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      George Santos Says He Will Run for Re-election in 2024

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      Mr. Santos, a Republican House member from New York, has admitted to lying about parts of his biography and is facing several ethics and criminal inquiries.Representative George Santos won his seat in Congress in part by deceiving voters with lies and exaggerations about his biography. Now, with his falsehoods exposed, Mr. Santos plans to test his luck with voters again.Mr. Santos, a Republican from New York, formally announced that he was running for re-election on Monday. In a statement, he did not address the controversy that has surrounded him for months.Instead, he depicted himself as a political outsider who would eschew traditional Republican Party politics.“We need a fighter who knows the district and can serve the people fearlessly, and independent of local or national party influence,” Mr. Santos said. “Good isn’t good enough, and I’m not shy about doing what it takes to get the job done.”The announcement follows months of speculation over Mr. Santos’s political future, with fellow Republican lawmakers calling for his resignation, and federal and state prosecutors and his colleagues in Congress investigating his falsehoods on the campaign trail and his finances.Last month, Mr. Santos filed paperwork indicating his intent to run for re-election, but Monday’s announcement, which was first reported in The New York Post, was his first public declaration of his 2024 campaign.Though he has admitted to fabricating some parts of his résumé and biography, Mr. Santos has stood by other apparent falsehoods and insisted that the inquiries into him would find no criminal wrongdoing. Still, for months, he remained publicly ambivalent about whether he would run again.Shortly before sharing his intention to run for re-election on social media, Mr. Santos declined to confirm the announcement, telling a New York Times reporter, “I’m not confirming anything for you.”Mr. Santos enters the race with significant challenges. Polling has shown that he is unpopular in his district, with 78 percent of constituents believing that he ought to resign, according to a January Siena poll.He will also face a cash crunch: As of the end of last month, his campaign had just over $25,000 on hand, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.While other first-term Republicans in New York battleground districts raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first three months of the year, Mr. Santos raised only $5,333.26. During that same period he refunded nearly $8,400, bringing his fund-raising total into the negative.That is less than Mr. Santos raised during his first run for office in 2020, when he was virtually unknown and reported receiving about $7,000 in the same three-month period.Around the same time Mr. Santos made his intentions public, Republicans filed paperwork to create a new joint fund-raising committee that will allow Speaker Kevin McCarthy and others to pour money into defending the party’s seats in New York. Mr. Santos was the only vulnerable Republican left out of the effort.Even before he was mired in scandal, Mr. Santos was already expected to face a competitive race.Democrats, eager to reverse losses in New York that cost them their hold on Congress, were eyeing Mr. Santos’s suburban district, which covers northern Nassau County on Long Island and a small section of northeast Queens.But Mr. Santos’s seat became even more of a priority for Democrats after The New York Times and other news outlets published revelations that he had omitted key details from his financial disclosures and misled voters about his education, his professional background, his heritage and his ties to tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting and the Sept. 11 attacks.Subsequent reporting uncovered a number of irregularities in his campaign filings, including an unusual pattern of payments for $199.99, an unregistered fund that purported to be raising huge amounts for Mr. Santos and thousands of dollars in unexplained expenses.The F.B.I., federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the Nassau County district attorney’s office are now all investigating Mr. Santos’s campaign finances and how Mr. Santos operated his business, the Devolder Organization, about which he has disclosed little information.The House Ethics Committee, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, is conducting an inquiry into whether Mr. Santos failed to properly fill out his financial disclosure forms, violated federal conflict of interest laws or engaged in other unlawful activity during his 2022 campaign.Mr. McCarthy, who holds a slim majority in the House, has pinned Mr. Santos’s fate in Congress on that investigation. Yet the speaker, who supported Mr. Santos’s campaign in 2022, has also expressed reservations about a re-election bid, telling reporters in Washington earlier this year that he would “probably have a little difficulty” supporting one.Mr. Santos temporarily removed himself from two congressional committees at the direction of House leadership, and many rank-and-file Republicans have said they would not work with him on legislation.