(Eric Vilas-Boas)
Union man. Proud Irish-American Catholic. Heir to a political tradition.
Those are the driving forces for Chris Ryan. “I’m passionate about workers’ rights and the need to earn a good wage and protect middle-class jobs,” said Ryan.
Ryan, 38, is the Democratic candidate for the District 8 seat in the Onondaga County Legislature in November’s election. He is running against Republican Larry Corso. District 8 is in the center of Onondaga County, including a portion of Solvay, a portion of Geddes, and the northwestern corner of the city of Syracuse.
The election is Nov. 8.
Ryan is a proud Irish-American Catholic who seldom misses mass, say friends, family and political colleagues. He’s also a third-generation member of a prominent Syracuse political clan. For the last 30 years, Ryans have been in local, city, county or state politics. For his part, Chris Ryan has been on a Geddes town councilor for six years. For 15 years, he’s worked for Verizon and is executive vice president of Communications Workers of America Local 1123.
If elected to the county legislature, Ryan saids, he hopes to foster job growth, and expand environmental initiatives and improve public safety in Onondaga County.
He earned a degree in criminal justice at Buffalo State College and is studying industrial labor relations at Cornell University. He and his wife Erin have been married for ten years and have three children.
Ryan’s Irish-American heritage and Catholic faith define much of his life, he and family members say. His 9-year-old daughter Maeve takes Irish step-dancing lessons, a family tradition. His family attends St. Patrick’s Church in Syracuse’s clover-green Tipperary Hill neighborhood, and has done so since Ryan was a boy. And Ryan drinks at the Blarney Stone Tavern.
His brother Kevin, 40, serves on the board of the Syracuse Irish Festival. The brothers are godfather to each other’s oldest child.
“We grew up in your classic Irish-American Catholic family,” brother Kevin said.
Ryan’s uncle, Ed Ryan — now the Democratic commissioner for the county elections board — gave Chris his start in politics. In the 1990s, Ryan and his brother Kevin manned their uncle Ed’s campaign booth at the York State Fair. In addition, young Chris Ryan distributed fliers, put up signs, knocked on doors and answered phone calls from potential voters.
Ed Ryan describes young Chris this way: “He gave me 100 percent of his time to help me.” Ed Ryan remains Chris’ mentor. They talk at least a couple of times a week, they say. They play golf and Ed, said Chris, gives him pointers on what to wear and how to talk to the press.
Right after college, Ryan started working for Verizon. As a field technician, he installs and repairs signal equipment. In 1996, he also started working for the Communications Workers of America, first as a steward and eventually moving up to executive vice-president. That makes him a chief negotiator for the unionized workers. For example, in 2008, he helped negotiate a deal with Verizon that brought 335 above-average-paying jobs to Syracuse for a new call center in the area, The Post-Standard reported.
In August, he and Verizon’s other union workers nationally went on strike to protest the company’s plan to cut benefits. In Syracuse, Ryan was the union’s spokesman to the press. The strike lasted two week. But its success is debated.
Said Ryan: “Every day is a struggle.”
In his campaign for the District 8 seat in the county legislature, he calls for creating more technology start-ups and expanding Onondaga County’s environmentalist initiatives like Save the Rain, a water conservation program. His biggest concern is public safety, he has said. He urges combining the resources of some police departments.
As a Geddes town councilor, Ryan wins praise from some colleagues for being bipartisan and willing to look for compromises. Manny Falcone, a Republican and Geddes town supervisor,
called Ryan a hard worker, a man who makes sure all the paperwork is in order to the smallest detail.
“He won’t stop,” said Falcone, “until a job’s done.”
(Eric Vilas-Boas is a senior with dual majors in magazine journalism and English and textual studies.)
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