it.

“We can start mitigating inflation if we re-engage in our own production of energy in this country within eight to 12 months,” Santos said. 

“That’s a statistic proven by economists who served in the Biden administration, and who served on the Bush, Clinton, Trump — all of the administrations across the spectrum.”

And, above all, government needs to make sure it’s spending money soundly.

“Instead of making omnibus spending packages of trillions of dollars, we need to tackle bills head-on individually, fiscally responsible,” Santos said. “Right now for the American people, by the time the money is spent, they’re not done reading the bill. They don’t even know where the money is going. 

“So, in a time of economic chaos, we need a controlled environment to make sure that we’re delivering responsible results for the people.”