A short time after George Santos was elected as congressman for the 3rd Congressional District we learned that he had lied to Nassau County voters about his professional background, educational history, religion and property ownership. Among other things.
This was followed by a 13-count federal indictment in which Santos was charged with embezzling contributions from supporters, fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits and lying on campaign disclosures.
And questions still remain about the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars Santos had listed as contributions to his campaign.
This has raised legitimate questions about who was to blame for a congressional candidate getting elected by deceiving the voters of his district.
Some blamed Santos’ election on the Nassau County Republican Party, which picked him twice as its candidate. Some blamed his opponent, Robert Zimmerman, for not doing a better job in getting out the Democratic Party’s opposition research.
Others blamed the press, Blank Slate Media included.
That is what raises our concerns about the unwillingness of some candidates who will be on the ballot the first week of November to sit down with news organizations such as Blank Slate Media for one-on-one interviews or to participate in debates.
Voters will be choosing all 19 members of the Nassau County Legislature as well as control of town governments with the town supervisor, town receiver of taxes and trustee positions in the balance.
Candidates running for these offices should be expected to make themselves available to answer whatever questions voters and the press believe are necessary for the public to make a decision.
During the 2022 congressional campaign, Santos ducked sit-downs with both Blank Slate Media and Newsday, which employ journalists who get paid to stay informed about the issues.
Yes, this does sound self-serving on our part. But it’s really not.
There is a reason the founding fathers made freedom of the press part of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – to keep elected officials accountable and honest. On behalf of the public.
During the 2020 campaign, Blank Slate Media did have a one-on-one sit-down with Santos and learned that he supported overturning Roe v. Wade and would be in favor of criminal charges for doctors who performed abortions.
Santos also called the Mueller Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election a “hoax.” No, we didn’t learn that he was lying about his background, but we did learn that he had extreme views and, in our opinion, should not be elected to Congress.
Santos was not alone then in refusing to sit down with Blank Slate Media for one-on-one interviews and other news organizations in 2022.
And he may not be alone now in turning down our invitation to sit down for one hour via Zoom for an interview to be recorded via YouTube for all to view as well as be the subject of a news story published in our six newspapers. The date and time are left up to the candidates.
The excuses for not participating, or hesitating to take part, vary.
One official said he needed to see the questions in advance.
This is not something any legitimate news organization will do or the public should want.
Candidates should be well enough prepared on issues to answer questions without seeing them in advance.
Getting the questions in advance also gets in the way of news organizations like ours from asking follow-up questions, which is particularly useful when candidates respond without answering the question asked. Or when the answer they give raises more questions.
Another candidate has expressed concern that we are asking “national” questions to local candidates and are not just focused on the particulars of the job they are seeking. Which is true.
We are asking Republican candidates about former President Donald Trump, who is leading the field by a wide margin in the race for the GOP presidential nominee.
This question is based on the belief that any candidate for a county, town or village government job should be willing to fulfill the oath of office that they take by swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution – something Trump did not do following the 2020 presidential election.
It is also our belief that character and good judgment can be just as important as having the right background for the job.
So, yes, we will ask all Republican candidates if they believe President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidency in a free and fair election.
We will also ask, as a Fox News interviewer asked the GOP presidential candidates in a recent debate, if they would vote for Donald Trump even if he was convicted of one or more of the 91 criminal charges he faces in four jurisdictions.
A candidate certainly has the right to say Biden didn’t win the presidency in a free and fair election and that he or she would still vote for Trump if he is convicted on felony charges.
They can also refuse to answer the question because they believe it is not relevant to the job they are seeking. Or because they fear the political price they might pay if they answered one way or another.
This may be inconvenient to some candidates, but we also believe it gives voters a fuller picture of who the candidate is before they enter the polling booth.
Some Republican candidates also contend that the paper is slanted in favor of Democrats and they do not have a chance to get the paper’s endorsement. This is not true.
Our papers have endorsed candidates of both parties in the past. It is true that we have endorsed more Democrats than Republicans of late.
Why? Because the editorial board, in this case the publisher, preferred the Democratic candidates and policies.
In a place in which a Republican county executive, his wife, his deputy, the state Senate majority leader and a town supervisor were convicted of political corruption that doesn’t seem like such a crazy idea.
And our opinions, clearly marked in the paper, should not be a reason for a candidate to avoid a sit-down.
The sit-downs we offer, recorded for replay on YouTube, allow candidates the chance to present themselves and their views.
We are confident these videos will demonstrate that the news stories we publish are fair, balanced and free of our own opinions.
Will we press for a full response when a candidate is avoiding the question or not answering it fully? Yes. And we believe that serves the public well.
If the paper really wanted to be one-sided, it would not give the candidate a platform and/ or write a story to present their views.
We believe that voters already get enough one-sided presentations in often misleading mailers, television commercials and newspaper ads.
Those mailers, television commercials and newspaper ads are part of every campaign And they are protected by the First Amendment just as the press is protected in reporting on the news.
Together they make up a marketplace of ideas that has served this country well for more than 200 years.
But especially in recent years, with the growth of cable television and the internet, many people have come to live in bubbles, never hearing the other side.
Papers such as ours seek to break through that bubble. We may not agree with both sides, but we want to give them the opportunity to make their case to our readers in news stories and letters to the editor from their supporters.
Will this prevent another George Santos from being elected? We hope so, but there are no guarantees.
We do believe that voters who wish to avoid the mistakes that led to Santos’ election should take into account whether a candidate is willing or not to subject themselves to questioning in public forums and by news media representatives such as Blank Slate Media.
If not, you may have nobody to blame but yourself.