Just over a week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled that the House Administration Committee may make the final decision on who won the disputed race in New York’s 22nd District (Utica), attorneys from the committee will be in the eight-county district Monday to observe the court-ordered recanvass of disputed ballots.
“What’s happening now is it's so close that Nancy Pelosi, the current House speaker, has sent lawyers who are supposed to be from the House Administration [Committee],” former Rep. Claudia Tenney, the Republican in the nation’s only uncalled House contest, told Fox News on Sunday.
Tenney emphasized that “they're supposed to be in an observing role. Not anything more than that.”
Republican Tenney has led Democrat Rep. Anthony Brindisi since the vote-counting began on November 3. When State Supreme Court Judge Scott DelConte ordered canvassers in all eight counties to count and settle ballots disputed by both sides, Tenney clung to a lead of 12 votes out of 325,000 cast.
What makes many Republicans uncomfortable with the presence of the Administration Committee lawyers during the recanvass is that Brindisi has yet to file a formal request to the committee to look at the contest.
Asked if he would file a petition with the Committee, Brindisi told the Washington “Examiner” last week: “Well, I'm not going to speculate on what happens in the future. We have a long way to go. And thousands of ballots still to count. And my position has been clear from the beginning. I want to see these ballots counted. I want the voices of the people to be heard.”
That last time the House Administration Committee intervened in a disputed race was in 1985, when the Democrat-controlled House refused to seat Republican Rick McIntyre as congressman from Indiana’s 8th District.
This was despite the fact a recount showed him winning by 34 votes and he had a certificate of election. But a special panel of the Administration Committee concluded Democrat Frank McCloskey had actually won by four votes and the House seated him.
“The ‘Bloody Eight’ is forever seared in the minds of Republicans as a low which, in many ways, kicked off the historic career of Newt Gingrich as a fighter who led the Republicans to the promised land of the 104th Congress,” historian Craig Shirley, author of several much-praised books on Ronald Reagan, told Newsmax. “It is too early to say if the imminent theft in New York will do the same but Republicans had once and for all better understand they are up against a political party that will stoop to any low — including outright theft — to have power. Ask yourself one question. Would you ever trust Nancy Pelosi?”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.