WASHINGTON – The woman who would be the Southtowns' congresswoman lives near Utica, but she wants you to know that will soon change, and that she knows Buffalo and points south and a thing or two about being a hometown Republican representative in the Trump era.
And over an hour and 15 minutes last week, Rep. Claudia Tenney – who, thanks to Democratic gerrymandering, may end up representing a sprawling Southern Tier district – spelled it all out, as she tends to do, in blunt terms.
“Claudia Tenney is a fantastic Representative for the Southern Tier, and a great Member of Congress," Trump said in a statement.
Asked if she would move to the new 23rd district, even though state law would not require her to, she said: "Absolutely."
Asked about her willingness to buck the party line, she said: "I don't consider myself to be a right winger. I consider myself to be common sense."
And asked about an increasing national profile that stems in part from a Twitter feed in which she regularly flames opponents, Tenney said: "I'm not intentionally trying to be provocative. Sometimes the truth is provocative, right?"
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In other words, Tenney isn't quite Rep. Tom Reed, the retiring Corning Republican and former Problem Solvers Caucus chairman whom she's aiming to replace.
Tenney – who has campaigned saying, "I was Trump before Trump" – is no kumbaya congressperson.
Instead, she's one complicated conservative.
WNY ties?
Thanks to Democrats in the State Legislature who passed a redistricting plan that aims to cut in half the number of New York Republicans in the House, Tenney is looking to represent a district that's demographically similar, but geographically opposite her current district, which runs from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania border.
While the Buffalo-based district in the proposed plan would be largely Democratic, the other two districts including parts of Erie County consist largely of smaller communities and rural territory and are most likely to be represented by Republicans.
And while raging against the Democrats for what she called "their very partisan gerrymandering map," Tenney made clear she's happy to run for re-election in 2022 from the Southern Tier district.
"I feel like, with this district, it's so similar in many ways to the one I represent," Tenney said, noting that both consist largely of smaller cities and rural areas that have deindustrialized and lost population, but where farms and small businesses remain.
The new 23rd district includes parts of half the counties in Tenney's current district: Chenango – where Tenney's family has its roots – Cortland, Broome and Tioga.
But that doesn't matter to Tenney's critics.
"It’s difficult to see how someone from New Hartford, 190 miles away, will be able to understand and deliver for a district so used to hometown representation," said Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy Zellner.
"I've worked closely with Claudia and seen firsthand how she stands up for our veterans, military families, farmers, our law enforcement, manufacturers and small businesses," said Stefanik, who chairs the House Republican Conference.
Bob Lonsberry, a conservative Rochester-area radio host, put matters even more bluntly in a column in which he called Tenney's move "a disgusting mix of opportunism and carpet bagging."
A longtime Tenney supporter, Lonsberry asked: "What ... does she know about the hills and valleys and priorities of the Southern Tier?"
Plenty, Tenney said. As a sales rep for her family's printing company in the 1980s, she frequently drove across I-86 and Route 17 to visit clients.
And on top of that, Tenney said she visited Buffalo regularly when she was young. Her father, State Supreme Court Justice John R. Tenney, spent about two months annually hearing cases in Buffalo, and his daughter now remembers him taking the family to dinner at Salvatore's Italian Gardens on Transit Road.
Tenney was a young equestrian, too, who fondly recalls competing at the Buffalo Saddle and Bridle Club. That's how she got to know the family of Delaware North Cos. Chairman Jeremy M. Jacobs.
"You can mark it on your calendar. Every four years – Olympics. Every 17 years – locusts. And every 10 years – politicians incensed over reapportionment mandated by the Constitution," writes Bob McCarthy.
"I showed horses, so I used to stay at the Jacobs' house. I was the poor kid with all the wealthy people," she said.
An independent streak
A lawyer and former state assemblywoman first elected to Congress in 2016, Tenney lost her bid for re-election to Congress in 2018, only to reclaim her seat by 109 votes two years later.
She's a conservative Republican who's willing to buck the party line.
On one hand, she is a Donald Trump loyalist. FiveThirtyEight.com's "Trump's Score" found that in her first term, she sided with then-President Trump on the big national issues 96.9% of the time. In other words, she's a tax-cutting trade skeptic who's also deeply worried about undocumented immigrants crossing the Southern Border.
Yet Tenney also is a strong supporter of refugees -- legal immigrants allowed into the U.S. after fleeing hardship in their homelands -- given how she's seen how they've helped revive Utica. And that's a sign that Tenney is, in the end, a vote-your-district representative.
In her first term, Heritage Action for America's congressional ratings show she sided with the group only 46% of the time on key issues, disagreeing with conservative orthodoxy on matters involving her district.
For example, she proposed an amendment that Heritage opposed that called for the Defense Department to buy flatware from U.S. companies only, a proposal designed to benefit Oneida Ltd. She also disagreed with Heritage on Farm Bill provisions that benefited New York farmers and on proposals to cut funding for Amtrak and air service for smaller communities.
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Tenney said she would carry that district-first ethos with her into her new district. Asked if she would continue serving on the Foreign Affairs and Small Business committees in the next Congress, she said: "What's best for the district is really what dictates where I'll be."
Tenney is willing to go her own way, too, on political matters.
Asked if she would have voted against certifying President Biden's election, she said: "There was not enough evidence that was put forward to the Congress at that time to really overturn the election."
Tenney – who was not in Congress at the time – decried the Jan. 6 insurrection. And even though she raves about Trump's economic and foreign policy track record, she offers a nuanced take on the possibility of a Trump return in 2025. She would fully support him if he were to run for president again, but she wonders if personally he might be better off as a kingmaker in the wings.
"You know, I think it would be risky for him to run again, because there's just so much, you know, angst" connected with the rigors of another campaign, Tenney said in the interview, which came two days before Trump endorsed her for re-election.
The he Assembly passed the measure Wednesday by a 103-45 vote, largely along partisan lines. The Senate followed later by a margin of 43-20.
A GOP rabblerouser
Tenney's willingness to buck the party line has gone largely unnoticed partly because her hard-right tweets are so noticeable.
"Crooked art deals. Ties to corrupt foreign corporations," she tweeted on Feb. 3. "The allegations are mounting. "It's time to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Hunter Biden!"
And, most famously of all, Tenney commented in October on Twitter about a photo showing Pope Francis shaking hands with the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
"Just two communists," she said.
Tenney said she made that comment "in jest," but was concerned that Pope Francis met with the Castro brothers in Cuba and would not meet with dissidents there.
Comments like that were by no means the stock in trade employed by Reed, the outgoing congressman.
"I am, in my heart, a pragmatist," said Reed, who endorsed a former staffer, Joe Sempolinski, before Tenney entered the 23rd district race. "I want to get something done and I believe the best way to do that is essentially by incrementalism and working with people, even people on the other side. ... That being said, I'll let people introduce themselves to Claudia and Claudia introduce herself to the people of the 23rd congressional district. But she has a proven record of representing in Washington and obviously has been successful."
And Tenney acknowledged that she differs from Reed.
"I don't come out of the gate compromising," she said. "I come out of the gate advocating and then then we come to the middle with a compromise, and I think that might be the difference."
Tenney plans to follow Reed's footsteps in one way. He prided himself on visiting every corner of his district, and Tenney vowed to do the same.
"I'm also a very hands-on type of member," she said. "I go to events. I go to meet with constituents. You're going to see me everywhere, even if it's going to be a little more challenging in this district to get everywhere."
