In the race for a U.S. Senate seat in Alaska, two Dan Sullivans will be on Tuesday’s ballot. Dan S. Sullivan is the Republican incumbent. Dan J. Sullivan is a retired teacher who has no party affiliation. Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has ordered a probe centered on Democrat Mary Peltola's campaign and whether it recruited Dan J. to spoil the election and draw votes away from Dan S.
A similar scenario is seemingly playing out in New York’s 113th State Assembly District race — incumbent Democrat Carrie Woerner is facing Republican Allen Caruso… and 22-year-old Thomas Kenny, whose campaign is tied to Caruso’s in a couple of notable ways.
WAMC’s Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Aaron Shellow-Lavine discussed the similarities between Kenny and Caruso with New York Focus’ Chris Bragg.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Shellow-Lavine: Over the weekend, I was forwarded a text blast from Thomas Kenny's campaign, where I was able to take the photos that were sent out with it, do a little digging on the metadata from them, and they are linked to Alan Caruso's campaign in a way that you had reported on a little bit previously in the last week or so. I wanted to give you a chance to talk about what you were able to find, and then we can bring it back to talk about the most recent, you know, fold in this relationship between the two campaigns.
Bragg: Right. So, I also looked at metadata. I can barely spell metadata, honestly. I am not a tech expert, but somebody also sent that to me and showed me how to do that. So, the metadata on the images that were uploaded to Thomas Kenny's website shows that they were basically—the graphic design was done by Alan Caruso, who works for. he, I'm sorry, he works. I'm sorry, it was done by Brandon Acres, who works for Alan Caruso's campaign, also a business partner, other relationships with him, and then Alan Caruso's campaign website also has images that were created by Brandon Acres. So pretty unusual that a campaign aide to one candidate would be creating graphic design for another candidate.
Shellow-Lavine: And it wasn't just sort of the images on the website. There's a Squarespace, which is, you know, a way that folks are able to create websites. The Squarespace account was also linked pretty, you know, directly to Brandon Acres as well, right?
Bragg: Yeah, they were created on the same second, apparently, which is crazy. So yeah, the one square so the square the Squarespace account that created Thomas Kenny's website was registered to Brandon Acres at the same second, so that seems pretty definitive.
Shellow-Lavine: Then there were also links that you were able to report on through Venmo.
Bragg: Thomas Kenny did have four friends on Venmo, including Caruso's campaign manager, as well as two relatives of Caruso's campaign manager out of his four friends. After I asked about it, those friends disappeared. So, you know, you can't definitively say that any payments were made between these parties from that. But I did ask about it and got no answer. You know, in terms of Kenny's campaign spending, there's basically no information on the Board of Elections website. You're required to disclose who you paid through your campaign. He's disclosed paying nobody, even though you know he had to fight off court challenges in two different cases. Had to presumably pay an election lawyer. He has this campaign website at least, no expenses whatsoever for it, so it does raise the question: like, how are these things paid for? He did apparently put $5,500 of his own money into his campaign. 22-year-old who works at an Amazon warehouse, but in any case, you know, there's no spending at all, so it does raise the question: like, how are these things paid for?
Shellow-Lavine: Right. So, question marks abound certainly in a lot of the reporting for this three-way race at the moment. Just to touch on sort of a little bit of the point that you had just made as far as the response to a lot of these questions. You know, as reporters, we raise these questions. We bring them to the people who are involved to give them a chance to respond. What kind of response have you been getting as far as the seemingly, you know, links between Alan Caruso and Thomas Kenny's campaign?
Bragg: Yeah, Thomas Kenny sent me just a statement saying, basically, I am the candidate for the Working Families Party and No Kings Party ballot line, which is factually true, but not responsive to my question about if he was a spoiler candidate. And then Alan Caruso, through a spokesperson, basically just said, "I'm I've been too busy with my campaign to be paying attention to other campaigns, and the spokesperson also kind of tried to distance Caruso from Brandon Acres, even though they're, you know, business partners, one-time romantic partners, apparently. Other things been paid. Brandon Acres has been paid $108,000 by Caruso's campaign, but basically his campaign spokesperson tried to kind of paint him as like an independent contractor. Even though Acres, you know, at the time of the creation of these websites was actually on the payroll of Caruso's campaign.
Shellow-Lavine: Just, you know, you brought it up there. I want to bring it back up, Thomas Kenny. Will appear on the New York Working Families Party line, as well as the No Kings line. You know, the "No Kings" line. The New York Working Families Party has come out and essentially condemned Kenny for appearing on that line. They've said he has no relationship to the Working Families Party whatsoever. That, you know, I think they called him a thief, essentially, you know, really calling him a spoiler candidate. And then the local Indivisible Adirondack Saratoga, or Indivisible ADK Saratoga, who is the local group that has organized dozens, you know, handfuls really, of the No Kings rallies, as many people might think of them, right here in Saratoga Springs, within the 113th district, they've come out and essentially said the same thing, calling Thomas Kenny this spoiler candidate to not vote for him. As far as spoiler candidates go, it's not an uncommon thing to have them in New York. In your experience, and in this reporting, is sort of the extent to which this is happening uncommon.
Bragg: It has happened a few times recent years. So, in the assembly race we're talking about, Carrie Woerner did not seek the Working Families Party endorsement, which is notable. She's also not you know she's basically like opposing Kenny running on this line, but also didn't seek it herself, which is interesting. But that really opened up the opportunity for Kenny in a way because, you know, he was a member of the Conservative Party, kind of without anybody noticing, switched Working Families, and then was able to gather enough signatures to petition on the ballot without anybody noticing. And he didn't have to run a primary for the Working Families Party line because Woerner wasn't trying to get it and nobody else was, so that made it easier. You know, in a congressional race in 2024, Mike Lawler down in the Hudson Valley area, there was a Working Families Party candidate where there was a primary. The Democrat in that congressional race was trying to petition onto the did petition onto the Working Families line, tried to run in the primary, and basically about 300 conservative party members switched over to Working Families right before the primary, and that kind of swung the vote so that the conservative party, the former Republican who was running to be the Working Families Party candidate got the nomination that helped a little bit at least with Lawler winning re-election with you know somebody else running besides the Democrat on the Working Families Party line in the general election and then there was the craziest case which happened last year down in Huntington, Long Island, a town down there where a woman who was 83 years old was put on the ballot and got something like 13% of the vote. It ended up swinging the election towards the Republican. And Newsday tracked this woman down, and she had no idea she was even on the ballot. There was later a New York Magazine article about how she'd gotten put on there by some supporters of the Republican crazy story, but so this is an increasingly, you know, common kind of thing in New York politics.
Shellow-Lavine: Well, Chris, thanks so much for taking a couple minutes and walking through the twists and turns of all of the interconnected relationships here in the 113th race. If anything interesting, I'll say when the next interesting thing, happens in this race, we'd love to have you back on.
Bragg: Alright. Thanks so much.
