By Colin Brennan
WASHINGTON — Rep. Claudia Tenney is running in one of the safest Republican seats in New York, a 14-county district that stretches from Niagara County to the shores of Lake Ontario and where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 100,000. Her campaign is spending as though the money has somewhere to go anyway.
Claudia Tenney for Congress has reported about $2.6 million in spending since January 2025, according to a Buffalo Chronicle review of every report the committee has filed with the Federal Election Commission this cycle, through the pre-general report that closed on Oct. 14. The campaign raised about $3.15 million over the same stretch and still had $835,741 in the bank two weeks before Election Day.
The filings show a campaign that spends most of its money raising more money, moves a lot of it through Washington-area consulting firms, picks up a steady flow of meals, flights and hotel bills, and, in the final weeks, sent a six-figure check to the state Republican Party. Nothing in the reports indicates any violation of federal law, and the Chronicle has asked the campaign to explain several of the entries.
Her Democratic opponent, Army veteran Alissa Ellman, reported $46,242 in cash on hand on the same date.
Most of the money goes to raising money
The Chronicle sorted the campaign’s 1,422 itemized disbursements by the purpose the campaign itself listed. Roughly 55 percent, about $1.4 million, went to fundraising, digital, texting, list and payment-processing vendors.
The largest single payee was Go Strategies LLC of McLean, Va., which received $518,525, most of it labeled “digital consulting.” Targeted Victory LLC, a Republican digital firm, received $353,685. The Stanton Group LLC, the campaign’s finance consultant, received $316,993, nearly all of it in payments the campaign described with a single combined label such as “finance consulting/travel/food/beverages.” Smart Media Group received $189,112 and Strategic Partners & Media received $170,374.
That pattern is common among incumbents with national donor networks. It also means that relatively little of the campaign’s spending has gone to the kind of voter persuasion a competitive race would demand. Media buys, printing and polling together account for roughly $370,000.
Meals, flights and some famous addresses
The campaign reported more than 600 line items, totaling about $208,000, that are labeled only as travel, lodging, food or beverages. That figure does not include the consulting payments that bundle travel and food into the same entry.
The airline bills alone top $50,000, led by American Airlines at $27,377 and United at $15,295. The campaign reported about $44,000 at hotels, including the Mayflower in Washington, the Ritz-Carlton in Bethesda, the JW Marriott in Miami and the Omni Berkshire Place in Manhattan. It paid the Capitol Hill Club, the Republican social club near the Capitol, $4,640.
Some of the entries carry recognizable names. The campaign paid The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach $2,507 on Nov. 17, 2025, for what it described as “donor gifts- hats/shirts,” plus $85 for food and beverages. It paid Trump International in West Palm Beach $807 in March 2025 for donor gift shirts. A reimbursement filed in August 2025 itemized $1,797 at Trump National Doral in Miami for travel, food and beverages. President Donald Trump’s properties are frequent venues for Republican fundraisers and party gatherings, and the filings do not say what events Tenney attended there.
Other entries include $1,918 at the Omni Homestead Resort & Spa in Hot Springs, Va., in July 2025; about $1,780 at Encore Boston Harbor in August 2025; $2,304 at PGA Frisco in Texas in March 2026; and a $593 payment dated April 1, 2026, to the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews, Scotland, labeled “travel.”
The campaign also reimbursed Tenney herself $38,206 over the cycle, mostly for travel, food and beverages, with smaller amounts for equipment and donor gifts. Her congressional chief of staff, Spencer Carr, received $55,085 from the campaign, a mix of monthly payments of $1,000 to $1,500 labeled “political strategy consulting” and travel reimbursements. House rules allow congressional aides to be paid for campaign work done on their own time, and the practice is widespread in both parties.
Plenty of the spending stays close to home. The reports list meals at Eli Fish Brewing in Batavia, Port City Cafe in Oswego and the Lake House on Canandaigua, catering and tickets from Corning Inc. and sponsorships of county Republican committees, including $5,000 to the Niagara County GOP.
What the law allows
Federal law gives campaigns wide latitude on travel and meals, so long as the expense is tied to the campaign or to the member’s duties. The FEC defines banned personal use as “any use of funds in a campaign account of a candidate (or former candidate) to fulfill a commitment, obligation or expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign or responsibilities as a federal officeholder.”
The agency’s guidance adds: “Conversely, any expense that results from campaign or officeholder activity falls outside the personal use ban.” The regulation specifically bars campaign money for vacations and country club dues, and the commission judges meals and travel case by case.
A search of the FEC’s enforcement records turned up one prior matter involving the committee, MUR 7290, which was opened in 2017 and closed in 2018. The Chronicle found no pending public enforcement action.
A big check to the state party
The largest single disbursement of the cycle came on Oct. 8, 2026, when the campaign sent $160,000 to the NY Republican Federal Campaign Committee, the state party’s federal account, according to the campaign’s pre-general report. That one payment accounts for more than half of the $293,480 the campaign spent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 14.
Federal law allows unlimited transfers from a candidate committee to a party committee, and safe-seat incumbents routinely use them to help the party in closer contests elsewhere in the state. The campaign gave the National Republican Congressional Committee $10,000 in January.
The challenger
Ellman, who won the Democratic primary in June with nearly 62 percent of the vote, has raised about $449,000 for the cycle, according to her committee’s FEC filings. She raised $35,734 in the first two weeks of October and spent $89,300.
The two met in their only debate on Oct. 20. According to WRVO, Tenney attacked Democratic health care proposals.
“Medicare for All would mean our budget would go up to about double of $277 billion a year,” Tenney said. “That is not a solution. That is socialism and that is what is advocated by the Working Families Party and Democrats in New York state.”
Ellman, who also runs on the Working Families line, pushed back. “I’m absolutely not a socialist. I’m a capitalist,” she said. “I live in this country. I fought for this country and right now we have a lot of problems.”
The two also split on prices. “I think the inflation has a lot more to do with the war in Iran,” Ellman said, according to WRVO. Tenney blamed energy policy. “My opponent is against nuclear power. She’s against natural gas,” Tenney said. “That’s dangerous. That’s catastrophic and that’s why our prices are high and Kathy Hochul agrees with her.”
On immigration, Tenney said, “We have a huge problem with immigration in this country,” according to 13WHAM. Ellman answered, “Nobody is asking for open borders. Nobody is asking for no background checks.”
Ellman also accused Tenney’s congressional office of being unresponsive to constituents, WRVO reported. Tenney said her office solves dozens of constituent problems every week.
Questions for the campaign
The Chronicle sent questions to Tenney’s campaign on Monday asking about the purpose of the Mar-a-Lago, Doral, St Andrews and resort expenses, the payments to Carr and the $160,000 transfer to the state party. The Chronicle also asked the Ellman campaign for comment. This story will be updated with any response.
The Cook Political Report rates the race Solid Republican. Election Day is Nov. 3.
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