Rep. Tenney (R-NY24) Deserves a Chance to Clear Her Name

More than seven months after a report raised questions about her campaign spending, no one, as far as the public record shows, has asked the FEC to find out if it was legal. Not even her.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY24) has been living under a cloud since January, and nobody, as far as anyone outside the FEC can actually know, has bothered to lift it. A Politico report raised questions about how her campaign spent donor money. Her opponents, running against her in a competitive election, called it corrupt. Her campaign called it a smear. In the more than seven months since, no complaint or enforcement action has been publicly disclosed, not from her opponents, not from a watchdog group, not from the FEC itself. That's not fair to Tenney, and it's not fair to the voters trying to figure out whom to believe.

The Politico Story

The story broke on January 15, 2026, when Politico's Jason Beeferman published a report on Tenney's campaign spending ("Rep. Claudia Tenney adores Novak Djokovic. Her team won't say if she spent campaign cash to see him play."). The report found Tenney's campaign spent $3,913 at a New York City hotel during last year's U.S. Open, and $2,106.57 on hotels and a rental car in Florida during the Miami Open. Both hotel stays happened to fall on the same dates tennis star Novak Djokovic was playing in those tournaments. Tenney has long been an outspoken Djokovic fan, posting regularly about him on social media. None of that, on its own, proves anything: plenty of members of Congress travel to cities where events they're personally interested in happen to be taking place, and overlapping dates are not the same thing as misspent money.

The campaign also spent $388 at a Lacoste store in New York during the U.S. Open. Lacoste sponsors Djokovic. The purchase was logged in FEC filings as "DONOR GIFTS-SHIRTS/HATS," standard language campaigns use to describe swag handed out to supporters. Three days later, according to the Utica Observer-Dispatch, Tenney posted a photo of herself on X wearing a Lacoste jacket and hat, calling Djokovic "the GOAT... all the way!" Her campaign would not tell Politico whether that gear came from the donor-gift purchase, or whether Tenney actually attended either tournament, a silence Politico treated as suspicious but which campaigns often maintain simply as a matter of not engaging with a story they consider bad-faith.

According to Daniel Weiner of the Brennan Center for Justice, a national campaign finance watchdog, federal law generally prohibits using campaign funds for personal clothing unless it qualifies as branded campaign paraphernalia. That's a real legal standard, but it's worth being precise about what Weiner actually said: he described the general rule, not a verdict on Tenney's specific purchase. Whether a Lacoste hat handed out to supporters crosses that line is exactly the kind of question the FEC exists to answer, and there's no public sign anyone has put that specific question to it.

Democratic Response

It's worth remembering, reading the reaction below, that every person quoted here was actively running against Tenney at the time they said it. Political opponents in the middle of a campaign have every incentive to make a damaging story sound as bad as possible, and that context matters for how much weight to give their conclusions.

Democrat Alissa Ellman, who would go on to win the June primary, didn't hold back:

Ellman went further, saying Tenney should resign over "following around a foreign tennis player full time" while neglecting the district: "Zero town halls, zero outreach, but multiple trips to major tennis tournaments. This is why people are so cynical about politics." Strong language, and language from a rival candidate actively campaigning to take her seat.

Diana Kastenbaum, who lost to Ellman in the June primary, took a more measured tone. She said it seemed suspect that Tenney's hotel bills coincided so closely with Djokovic's tournament schedule, and that if campaign money paid for personal travel or gifts unrelated to the campaign, "that's a problem," while stopping short of declaring that it had. She added: "I'm staying focused on how we unseat her in the midterms. Then she can watch all the tennis she wants."

The Tenney Campaign Rebuttal

Tenney's campaign didn't just deny the story. It called the investigation itself illegitimate, and made a real point in doing so. Spokesman Anthony Pileggi told reporters it was "ridiculous" that some outlets had reduced themselves to "speculating about personal interests and sports fandoms" instead of covering real policy, calling it "a desperate attempt to manufacture a smear when there is no real story to tell." Pileggi separately called the report "embarrassingly false and inaccurate reporting by a reporter who does not even understand how to read the House calendar" in comments to WWNY, a Watertown TV station.

Pileggi's framing suggests reporters covering this story have abandoned policy coverage for gossip. That's not accurate. WNYP alone has covered Tenney's actual legislative record extensively, including her push to end birthright citizenship, factual claims she's made that were refuted by the Wall Street Journal, her position on the Epstein files discharge petition, her vote against the CHIPS Act followed by claiming credit for the jobs it created, the Medicaid cuts putting Upstate New York hospitals at risk, and her support for ICE amid fatal shootings involving the agency. A spending controversy getting covered doesn't mean policy coverage stopped. It's happening alongside it.

It's a fair criticism as far as it goes: a story built on the coincidence of dates, without direct evidence of what the money actually paid for, is circumstantial. The campaign maintained, in general terms, that all spending was "fully in compliance with all applicable laws and FEC regulations." Tenney's campaign did not publicly answer the specific questions of whether she attended the tournaments or whether the Lacoste items were the items she was photographed wearing. Declining to engage with a story on principle is a defensible choice. It also means the specific factual questions remain open, through no fault of anyone but the fact that nobody has forced a real answer.

Why Hasn't the FEC Cleared Her Name?