“From a political point of view, I don’t think there’s any future for him,” Edward F. Cox, the state Republican Party chairman in New York, said in an interview. He added that his organization would “clearly not” be helping Mr. Santos’s campaign.Gerard Kassar, the chairman of the New York Conservative Party, a small but influential partner to the Republican Party, said in a statement that the Conservatives would not back Mr. Santos under any circumstances. “The party has called for his resignation and finds his pattern of deceit morally repugnant,” he said.Closer to home, just days after Mr. Santos was sworn in, a score of Republican officials in Nassau County called on him to resign, said they would not endorse him in 2024 and would work to circumvent his office whenever possible.Mr. Santos already faces a primary challenger, Kellen Curry, whose campaign biography says he served in the Air Force for eight years before working for J.P. Morgan.The seat is also being looked at by a raft of Democrats, including Mr. Santos’s 2022 opponent, Robert Zimmerman, and Josh Lafazan, a centrist Nassau County legislator who has entered the race.Party leaders are also encouraging a comeback attempt by Thomas R. Suozzi, the district’s former representative who retired last year. Mr. Suozzi is now working for a consulting firm, but he has spoken about the possibility in recent weeks with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat, and Jay Jacobs, the state party chairman, according to two people with direct knowledge.Nicholas Fandos More

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      Looking Back at Her World War II Secret

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      Ruth Mirsky, who turns 100 today, was a code breaker in the U.S. Navy. “It was very hush-hush,” she remembered.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll meet a World War II code breaker who turns 100 today. We’ll also look at a filing by Representative George Santos that suggests he is already considering running for another term in Congress.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSomewhere in Rockaway Park, N.Y., is a World War II code breaker who is finally talking.Ruth Mirsky, who turns 100 today, did not say much about breaking codes. She gave almost nothing away, saying things like “it was top-secret work” and “I had a very small part in it.” And “we worked in shifts. We worked around the clock — daytime, nighttime.” Not a word about encryption machines or eureka moments deciphering enemy messages long ago.Mirsky’s birthday comes 80 years after she enlisted in the Navy and became a WAVE, the acronym for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services. She was promptly sent to Washington, where she became one of several thousand women scrambling to unscramble messages intercepted from the Japanese and German military.She worked in the library unit at what became known as the Naval Annex, typing incoming messages on file cards, categorizing them and noting repetitions — recurring letters or phrases that might have been potential clues to encryption. Others have said it was mind-numbing duty, an excruciating search for patterns and ciphers among monotonous columns of numbers and letters, but Mirsky still sounded fascinated.“It was a whole new thing,” she said. “For me it was, anyway.”Their diligence paid off. “Together, this group of Navy women broke and rebroke the fleet code” and “helped keep track of the movements of the Imperial Japanese Navy,” the author Liza Mundy wrote in her book “Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II.The women were instructed not to talk about their secret wartime lives — “it was very hush-hush,” Mirsky told me. When she visited her former boss in New York, she recalled, “he asked me, ‘What are you doing there? The F.B.I. was asking all kinds of questions to find out what kind of a person you were.’”She added: “I couldn’t even tell my fiancé.”We’ll get to him in a moment. Mirsky worked in an installation in Washington that was just off Ward Circle, “which taxi drivers started calling WAVES Circle,” Mundy wrote.Around the time Mirsky arrived in 1943, that installation was a base of operations for 1,500 women, along with just over 900 male officers and enlisted men, according to Mundy, who wrote that by early the next year, there were almost twice as many women and far fewer men. But, in what the writer Meryl Gordon called a “pre-Betty Friedan moment in American life when institutional discrimination was the norm,” the Navy’s pay scale favored the men.Mirsky did not mention that last week. She talked about two