The 2020 House election cycle is finally over, and for Democrats, the ending is proving just as sour as did Election Day.
Republican Claudia Tenney is set to be certified as the winner in New York’s 22nd Congressional District, over former Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi. The race took until Friday to be called, with Tenney’s election night yielding to three months of back-and-forth legal rulings over which ballots should be counted.
And in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks beat her Democratic opponent by six, out of more than 394,000 cast. That race wasn’t decided until days before the 117th Congress was set to convene, on Jan. 3.
The late-counted races in favor of Republicans ends a disappointing election cycle for Democrats. They had expected to expand the majority won in 2018 by winning up to 15 seats. But in a stark reversal, Republicans gained 12 House seats, putting them only about six short of a majority heading into the 2022 cycle.
Tenney, who was a House member for a single term from 2017 to 2019 and lost to Brindisi in 2018, had to wait 94 days before emerging as the winner. On election night, she was about 28,000 vote ahead, but her lead shrank considerably, to low double digits after absentee ballots among the district’s eight counties were counted.
The legal fight entailed recanvassing and recounting challenged ballots that revealed how county officials mishandled paper votes and failed to process voter registration papers in a timely manner amid a new state election recount law that went to effect in January.
Tenney prevailed in the end after New York State Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte ruled the last two counties in the district engaged in a final recanvassing could certify their results. This enabled the New York State Board of Elections to certify Tenney as the winner by a 105-vote margin.
Although Brindisi initially had a federal appeal pending, he conceded the race Monday morning. The New York Democrat plans to run for his former seat in 2022.
In Iowa, meanwhile, Democrat Rita Hart has yet to concede to now-Rep. Miller-Meeks. The Iowa State Canvassing Board certified the election results for Miller-Meeks after she won by a margin of six votes.
Hart contested the election to the House of Representatives back in December, claiming at least 22 ballots were mistakenly omitted from the count and that thousands of undervotes and overvotes were not reviewed by hand.
However, Miller-Meeks filed a motion to dismiss the case last month, saying precedent forces the House to reject the contest because Hart did not initially appeal to a state court. Miller-Meeks’s attorney is reportedly searching for ballots that were rejected in the district in case she must defend her seat before the committee.
After Tenney is sworn in, Democrats will have 221 members to 211 for Republicans. There are currently three vacancies in the chamber, with one seat safely in Democratic territory, another sure to go Republican, and a third, held by the late GOP Rep. Ron Wright of Texas, which leans red but could be competitive.
