TPM Reader LC asks the following and I’ll try to answer …

I’m loving your coverage of George Santos in NY-3, and I’m wondering: Why are we only hearing about all this now? Don’t political candidates do oppo research? Obviously none of that was done, not even a little bit, since George Santos’s entire identity would collapse in the face of a not particularly vigorous sneeze. My question for you or your readers who may know – who is normally responsible for making sure oppo research happens? Is that the candidates themselves (Robert Zimmerman in this case), or DNC/RNC.

The first thing I would say is that contrary to what some readers are telling me, this part of the story is hardly being ignored. It’s almost the first part of every discussion I hear about this. For some it’s a failure of the Democratic Party; for others it’s a failure of journalism, gutted local news and so forth. But I want to start on the question itself: who is responsible for making sure the oppo research happens?

Yesterday I joked — well, maybe half-joked? — that with all we’ve learned about Rep.-Elect George Santos, is he even gay? Being an “openly gay” Latino Republican has been a central part of his campaign pitch. He doesn’t fit the mold of a Trumper and that, he argues, “scares the left.” Now, it’s a fairly complicated and inevitably subjective and personal matter whether someone is gay or straight. But The Daily Beast managed to dig up the fact that until just two weeks prior to announcing his run for office he was married to a woman.

The celebration of truly horrible campaign ads has long been a fan favorite during the TPM Golden Duke season. In 2008, you all voted on the Sleaziest Campaign Ads of the year, which featured an iconic appearance from the John McCain campaign. That year, the late senator’s campaign put out an ad insinuating that Barack Obama preferred sex education for kindergarten students.

Ten years later in 2018, TPM celebrated the Worst Campaign Attack Ads of the year, complete with the National Republican Congressional Committee being super racist in its attacks on Antonio Delgado.

We’re bringing a 2022 version of the category back this year as part of our ongoing celebration of those who did the worst the best: it’s time to vote on this year’s most Cringe Campaign Ads, which in 2022, also includes memes.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the January 6 committee’s public finale, along with revelations about Rep.-Elect Talented Mr. Santos (R-NY).

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

One additional fact about this reinstatement filing Rep-Elect George Santos (R-NY?) filed today for his Florida-registered company. When he registered the company in May 2021 he listed a company called D&D International Investments as his registered agent in the state. When he refiled today he listed himself as the registered agent.

That’s significant.

This morning we noted that incoming congressman and apparent flimflam artist George Santos (R-NY) has a rather sketchy background with numerous false claims in his bio and a company which dissolved for failure to file an annual report just three months ago. The story was first reported yesterday in a gobsmacking exposé in The New York Times.

Rep-Elect Santos had registered the Devolder Organization LLC in Florida back in May 2021. On his congressional disclosure form he reported $750,000 in income from the company and between $1 million and $5 million in dividends. This compares with $55,000 in income he reported two years earlier from a different employer when he ran for the same seat in 2020. But the company was dissolved in September 2022, the same month as the disclosure form was filed, because the company never filed an annual report. Just today, Florida records show that Santos has filed documents to have his company reinstated. You can see the filing below the fold.

I thought I’d take a brief moment to whet your expectations about the story of Mr. George Santos, soon to be Representative George Santos (R-NY), possibly soon to be former Representative George Santos (R-NY). This is mainly just elaborating on points made in the Times piece from yesterday with a few tidbits from my digging last year.

Let’s consider the timeline.

Santos’ biography turns on a purported family real-estate business which owns 13 properties. He made news during the pandemic grousing about how his tenants were taking advantage of eviction holidays. That family real-estate firm appears to the Devolder Organization LLC, maybe, which we’ll come back to in a moment.

This morning The New York Times published an exposé on incoming New York Representative George Santos (R) who will soon represent a district covering western Long Island and a part of Queens. Put simply, this is one of those stories where the reporters check on the various elements of Santos’ inspiring American story and basically none of it checks out. There are the colleges he claimed to attend with no record of him, the investment banks he claimed to have worked at who have no record of his employment. Along the way there’s the criminal record in Brazil and the family real estate company that doesn’t appear to own any real estate. It just goes on and on. As I said, it’s one of those stories.

When I saw the headline I thought, wait, don’t I remember that name? Sure enough, almost exactly a year ago I wrote a couple posts about Santos’ pack of nonsensical tall tales. To be fair, the Times went into infinitely more depth. I was mainly focused on a gas price tale of woe he was pitching on social media. Santos explained how he was paying an insane amount of money putting gas in his car because of Joe Biden’s inflation. The problem was that his claimed spending required him to be logging at least 1,000 miles a week on a 15-mile commute. Needless to say, I found running those numbers irresistible and went to town on it.

Just an incredible exposé from the New York Times on an incoming GOP member of Congress leads today’s Morning Memo.

I know we’ve been a bit Elon-centric here of late, but the latest developments should prompt us to look to some of the core challenges behind what we now call social media. The Musk saga is comparatively simple: a middle-aged buffoon on one-half midlife crisis, one-half power trip running roughshod over everything. But outside such extreme cases there are more basic challenges. The essence of the social media business proposition is to be the venue for literally everyone talking about everything while managing the venue through automated processes which keep the staff capacity and costs low. Put a different way, success means scale: revenues growing exponentially while costs grow arithmetically.