One seat and the whole House

This is the third editorial in a row urging the Nassau/Queens constituents of former Con(gress)man George Santos to vote for the man who beat Santos in 2020, Tom Suozzi, the once, and hopefully future, congressman. Early voting has concluded and tomorrow is (special) Election Day and we plan to reiterate our endorsement of Suozzi then also.

The reason that this single race is so important is that the House of Representatives is as narrowly divided as it has ever been since the first Congress under the Constitution assembled in Downtown Manhattan in 1789.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has 219 in his Republican conference. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has 212 in his Democratic caucus and there are four vacancies. After tomorrow, there will be three vacancies.

And before the empty Santos seat is filled, either by Suozzi, or by Mazi Pilip, a registered Democrat running on the GOP line, Johnson is planning to vote again tomorrow on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, an unconstitutional abuse of a power reserved for federal officials who have committed “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” none of which Mayorkas has even been accused of.

The initial vote, last week, failed at 215-215, with three Republicans — Colorado’s Ken Buck, Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin and Californian Tom McClintock — refusing to go along and saying no, standing up for the Constitution and against the mob led by kook Marjorie Taylor Greene. Buck had already decided to make this final term and on Saturday, Gallagher also said that he wasn’t running again, depriving the House of one more person of conscience. That is just terrible.

Steve Scalise, the GOP’s No. 2, was the sole absence last week, undergoing treatment for blood cancer. He intends to be present on Tuesday to cast his tie-breaking vote for impeachment. They are racing ahead on the vote redo because should Suozzi prevail on Tuesday night, as we hope he does, they think it will look bad to be squeezing in the first ever impeachment of a sitting cabinet secretary before Suozzi is seated. As though it doesn’t look bad to have the impeachment roll call even as voters in New York are casting their ballots?

As for the No. 3 in the House after Johnson and Scalise, Elise Stefanik, the former moderate has gone full crazy. First Stefanik used Donald Trump’s disgraceful description of the duly convicted criminals who sacked the Capitol — some of whom defecated on the floors — as “hostages.” Now she is reiterating that Vice President Mike Pence shouldn’t have certified the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 (even though the VP had no discretion nor authority to do any such thing.) And she is angling to be Trump’s running mate.

The Senate spent the Super Bowl debating an aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which Johnson refuses to bring to the floor. As we’ve said before, Jeffries should start collecting signatures for a discharge petition to force the matter to a vote. It needs a majority, so he’ll have to find some reasonable Republicans (they do exist).

Today is Lincoln’s birthday. Before he saved the Union and extinguished slavery, he was a House member for a single term. Would he recognize the place?

Vote for Tom Suozzi to bring back sanity to Congress.