Taylor Greene knocks GOP for losing Santos seat — and wants more pro-Trump candidates
WASHINGTON — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Raw Story that the biggest mistake the Republican Party made was not choosing a candidate firmly behind former President Donald Trump to run in the New York Third District special election.
Disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was expelled, and a new election was called, which Greene called their first mistake. It's a bad precedent to set to expel a member of Congress, she said.
"We shouldn't have lost that seat to begin with," she told Raw Story, meaning Santos.
She then claimed, "redistricting turned that district over to a D+8." Redistricting happened in 2020 and Santos was elected in 2022 after redistricting. There are new maps being drawn using a bipartisan commission, but those haven't yet been decided, much less implemented.
"Number three, they picked the worst possible candidate," Greene said, bashing Republican candidate Mazi Pilip. "She was a registered Democrat but, um, didn't like President Trump. And, uh, why would we pick a Democrat to run as a Republican? That's the dumbest thing they could have done. All of those reasons there — that's not an indicator of the election as a whole."
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) explained that newly elected Tom Suozzi was basically an incumbent because he'd previously held the seat.
"So, he had name recognition," said Thompson.
When asked whether Trump was right, if she was more of a MAGA candidate and had his endorsement, she would have won, Thompson said "no." He blamed it all on name identification for Suozzi. There's "nothing in my opinion to take away."
Rep. Ken Buck (R- CO) agreed that Suozzi had the overall advantage of name recognition after spending so much time in office previously there.
"He's a moderate Democrat who does work across the aisle. He had accomplishments he could point to, um, the weather was a factor," Buck said, citing the several inches of fluffy snow that fell on the Long Island congressional district.
"Either way it was going to be a wake-up call," said Buck. "When a party in power loses something, they say, 'Well, politics is local.' When you win something, you say, 'See what a great job I'm doing?' So, it's a mixed bag."
Buck's comments were almost a premonition of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who said, "To me, every election has a local geographic point to it, and it's been a Democrat district. We were fortunate to flip it. I equate it to the district in Charleston. They flipped it forever but they flipped it back. So, that was perceived as a huge Democrat (sic) victory. There was a fluke — a huge divide in the Republican party that got a Democrat elected."
He was optimistic about Pilip, calling her "an attractive candidate background, gosh."
When asked if she should have asked for his support, Wilson said that his endorsement has always helped in his South Carolina race.
"We've gotta stick to what we're doing," Wilson said.
Buck went on to tell Raw Story that while Trump certainly has a lot of influence over members of the conference, he doesn't believe that the ex-president is fully running things from Mar-a-Lago.