brothers, David, whom she had been dating, and Harry, who had been stationed in South Dakota as a radar specialist. “Harry came to see his brother before David’s unit went overseas,” she said. Harry had been injured when he was thrown from a jeep; at one point he had been in a body cast. With David off to the front lines, “Harry asked me if he could write to me from South Dakota, so that’s how it started,” she said.About six months later, Harry’s unit was transferred to Fort Dix, in New Jersey. He remained stateside when the unit went overseas because of the accident. He managed to go to Washington regularly — once without a pass, for which he was punished when he returned to Fort Dix, she said.You can guess what happened. Harry became the fiancé, then the husband. They were married for 39 years, until his death in 1984.She is a regular at a JASA Older Adult Center not far from her apartment center. It organized a birthday party last week, a few days early. “You can’t put 100 candles on a cake,” Mirsky told me, but she blew out 10 or so on the strawberry shortcake that was served. Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, who represents the area, brought a proclamation and tweeted photos.“I’ve had a happy life,” Mirsky told me. “I feel I’ve done what I wanted, actually.” She mentioned her two children, Stuart Mirsky and Debra Aluisio, who had joined her at the JASA center. She mentioned her five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. She double-checked those numbers with her son, counting as they named the names.She talked about playing Scrabble — on an iPad.“It’s a good thing for my mind, I guess,” she said.“Very similar to the codes,” said Aluisio.WeatherIt’s a cloudy, windy day near the mid-40s. The evening is breezy and mostly clear, with temps around the mid-30s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until April 6 (Passover).The latest Metro newsJefferson Siegel for The New York TimesJail supervisor convicted: A jail supervisor who walked away from an inmate after he had hanged himself was convicted of criminally negligent homicide, capping a trial that pointed to the brutal conditions inside New York City’s jails and the persistence of inmate suicides.A city councilman’s apartment hunt: Chi Ossé became the youngest member of the New York City Council when he was sworn in 14 months ago. Now, he faces a challenge: finding an apartment in his district. He called the search “tiring, treacherous, and competitive.”A police department’s troubled history: Najee Seabrooks was shot and killed by police officers in Paterson, N.J., after calling 911 to report that he was experiencing a mental health crisis. A coalition of groups requested a Justice Department inquiry into what it called “widespread unlawful and unconstitutional conduct” by the Paterson police.Santos signals he might run againJonathan Ernst/ReutersLittle more than two months after he assumed office, George Santos signaled that he might want a second term.Santos, the embattled Republican from Long Island who is under scrutiny for lies about his background and questions about his finances, submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission suggesting that he may run for re-election in 2024.My colleague Michael Gold writes that the filing does not necessarily mean that Santos will run, but it does allow him to continue to raise money and spend it on campaign-related expenses, including paying back roughly $700,000 that he lent to his campaign last year.He can also use money he raises for any potential legal fees involving some of the investigations he is facing. Federal prosecutors have been examining his campaign finances and personal business dealings, and last month the House Ethics Committee opened its own inquiry.After The New York Times reported that Santos had lied about graduating from college, working for prestigious Wall Street firms and managing an extensive real estate portfolio, Santos acknowledged that he fabricated parts of his résumé and his biography.But he has denied criminal wrongdoing and has resisted calls to resign, even as some Republicans questioned whether he could serve constituents. Republican officials in Nassau County have said they would avoid taking constituent problems to his office whenever they could. Ten House Republicans have called on Santos to resign, and a poll in January by Siena College found that 78 percent of the voters in his district wanted him to give up his seat, including 71 percent of the Republicans who were questioned.METROPOLITAN diaryClocking inDear Diary:When I was in my early 20s, I worked at a cafe in Park Slope. I used to walk to work in the darkness at 4:30 a.m., lacing up my black sneakers in my Clinton Hill apartment and schlepping past halal trucks on my way as they set up for the day.I always bought a grapefruit from the bodega across the street before starting my shift. The man at the counter would greet me with a wide smile, its warmth washing away the tired feelings left over from the morning trek.Clocking out? I’d ask.Yes, he would say. Clocking in?Yes, I’d say.And then each day, like a mantra, he would singsong to me: “You are beginning your day … and I am ending mine!”— Annabelle LewisIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      George Santos Signals Intention to Seek Re-election in 2024

