Left to right: Laurie Camerota, Donna Kaplan, Gretchen Duerr, Cheryl Houston, Ken Willcox (Kathleen Ronayne)
“All of our industry has gone away from here. No one who has worked in industry, in a factory for 30 years, has any other skills to do anything else and there’s nowhere for them to go. I think we need to get more jobs like that around here. I drive around the state of New York for my job and I see the same things other places as I do here.
(Laurie Camerota,32, of Brewerton, nurse case manager, unaffiliated with a party)
“If there are politicians helping small businesses, I’ll vote for them. Just for a part-time employee it cost me an arm and a leg, so I had to let her go because of all the taxes. It’s crazy what they charge small businesses, but that’s never going to go away.”
(Donna Kaplan, 60, of Syracuse, owner of The Framing Studio, Democrat)
“Going into the November elections, I’m actually really involved in drug-policy reform. Me and a bunch of people I know are working with New York Patients First to get medical marijuana passed as far as statewide goals. I’m also really into prison reforms locally. Some really nasty things are going on in our prisons that I would like to see changed.”
(Gretchen Duerr, 22, of Syracuse, employed at Follett’s Orange Bookstore and a graduate student in English education, unaffiliated with a party)
“The housing situation — give us some more housing for the homeless. There’s so many people out here homeless. That’s not how it’s supposed to be — children…come on! They’re sleeping in the street with their parents, sleeping in cars, right here in Syracuse. It’s not supposed to be like that.”
(Cheryl Houston, 49, of Southside in Syracuse, a parking violations officer with the city police department, Democrat)
“I think taxation’s getting a little out of control. I’m not a smoker but the tax on cigarettes is getting completely ridiculous. I think that’s one of the true parts of being an American — you can do whatever you want. And if you want to smoke cigarettes, you should be able to smoke cigarettes.”
(Ken Willcox, 31, of Scotia, shipping supervisor at US Corrugated Inc.,
Democrat)
(Kathleen Ronayne is a junior majoring in newspaper journalism.)
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