Let’s Get Real

A conversation with friend and colleague Charles Madigan about truth in politics.

Jim: Charlie, what do you make of this Long Island politician who got elected by blatantly lying about his education, ethnicity, and professional work history? Lying is nothing new on the campaign trail, but congressman elect George Santos set a new record for being a fake. About the only thing he didn’t fabricate was his imagination! The New York Times exposed Santos, an openly gay Republican, in an investigative piece that detailed the sordid history of lying during a race he ran — and won — in a district that President Biden carried by a hefty margin only two years ago. Unfortunately, voters didn’t get to see the Times expose, which made the story a national scandal, until after Santos had been elected. Wouldn’t have been nice if voters knew the real Santos story before the election?

photo by Brian Wertheim (if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth/politics)

Actually, they could have had they been readers of a tiny Long Island community newspaper, the North Shore Leader, that raised alarm bells about Santos, his finances and his fake life story months before the November elections and the Times story. Drawing on coverage the newspaper started last September, the Leader wrote in an editorial a month later:

”This newspaper would like to endorse a Republican, but Santos is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot,” adding, “He boasts like an insecure child — but he’s most likely just a fabulist — a fake.”

The Leader’s gutsy coverage, which also raised questions about how he mysteriously pumped oodles of cash into his campaign, went unnoticed by almost everyone, though. The Leader’s publisher pointed out the paper’s readership includes media figures like Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters and several senior people at Newsday, a one-time giant of journalism on Long Island that has won nineteen Pulitzer prizes for its’ strong news coverage. For an excellent take on the situation, read the Washington Post’s Sarah Ellison’s piece.

As you know, Charlie, stealing another person’s work, adding a new detail, and then portraying the story as your own is a time-honored tradition in journalism. So, the fact that the Leader’s work didn’t get its due until Ellison wrote a story is no surprise. In another life, though, Newsday would have been all over the Santos story with headlines that would have demanded the attention of the national political press. The story shows the importance of a dying breed – a strong local press. What do you think, Charlie?

Charlie: I think we always remember the past as a more perfect era in which solid journalism won the day. I think you are right in this case, if more people knew about Santos, and his bold fabrications, he would not have won that election.

Or would he? People can be remarkably dumb!

One of the delights in covering state legislatures is the chance they give you to see just how much people will ignore in the behaviors of their lawmakers. One of my sources in the Pennsylvania Senate was a lawmaker named Buddy Cianfrani, a political power of substantial standing from South Philadelphia. He was a brilliant guy and as time showed, a bit of a thug.

He once offered me a handful of PT-109 tie clasps he had “liberated” from a Democratic convention back in the day. I wish I had taken them, but i was too sparkly as a reporter to accept that kind of gratuity.

He headed the appropriations committee. The big thing about Buddy was the rumor he was tied to the mob in Philadelphia. Was he? Well, he went to jail for racketeering, but that was for slathering his office with ghost payrollers, guys who only showed up on payday. Lots of lawmakers got nailed on that charge. It didn’t mean they were mobsters. But because he was so...so what? So Italian, yes that’s what it was, Italian, there was this longstanding assumption about his connections. Here is how bold Buddy was. A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate corruption in Philadelphia and Buddy was called as a witness. In an aside, he told a group of us “There’s nothing special about this guy if he can’t even get me!” I don’t think he was any more corrupt than a lot of other legislators in that era. But he wasn’t a phony about anything.

If he told you how a piece of legislation was going to roll, then that’s how it rolled. If you asked him where he got the votes, he would tell you the members of his caucus did what he told them to do. Lots of people wrote tons of stuff about Buddy Cianfrani, but it never really touched him. His base in South Philly was his base and it always turned out. Unlike Santos, Cianfrani didn’t have to make up anything. No money goes anywhere until it passes through the Appropriations Committee, and Buddy had his hands on all the levers there.

So, if Santos represents a case in which someone invents the character he thinks the voters want, Cianfrani represented a more authentic version. He was politically dangerous because he could bury your bill so deep it would never see daylight. He could also grease it up and move it through appropriations faster than butter melting in a hot skillet. Everyone knew all about that because it was so real. For so many reasons, you didn’t mess with Buddy Cianfrani.

Real is always better than made up.

Was he a mobster. I don’t think so. One of the things about federal prosecutors is that they are not shy about chasing mob influence into politics. Buddy didn’t get nabbed for connections to the mob. He got nabbed for the old-fashioned corruption that plagued so much of politics in that era, racketeering and mail fraud for padding his office staff.

Of course, that made him a criminal. He spent five years in prison and after his release, remained a force in Philadelphia politics. He was elected ward leader in 1988. He died of a stroke in 2002. Like it or not, he never felt the need to make up anything. He was no role model, but a very effective politician. And if he told you when and how something would happen in the Senate, you could take that to the bank.

As for Santos, the House should throw him out as soon as it can. He’s no role model either and will never be an effective politician, although he might claim to be one.

Jim: I couldn’t agree more. I always liked politicians who didn’t mince words; their shady connections often made them more interesting. They made better news stories, too.

I find it ironic that congressman-elect Santos now sits in Congress facing an uncertain fate because Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican, can’t secure the Republican votes he needs to become Speaker of the House, a job he covets. Newly elected congressmen can’t be seated until Congress has a speaker. After repeated attempts, McCarthy remains about twenty votes short. I wonder if there’s really a fundamental question whether there’s really much difference between McCarthy and Santos? The fibber from Long Island lied about going to college (he didn’t), working for two big investment companies (he didn’t), his Jewish heritage (he’s Catholic), and who knows what else, just to get elected to Congress. McCarthy declined to condemn such conduct because he wants a job, just like Santos. He is caving to a Republican cabal that is making impossible demands to win its support for what? A job he covets so much that he’ll ignore the fact that his party is about to put its official seal of approval on a serial liar. I don’t think there’s much difference between the two. Santos, whose lied about financial experience, can’t seem to explain where he got $700,000 to contribute to his own campaign. McCarthy hasn’t explained why he’s willing to Santonize his soul to win a vote.

Whatever happened to the times when we elected people like Liz Chaney, who had principles and went to Washington to represent people instead of themselves? Maybe we need more Buddy Cianfrani’s. I mean whose really shady — Buddy or Kevin and his sidekick Ingenuous George? Charlie?

Charlie: As delightful as it was to get to know Buddy and have him point you in the right direction on the fate of legislation, I don’t think we need more like him, mainly because there are no more like him and probably never will be. Liz Chaney is a different question. She had deep integity at just the right point. George will suffer his own unique fate. He is a scoundrel and it is especially painful that he sits in a chamber full of people who had to work to get their positions.

My prediction is that he will get shanked in a hallway someplace, either in Congress or in prison, and will be eaten alive by people who know red meat when they smell it.

—James O’Shea and Charles Madigan

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Five W’s Substack here.

Charles Madigan is a writer and veteran foreign and national correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, where he also served as a senior writer and editor. He examines news reporting, politics and world events.