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      The move by Mr. Santos allows him to continue fund-raising as a prospective candidate and to spend campaign funds.Representative George Santos, the embattled Republican from New York facing criminal inquiries and ethics investigations, filed paperwork on Tuesday indicating his intent to run for re-election.The statement of candidacy filed with the Federal Election Commission does not guarantee that Mr. Santos, a first-term lawmaker representing parts of Long Island and Queens, will run for office next year.But it allows Mr. Santos to continue to raise money and spend it on various campaign-related expenses, including paying back the roughly $700,000 he lent to his campaign and paying any potential legal fees connected to the inquiries that he is currently facing.The filing also offers a clear signal that Mr. Santos is leaving the door open to defending his seat in Congress, even as he has been besieged by calls to resign from his constituents, a handful of local Republican officials in his district and fellow House members, including representatives from his own party.Mr. Santos did not respond to a message seeking comment.Mr. Santos’s political future has been severely questioned after revelations in The New York Times that he lied to voters about graduating from college, working for prestigious Wall Street firms and boasting an extensive real estate portfolio. Subsequent reporting by The Times and other outlets has also raised questions about his campaign’s fund-raising and spending practices.Federal prosecutors have been examining Mr. Santos’s campaign finances and personal business dealings, and local prosecutors in New York have been exploring Mr. Santos’s behavior during his campaign. Last month, the House Ethics Committee said it would investigate whether Mr. Santos broke laws tied to his campaign filings or his personal business.While Mr. Santos has admitted to fabricating parts of his résumé and biography, he has denied any criminal wrongdoing. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has maintained that Mr. Santos was duly elected, and that the House would only take action if its Ethics Committee found cause.Yet many rank-and-file Republicans have raised concerns about Mr. Santos’s ability to properly serve constituents. Republicans in Nassau County on Long Island have said they would circumvent his office whenever possible, and 10 House Republicans have called on Mr. Santos to resign. Other Republican representatives have said they were hesitant to collaborate with Mr. Santos on legislation or party business.Mr. Santos has said he would not leave office unless all those voters who supported his campaign last year called on him to do so. A poll in January by Newsday and Siena College found that 78 percent of voters in Mr. Santos’s district wanted him to step down, including 71 percent of Republicans surveyed.Still, Mr. Santos appeared to bow to pressure in January, when he said he would temporarily recuse himself from sitting on two congressional committees. Mr. McCarthy said that he and Mr. Santos reached the decision jointly.But Mr. Santos has repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether he planned to run for re-election.In January, he repeatedly told reporters asking about his future plans that it was “too early” to answer. Last month, he told the Fox station in New York that he had not yet decided whether he would run in 2024.Mr. McCarthy — who endorsed Mr. Santos and helped his campaign in 2022 — told reporters in Washington that he would “probably have a little difficulty” supporting Mr. Santos in a re-election bid.Local Republicans have also voiced their opposition to re-electing Mr. Santos: The Nassau County Republican Committee, a powerful local party organization, has resolutely said it would not support him in 2024.The committee’s chairman, Joseph G. Cairo Jr., reiterated on Tuesday that Mr. Santos would not receive its endorsement.“If he decides to run, we will oppose and beat him,” Mr. Cairo said in a statement.The Federal Election Commission requires candidates to register if they raise or spend more than $5,000 toward an election, a threshold that Mr. Santos passed at the end of last year, according to campaign finance reports.Incumbent politicians are generally quick to register regardless of whether they have decided to run again, so they can continue to accept donations that can be used to pay old campaign debts.Those debts can include personal loans that candidates make to fund their campaigns, experts said. A Supreme Court decision last year cleared the way for candidates to be repaid well after their elections.Brett G. Kappel, an election lawyer, said that the commission’s guidance was also “pretty liberal” regarding the use of campaign money for legal expenses. Candidates can use funds for legal fees tied to “any investigation related to your status as an officeholder or candidate.” The inquiries into Mr. Santos’s campaign finances would likely qualify, he said.So far, only one other candidate has registered with the commission to fill Mr. Santos’s seat: Josh Lafazan, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully in last year’s primary. More

