Former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney spoke for the first time in months about her 2020 plans, and she not only said that she was still considering a rematch with freshman Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi in New York’s 22nd District, she added that she was “leaning closer to running.” Tenney, who lost the seat to Brindisi 51-49 last year, also said the NRCC encouraged her to run because “[t]hey know that I am the only one who can win it.”
That’s a truly ludicrous thing for anyone to believe given what happened back in November. This upstate seat backed Donald Trump by a wide 55-39 margin, making it the Trumpiest seat that a House Republican managed to lose in 2018. In fact, of the 235 Democratic-held House seats in the nation, the only Trumpier one is Minnesota’s 7th, which has been represented by Rep. Collin Peterson for decades. According to Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux, Republican gubernatorial nominee Marc Molinaro also carried New York’s 22nd by a wide 56-36 margin as Tenney was losing, so she managed to alienate quite a few conservative voters.
Indeed, Tenney had a knack for attracting plenty of bad headlines for herself during the campaign. In just one of many examples, she hurled hoary anti-Italian slurs at Brindisi last year by saying his father had represented "some of the worst criminals in our community" who were members of "organized crime"—in other words, mafia figures. In September she doubled down on line of attack, a very bad strategy in a seat where one in seven residents are of Italian descent.
If Tenney runs, she’ll need to get through a primary against Broome County District Attorney Steve Cornwell, who announced in early July at the start of the new fundraising quarter, before she can get another shot at Brindisi. A few other Republicans are running, but none of them look particularly formidable right now. Perennial candidate George Phillips had just $54,000 to spend at the end of June, though that’s still better than teacher Franklin Sager, who had exactly zero cents on-hand. Brindisi had $771,000 in the bank to defend this seat.
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