To be clear about what this section can and can't establish: Tenney has not been found to have violated campaign finance law. There is also no publicly available evidence that the FEC has opened an enforcement matter over the tennis-related spending Politico reported. Those are two different kinds of not-knowing, and it's worth being precise about which one applies here.

Any person can file a complaint with the FEC alleging a violation of federal campaign finance law, and there's no FEC filing fee to do it, though the complaint has to be written, signed, sworn to, and notarized, laying out the alleged violation with supporting evidence. FEC staff review a properly filed complaint before it goes to the Commission for action. The Commission can dismiss a matter or vote to find "reason to believe" a violation occurred; four affirmative votes, out of six commissioners evenly split by law between the two parties, are required for a reason-to-believe finding. If the Commission proceeds, the matter can then move into the investigative stage. None of this happens automatically or quickly.

Here's the part that matters most for this piece: the FEC keeps its enforcement matters confidential until they're resolved. That means WNYP, or anyone else outside the Commission, cannot actually confirm whether a complaint has been filed over this spending. What can be said accurately is narrower: as of this writing, no FEC complaint or enforcement action tied to Tenney's tennis-related spending has been publicly disclosed, by Ellman, who called the spending "certainly illegal" in the heat of a campaign, by Kastenbaum, who said the FEC "should investigate," or by any watchdog group. If any of them quietly filed something, the public simply wouldn't know yet.

The FEC can also pursue non-complaint-generated matters based on information it obtains in the normal course of its supervisory responsibilities, including through its own review of campaign reports, no outside complaint necessary. There's no public indication that's happened here either, though for the same reason, that absence isn't proof of anything on its own.

What is fair to say: more than seven months after Politico's story ran, there is no public record of a formal FEC enforcement complaint or proceeding concerning this particular spending. Tenney says she has nothing to hide. An FEC proceeding could provide an official resolution, but there is no public indication that one has begun.

This isn't the first time Tenney's campaign spending has raised questions. A 2021 investigation by the Daily Beast reported that her campaign paid more than $100,000 to businesses she owned or operated. The Daily Beast itself noted that payments to a candidate's own businesses aren't automatically improper if the services were legitimate and priced at fair market value, so this wasn't a finding of wrongdoing either, just an unresolved question, the same shape as the one this piece is about. A campaign finance expert said at the time that voters deserved an explanation or an investigation. Neither ever came, at least not publicly. Five years later, a separate report has raised a new set of questions about Tenney's campaign spending, and a Congresswoman is once again left tainted by an accusation during her re-election campaign.

There is at least one confirmed instance of the FEC actually taking up a complaint that named Tenney, though it involved a different matter entirely: a 2019 complaint over how the NRCC and several campaigns, including Tenney's, allocated the costs of joint television ads in 2018. In September 2021, the Commission deadlocked 3-3 on proposed "reason to believe" findings involving several respondents, including Tenney, and also deadlocked 3-3 on a proposed dismissal. The Commission subsequently voted 6-0 to close the file, with the FEC's public disposition listing the matter as "Dismissed-Other." It's not evidence of anything about the current tennis spending or the 2021 self-dealing story, both separate matters. The result there was neither a finding of a violation nor a substantive determination that Tenney had violated the law: the Commission deadlocked on the proposed enforcement findings and ultimately closed the file.

What the Public Record Does and Doesn't Show

The public record establishes that Tenney's campaign reported the hotel, travel, and Lacoste expenditures described above. It also establishes that her campaign denied wrongdoing and that at least one opponent publicly called for FEC scrutiny. What the public record does not establish is whether Tenney attended either tournament, whether the Lacoste apparel she wore was purchased with campaign funds, whether the travel had a legitimate campaign or official purpose, or whether anyone has filed a currently pending FEC complaint about the expenditures. Because ongoing FEC matters are confidential, that last question can't be answered definitively from public records alone.

Who's Funding the Tenney Campaign

One more thing worth knowing: campaign donor records aren't secret. Federal law generally requires campaigns to publicly itemize contributions from individuals that exceed $200 within the applicable reporting period. WNYP wasn't able to pull a verified list of individual donors for this piece using automated tools, since the sites that host this data block that kind of access on purpose. But you don't need special access. Anyone can look. OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan campaign finance tracker, breaks down which industries and organizations are funding Tenney's 2026 campaign, drawn straight from her own FEC filings. OpenSecrets' figures indicate roughly two-thirds of her individual donor money comes from outside New York State, with Texas, California, Florida, and Virginia leading the way; WNYP was unable to independently verify that exact figure and encourages readers to check the OpenSecrets page directly. Tenney represents a rural district in upstate New York, but if the figure holds, most of the people paying for her campaign don't live anywhere near it, which is common for members of Congress in competitive races, not unique to Tenney. That transparency exists because Congress decided voters deserve to know who's funding the people who represent them. It's worth using.

An FEC review isn't the only way the underlying facts could be established. Tenney's campaign could also simply release the itineraries, receipts, and documentation that would show what the spending was actually for. But WNYP's argument stands either way: Tenney deserves a real answer to this, not more months of an unresolved accusation. So does every candidate this happens to. Right now, whatever is or isn't happening behind closed doors at the FEC, the public record offers nothing but silence, and silence isn't the same as an answer.