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      A New Voice for Winning Back Lost Democratic Voters

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      Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez chose her guest for last month’s State of the Union address in order to make one of her favorite points. She invited Cory Torppa, who teaches construction and manufacturing at Kalama High School in her district in southwest Washington State, and also directs the school district’s career and technical education program. President Biden did briefly mention career training that night in his very long list of plans; still, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez wasn’t thrilled with the speech.“I went back and looked at the transcript,” she said, “and he only said the word ‘rural’ once.”It’s safe to say that Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez was one of very few Democrats in the room listening for that word, but then she didn’t win her nail-biter of a race in a conservative district with a typical Democratic appeal. To court rural and working-class voters who had supported a Republican in the district since 2011, she had to speak to them in a way that her party’s left wing usually does not — to acknowledge their economic fears, their sense of being left out of the political conversation, their disdain for ideological posturing from both sides of the spectrum.She came to Congress in January with a set of priorities that reflected her winning message, and she is determined to stress those differences in a way that might help Democrats lure back some of the voters it has lost, even if it means getting a lot of puzzled looks and blank stares in the Capitol.Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez was already an unexpected arrival to the House. No one predicted that she would win her district, and her victory (by less than one percentage point) was widely considered the biggest electoral upset of 2022. The Third Congressional District is exactly the kind that Democrats have had trouble holding on to for the last 10 years: It’s 78 percent white, 73 percent without a bachelor’s degree or higher, and made up of a low-density mix of rural and suburban areas. It voted for Barack Obama once, in 2008, and Donald Trump twice, and the national Democrats wrote it off, giving her almost no campaign assistance.But as the 34-year-old mother of a toddler and the co-owner (with her husband) of an auto repair shop, she had an appealing personal story and worked hard to distinguish herself from the usual caricature of her party. She said she would not support Nancy Pelosi as speaker, criticized excessive regulation of business, and said there should be more people in Congress with grease under their fingernails. But she also praised labor unions and talked about improving the legal immigration system, boosting domestic manufacturing, and the importance of reversing climate change. In the face of this pragmatic approach, her Republican opponent, Joe Kent, followed the Trump playbook and claimed the 2020 election had been stolen and called for the F.B.I. to be defunded. She took a narrow path, but it worked, and you might think that Democratic leaders would be lined up outside her office to get tips on how to defeat MAGA Republicans and win over disaffected Trump voters.But some Democrats are still a little uncomfortable around someone who supports both abortion rights and gun rights, who has a skeptical take on some environmental regulations, and who has made self-sufficiency a political issue.“It’s a little bit of a hard message for them to hear, because part of the solution is having a Congress who looks more like America,” she said in an interview last week. “It can’t just be rich lawyers that get to run for Congress anymore.”She said there is a kind of “groupthink” at high levels of the party, a tribalism that makes it hard for new or divergent ideas to take hold. But if Democrats don’t pay attention to newcomers like Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, they risk writing off large sections of the country that might be open to alternatives to Trumpism.