A Candidate Says He's a Great Business Owner. Court Records Disagree.

Allen Caruso is a Republican running for a seat in New York's state government. He says he is a successful business owner who has created jobs. But court records — official documents from lawsuits and legal cases — tell a very different story about how his businesses have handled money and debts.

Caruso and his companies have been sued at least 15 times. In at least eight of those cases, courts ruled against him and ordered him to pay money — but records show he still has not paid. In total, he owes more than $350,000 in unpaid debts, tax liens, court judgments, and traffic fines.

Caruso is running in New York's 113th Assembly District, which covers parts of Saratoga, Washington, and Warren counties. The district is currently represented by Democrat Carrie Woerner, who has won her seat by about 10 percent each election since 2015. Caruso's main campaign message is that he understands small business problems and can fix them.

His newest business, a health food restaurant called Thorn + Roots, has been at the center of many of his legal troubles. He started the restaurant in Saratoga Springs in 2018 with his business partner Brandon Acres. The restaurant also opened a second location in Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 2021.

At the New Jersey location, Caruso and Acres personally promised to pay the rent. But within a year, they stopped making payments. By August 2023, the restaurant owed more than $74,000 in unpaid rent, according to court records. The two sides settled the case in February of this year, just one day before the trial was set to begin.

Problems at the New Jersey location did not stop there. In 2024, it was hit with a nearly $15,000 tax lien, meaning the government said money was owed in taxes. In 2025, a bank called Key Bank sued the restaurant for not paying back a loan. A court ordered Caruso and his partners to pay more than $280,000, and Key Bank says that amount still has not been paid.

Back in Saratoga Springs, Caruso fell behind on rent too. A court issued an eviction notice and ordered him to pay more than $26,000. He paid using a credit card in April, but then told his credit card company the charges were fake and got back more than $20,000 through a process called a chargeback. The court reversed its decision, and as of last month, Caruso still owes more than $26,000.

Caruso's legal troubles go beyond business. In 2010, he was arrested at age 21 for drunk driving, and in 2014 he was arrested again for driving without a valid license while going over 105 miles per hour. In 2021, police got a 911 call from a man who said Caruso had wrestled him to the ground, though the man chose not to press charges.

Elsewhere in New York politics, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is trying to win a third term in a competitive district in the Hudson Valley. He is running on an immigration message, criticizing both sanctuary city policies and some of the Trump administration's enforcement actions. His opponent, Democrat Cait Conley, is an Army veteran running for office for the first time.

In another story, New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin showed a deepfake image of herself at a council hearing to prove that Elon Musk's AI company, SpaceXAI, does not have strong enough safety rules. A deepfake is a fake image made by a computer to look real. Menin said she created the image in seconds using SpaceXAI's tool called Grok, and she plans to push the company to do more to protect people.