After nearly a year with George Santos as a local congressman, New York is finally poised to learn his successor.
The special House election on Tuesday pits Mazi Pilip, a little-known Nassau County legislator running as a Republican, against Tom Suozzi, a former Democratic congressman. With polls tight, the contest is considered a tossup with unusually high stakes — for both the immediate balance of power in the House and November’s general elections.
The race has been dominated by major national issues, from abortion rights to the influx of migrants at the southern border, but its outcome could also come down to the most local of problems: an ill-timed snowstorm unfolding on Election Day.
Here’s what you need to know.
How we got here
Mr. Santos, a Republican, won New York’s Third Congressional District in November 2022 amid a wave of Republican success. But it was just weeks before his résumé began to unravel based on reporting by The New York Times and other news media outlets.
His remarkable array of lies included fabricated academic degrees, a nonexistent career on Wall Street, and even a collegiate volleyball championship. Federal prosecutors soon added 23 criminal charges accusing him of campaign fraud, credit card fraud and other crimes.
Mr. Santos survived all of it until last December, when exasperated colleagues — armed with a damning bipartisan House Ethics Committee report — voted to make him only the sixth House member expelled from the body. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York then called for a special election to fill his seat.