“The national Democrats are just not ever going to be an alternative they vote for, no matter how much of a circus the far right becomes,” she said. “But I think there obviously can be competitive alternatives. There are different kinds of Democrats that can win, that avoid the tribalism.”She mentioned Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Mary Peltola of Alaska, and Senators Jon Tester of Montana and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, as examples of elected officials with an unusually broad appeal because they understand the priorities of their districts or states.In her case, those priorities center on relieving economic despair and providing a future for young people who have a hard time seeing one, particularly if they are not college-bound. Pacific County, on the western end of her district, had an 8.4 percent unemployment rate in January, compared to the 3.4 percent rate in tech-saturated King County, home of Seattle, just 150 miles to the northeast. Not everyone needs a four-year college degree, or is able to get one, but the economy isn’t providing enough opportunities for those who don’t take that path. Many high school students in her districts are never going to wind up in the chip factories that get so many headlines, or the software firms further north, but without government support they can’t even get a foothold in the construction trades.She supports what has become known on Capitol Hill as “workforce Pell” — the expansion of Pell grants to short-term skills training and apprenticeship programs, many of which are taught in community colleges. The idea has won approval among both conservative Republicans and Democrats like Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. She said she could not hire older teenagers as apprentices in her auto repair shop because it would bump up her liability insurance. (A local nonprofit group has helped her shop and other businesses cover the extra cost, giving many students the opportunity for on-the-job training.)“My generation was the one where they were cutting all the shop classes and turning them into computer programming classes,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said. “It took 10 or 15 years for that to hit the market, but now, coupled with the retirement of a lot of skilled tradespeople, there’s a six-month wait for a plumber or a carpenter or an electrician. You’d better be married to one.”She is also critical of putting certain environmental concerns ahead of human ones, a position sure to alienate some in her party.“My mom grew up in Forks, Washington, which is sort of epicenter of the spotted owl, and that decimated jobs,” she said, referring to the federal decisions in the 1990s to declare the northern spotted owl as endangered, closing off millions of acres of old-growth forest to logging. “People had trouble feeding their families. That indignity cast a really long shadow. People felt like they were being told they couldn’t work.”The Trump administration opened up much of that habitat to logging in its final days, but that decision was later reversed by the Biden administration. (The congresswoman hasn’t weighed in on that reversal.)Winning over lost voters can often mean just talking about the kinds of daily concerns they have, even if they are not monumental. That’s why Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez is an enthusiastic supporter of the right-to-repair movement, which promotes federal and state laws to give consumers the knowledge and tools to fix their own products, whether smartphones, cars, or appliances. Many companies make it virtually impossible for most people to replace a phone battery or make an adjustment on their car.“From where I live, it’s a three-hour round trip to go to the Apple Store,” she said. “Right to repair hits people on so many levels — their time, their money, their environment, their culture. It’s one of the unique things about American culture. We really believe in fixing our own stuff and self-reliance. D.I.Y. is in our DNA.”She and Neal Dunn, a Republican congressman from Florida, introduced a bill last month that would require automakers to release diagnostic and repair information about cars so that owners wouldn’t have to go to a dealership to get fixed up. That’s probably not a surprising interest for the owner of an independent repair shop, but it’s not something most Democrats spend a lot of time talking about.It’s the kind of thing, however, that may spark the interest of swing voters tired of hearing Republican candidates talk about cultural issues that have no direct relevance to their lives.“We have to stop talking about these issues of ‘oh, the creeping dangers of socialism,’ and start talking about getting shop class back in the high schools,” she said. “I don’t know anybody who stays up at night worrying about socialism. But they worry about a kid who doesn’t want to go to school anymore. Or, am I going to lose the house? Is there a school nurse? Those are the things that keep people up at night, and we have to find a way to make their lives better.”

