House Speaker Mike Johnson told the members of the House Republican Caucus on Wednesday not to panic about what happened in New York’s 3rd District because Dems spent $15 million while they only spent about half that, Mazi Pilip sucked as a candidate, it was a Biden District, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports, obviously having missed the part where Johnson squared that with the fact that he personally had traveled to the district to campaign for her, it was a 16 point swing from George Santos’s win in 2022, and when he explained why they let the Democrats outspend them.
Sherman did report earlier that there was a lot of “finger-pointing” going on inside the meeting, blaming Pilip, leadership, the Nassau County GOP, and each other for expelling Santos.