Thomas Kenny is still on the Working Families Party line and the independent No Kings ballot line he created for the 113th Assembly District this November, even though the party he's supposedly representing says it wants nothing to do with him. The Working Families Party has publicly disavowed Kenny as a candidate, accusing him of using its ballot line to siphon votes from incumbent Democrat Carrie Woerner in her race against Republican Allen Caruso.
Party Says It Never Endorsed Him
According to The Post-Star, Working Families Party officials say the party had no affiliation with Kenny. New York Focus reported that since Kenny launched his campaign early in 2026, he had virtually no public presence outside his website. The party has accused him of acting as a sock puppet for Caruso, the Republican candidate in the race.
Kenny ran unopposed for the Working Families Party nomination, according to New York Focus.
A Tangled Web Between Two Campaign Websites
The questions about Kenny's candidacy sharpened considerably with reporting from New York Focus, which examined metadata behind both Kenny's and Caruso's campaign websites. The outlet found that both sites were created by the same person — a Caruso campaign aide named Brandon Acres. Four graphics uploaded to Kenny's site in April came from a Canva account belonging to Acres, and that same account supplied five graphics to Caruso's website between February and August, New York Focus reported.
The digital fingerprints went deeper still. The Squarespace account behind Kenny's website was created on February 5, 2025, at 1:29:34 a.m. — a timestamp matching, to the second, an account tied to Acres on Caruso's website, according to the outlet's review. The Post-Star separately reports that Kenny's and Caruso's nominating petitions were witnessed by the same people. Acres, for his part, collected nearly $8,000 as a Caruso campaign worker and later received a $100,000 payment from the Caruso campaign through his company, Anderson Strategies, for professional services, New York Focus reported.
Caruso has said he had no knowledge of either rival's internal operations. “I am not aware of the inner workings of either of my opponents' campaigns,” he said, according to New York Focus.
Residency Fight Fizzled, But Questions Lingered
Kenny's path onto the ballot wasn't limited to petitions and party politics — it also survived a residency challenge in court. The Post-Star reports that Kenny moved from his parents' home in Queensbury to an address in Glens Falls, and changed his party affiliation from Conservative to Working Families through the Department of Motor Vehicles website, using his cellphone to update both his registration and address on DMV records. He later updated his listed address from Queensbury to Glens Falls in person at the Warren County Board of Elections.
A state Supreme Court justice dismissed a lawsuit challenging that residency, allowing Kenny to remain on the Working Families line, Times Union reported. Court records reproduced by Justia show the dispute centered on whether Kenny's 113th Assembly District residency should count from an October 2025 lease he signed in Glens Falls or from a later Board of Elections address update. New York law requires Assembly candidates to have resided in their district for the year before the election. The court accepted Kenny's testimony that his phone had automatically populated his parents' Queensbury address when he changed his party registration on February 11, 2026; the plaintiff failed to prove that Kenny lived at his parents' home or intended to return there, Times Union reported.
A separate legal fight challenged the signatures behind Kenny's spot on the independent No Kings ballot line he created. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, the Times Union reported. Even so, Working Families officials said at the time that they intended to pursue Kenny's removal after the primary election.
A Pattern Playing Out Across New York
The party's broader complaint is that Kenny's candidacy fits a pattern of Republicans allegedly hijacking its ballot line in races across the state — organizers elsewhere have often told voters to simply skip their party's line on Election Day when similar disputes arose, the Times Union reported.
New York Focus points to a comparable case from 2024, when the Working Families Party accused former Republican Anthony Frascone of running on its line to benefit Republican U.S. Representative Mike Lawler; Frascone went on to beat the Democrat in that race by fewer than 300 votes. Whatever happens with Kenny's standing on the ballot going forward, voters in the 113th Assembly District will choose this November among Woerner, Caruso and Kenny, who remains listed on the independent No Kings ballot line he created and the Working Families Party line, according to WNYT.
