Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., sits in the House chamber on the opening day of the 118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in Washington.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)ALEX BRANDON

A Republican congressman from Florida is under federal investigation in connection with the sex-trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. He won reelection in November by a more than 2-1 margin. A Democratic senator from New Jersey was indicted on federal corruption charges in 2015 and was “severely admonished” by the chamber’s Ethics Committee after the jury was unable to reach a verdict. He was nonetheless reelected by a double-digit margin in 2018 – the same year federal prosecutors dropped their charges against him.

Scandal? What scandal? House members in both parties have been subject to allegations and convictions ranging from sexual misconduct to financial impropriety and ethics violations – and nonetheless kept their jobs.

In the current hyper-partisan political environment, “scandal” is in the eye of the beholder – or at least the eye of the party looking to oust a lawmaker or to free itself of a political liability.

In other words, congressional historians and political experts say, it’s not about what you did. It’s about whether what you did is a problem for your party.

“We’re in a very tribal period of time when it comes to politics. You can’t view scandals as distinctive from the rest of the political sphere,” says University of Houston political science professor Scott Basinger, who teaches a course in political scandals. “People’s perception of scandal will be through that political sphere.”

Infractions that cost people their reelections in the past seem almost quaint now. Former Democratic Rep. Bob Mrazek of New York, for example, had to drop out of the race for a Senate seat because he was one of hundreds of lawmakers involved in the 1992 “House banking scandal.” The “scandal” was that elected officials were running overdrafts in a members-only House personal banking clearinghouse, which cost taxpayers nothing but underscored an image of congressmen living more privileged lives than their constituents.