BINGHAMTON, NY (WSKG) — Republican Claudia Tenney holds a lead over Democratic incumbent Anthony Brindisi after election night in the race for New York’s 22nd Congressional District.
Republican candidate Claudia Tenney. (Robert Lane/WSKG)
This is a rematch of the 2018 election during which Brindisi unseated Tenney. She won the seat in 2016 after former representative Richard Hanna retired from Congress.
As of early Wednesday morning, Tenney had a lead of more than 28,000 votes.
Both candidates said Tuesday that they are waiting on absentee ballots to be returned before declaring who won.
This isn’t the first time Brindisi and Tenney had a race come down to the wire. They waited more than three weeks for the race to be called in 2018.
With a record number of absentee ballots requested in the state, it is likely voters in the district will have to wait again for final results.
Tenney leads polls in several counties across the Southern Tier and Central New York. The Republican said she is confident in the tallies so far, but the pandemic drove a surge in mail-in ballots.
“I don’t think I could declare a total victory, but it looks very strong,” Tenney said. “This is an unusual year with an unusually high number of absentees, so we’ll see where the absentees break.”
Candidates for New York’s 22nd Congressional Distrct during a debate at WSKG on Oct. 22. (Robert Lane/WSKG)
Brindisi, meanwhile, held a slight lead in Broome County at the end of election night. Speaking virtually to supporters, the Democrat said he is ready to wait for further results.
“We’re in for a long and likely a long couple of weeks,” Brindisi said. “Two years ago we did not know who won until nearly Thanksgiving, and given the number of ballots outstanding, we are ready to wait for the results to come in.”
According to Brindisi, 68,000 absentee ballots were requested in the district. Some upstate counties say they won’t begin counting absentee and affidavit ballots until next week.
Mail-in ballots have until Nov. 10 to arrive at election offices across the state, as long as they were postmarked by Nov. 3.