After more than three months since the November election and dozens of days in court, former Republican MP Claudia Tenney is back in Congress.
A New York State Supreme Court judge ruled on Friday that Oneida County and the State Elections Council can certify their final results for the 22nd New York Congressional Race, which has Tenney with 109 votes over the Democratic deputy Anthony Brindisi.
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While there are likely legal challenges ahead – Brindisi’s lawyers are appealing the decision to the Appeals Division, saying that certification should be paused until after a manual count – the decision means that Tenney will sit on the House of Representatives.
Tenney used Twitter to write “after 94 days of arduous electoral process, I am grateful to voters and supporters for once again having the privilege of serving our community in the House of Representatives”.
The result is a pickup for the GOP.
When Tenney takes office, the majority of Democrats in the House will shrink to 221-212 over Republicans.
Two vacancies remain and both are in Louisiana. One is the chair held by former Democratic MP Cedric Richmond, who joined President Biden’s government last month. The other was the vacancy won last November by the Republican Party’s elected representative, Luke Letlow.
The new margin means that Democrats will only be able to lose four votes and still be able to pass a bill without the help of House Republicans.
ARCHIVE – In this November 6, 2018 archive photo, Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney signals that she successfully voted after voting for St. George’s Church in New Hartford, NY. On Tuesday, December 1, 2020, Chenango County informed a state judge that it had discovered 55 initial ballots that were not lifted by the local electoral council and therefore were not included in the vote totals in the heated dispute between Tenney and US deputy Anthony Brindisi. The most recent results – which do not include these ballots – showed Tenney with a 12-vote advantage over Brindisi. (AP Photo / Heather Ainsworth, Archive)
Tenney was first elected to Congress in 2016, with Brindisi dismissing her in 2018.
With an extremely tight vote count between the two candidates, campaigns have been fighting in the courts since November for everything, including what appeared to be an extra mark on a contested paper ballot. The two sides disagreed over whether the mark was a blood stain or a chocolate stain. It was an important distinction – since blood is considered an identification marker on banknotes.
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The district in upstate New York includes the cities of Utica, Rome, Cortland and Binghamton, and some suburbs of Syracuse.
Congressman Tom Emmer, chairman of the Republican National Congress Committee, congratulated Tenney, calling her “a proven fighter from upstate New York who will continue where she left off, delivering bipartisan solutions to her district.”