We really shouldn't have expelled George Santos, House Republican says

• Republicans lost George Santos's seat in a special election on Tuesday.
• That cuts the House GOP's majority down by one vote.

Rep. Mike Collins is taking one lesson from Tuesday night's special election in New York: Republicans shouldn't have joined with Democrats to expel George Santos from Congress.

"So who still thinks Republicans helping Democrats kick out Santos was a good idea?" the Georgia Republican wrote shortly after former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi was declared the winner of the special election in New York's 3rd congressional district.

He also suggested that Republicans who voted to expel Santos in December were to blame for the loss as well.

Collins isn't alone in lamenting the loss of Santos recently. Other Republicans said as much after the House initially failed to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week, given that they were down a vote.

Yet the cloud of scandal around Santos had become too much for even his Republican colleagues: Over 100 House Republicans, nearly half of the conference, voted to expel him on December 1.

That came in the wake of a scathing report from the House Ethics Committee, on top of federal charges of money laundering and wire fraud and a penchant for bad behavior in Congress.

In reality, the special election loss on Tuesday may have come down to the GOP's aversion to early voting. Democrats racked up early votes ahead of the special, and the district was hit with a significant snowstorm on Tuesday — potentially depressing what would have been a GOP-skewing election day electorate.

Additionally, GOP candidate Mazi Pilip had flaws of her own, struggling to answer questions about her positions, declining to state (until the end) who she voted for in the 2020 election, and even holding a campaign rally on Shabbat — preventing her, a religiously observant Jew — from attending.