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      The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ben Savage, ‘Boy Meets World’ Actor, Is Running for Congress

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      The former star of the 1990s-era ABC sitcom is running as a Democrat for a seat in the Los Angeles area that is being vacated by Representative Adam B. Schiff.Ben Savage, the former child actor who was the star of the ABC sitcom “Boy Meets World” in the 1990s, said on Monday that he was running to represent a Los Angeles-area district in Congress.“I’m running for Congress because it’s time to restore faith in government by offering reasonable, innovative and compassionate solutions to our country’s most pressing issues,” Mr. Savage, 42, said in a statement on Instagram.“It’s time for new and passionate leaders who can help move the country forward,” he said. “Leaders who want to see the government operating at maximum capacity, unhindered by political divisions and special interests.”A representative for Mr. Savage did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Mr. Savage moved to Los Angeles in 1987 and landed a role two years later in “Little Monsters,” a movie about a boy who discovers a world of monsters under his bed. He is best known for his role as Cory Matthews on “Boy Meets World,” a coming-of-age sitcom that was a staple of ABC’s Friday night lineup for seven seasons, from 1993 to 2000. He reprised his role in 2014 in a spinoff series, “Girl Meets World.”Mr. Savage, who lives in West Hollywood, submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission in January to run as a Democrat in the 30th Congressional District, which includes parts of well-known Southern California cities like Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena. (For those familiar with both the show and Southern California geography, the district does not include Topanga Canyon, which shares a name with Cory Matthews’s iconic love interest and sits in the 32nd District.)Mr. Savage is running to replace Representative Adam B. Schiff, a Democrat who led the first impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump and who is now seeking the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein.Ms. Feinstein, 89, announced last month that she would retire at the end of her term in 2024, capping more than three decades in office.In November, Mr. Savage ran unsuccessfully for a seat on West Hollywood’s City Council, earning less than 7 percent of the votes, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar’s office.For his congressional run, Mr. Savage, who described himself as a “proud Californian, union member and longtime resident of District 30,” will campaign on affordable housing solutions, reforms and improvements to police-citizen interactions, and supporting women’s health rights, according to his campaign website.Mr. Savage, who graduated from Stanford University with a degree in political science, joins a growing list of California celebrities-turned-politicians.Ronald Reagan was an actor in Hollywood before his political career, serving as the governor of California and the 40th president of the United States. In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican and former action-movie star, was sworn in as California’s 38th governor, serving two terms. And Caitlyn Jenner, the Republican former Olympian and prominent transgender activist, unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in 2021. More

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      Jennifer McClellan Wins in Virginia and Will Be State’s First Black Woman in Congress

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      Jennifer McClellan, a state senator, will fill the seat held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died in November.Jennifer McClellan, a veteran Democratic state senator, won a special election for Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, making her the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.Ms. McClellan, 50, will fill the seat formerly held by Representative A. Donald McEachin, who died Nov. 28 of colorectal cancer. She has cited Mr. McEachin as a mentor and was highly favored to win in the safely Democratic district, which stretches from Richmond, where she is based, to the rural counties along Virginia’s border with North Carolina.She defeated Leon Benjamin, a Republican Navy veteran and local pastor. Mr. Benjamin lost to Mr. McEachin by nearly 30 points in November.Virginia Democrats, including the party’s entire congressional delegation and many local and statewide officials, were quick to coalesce around Ms. McClellan’s candidacy during the primary in late December. Even though the accelerated election calendar set by Gov. Glenn Youngkin left her campaign with less than two weeks to turn out primary voters, she still won with nearly 85 percent of the vote, according to the state party.Ms. McClellan centered her campaign on legislation she spearheaded as a state senator — issues she championed, like voting rights, environmental protection and abortion access, often dovetailed with the national Democratic platform.“I passed legislation to protect our right to vote and our right to a clean environment. I led the fight for our reproductive freedom,” Ms. McClellan said in a television ad. “I’ll take that same fight with me to Congress.”In a January opinion essay for Essence magazine, Ms. McClellan also said that her identity as a Black female lawmaker would help shape her policy positions.“This election isn’t just about my lived experiences, it’s about elevating the experiences of so many whose voices have not been heard in our government,” she wrote.Ms. McClellan, a lawyer who is also the vice chair of the Virginia legislature’s influential Black caucus, has been frequently promoted as a rising star among state Democrats. This is her second run for statewide office: In 2021, she fell short in a crowded primary for governor.Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said in a statement on Tuesday night: “Jennifer McClellan’s history-making victory as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from Virginia will have ripple effects across the Commonwealth.”“Her leadership will expand upon the outstanding progress and advocacy for which we remember Congressman A. Donald McEachin — I cannot think of a better way to honor his life and legacy than with the new generation of leadership that Congresswoman-elect Jennifer McClellan will bring to Washington.” More

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      A Close Look at the Chaotic House Republican Majority

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      C-SPAN video of the House speaker election in January. The tumult that broke out last month during the election of Kevin McCarthy for speaker illustrated the potential for profound dysfunction in the new House Republican majority. And the spectacle created by Republican lawmakers at the State of the Union address showed the unruly behavior of […] More