For John Sharon, the power of politics became evident at the worst time in his life.
“Unless you’ve ever lived through when your family loses everything, you have no idea,” he said.
When Sharon was 16, his dad, a World War II combat veteran, got sick. The young John had to carry his dad from the house to the car to take him up to the hospital. After his father’s death, John Sharon recalls now, the family lost virtually everything — including the tavern his parents had bought and operated.
The family’s rescuer: Jim Hanley, a Democratic congressman from Central New York from 1965 to 1981. Hanley helped the family get past the Veterans Administration bureaucracy to get the government benefits they needed.
It was a defining experience for him, Sharon said. “That is something that an elected representative ought to do. When people get hurt like that and they’re down, if you can help them, you help them,” Sharon said.
Now Sharon, a former county attorney, is a Republican running for 128th State Assembly District. He is challenging incumbent Assemblyman Sam Roberts, D-Syracuse, in a rematch of the 2010 election. The district includes Salina, DeWitt, Onondaga, and the city’s Southside neighborhood. The election is Nov. 6.
There are 79,933 registered voters in the 128th State Assembly District, according to the New York State Board of Elections. Of those, 44 percent are Democrats, 25 percent are Republicans and 24 percent are not affiliated with any political party.
In the campaign, Sharon casts himself as someone who will be available to the public and stresses his experience as a county attorney, which he says made him a problem-solver. Others who know him well say he’s committed to the community.
He worked for nearly 35 years in the county attorney’s office, starting in 1978 as an assistant. When he earned his law degree in 1993 from Syracuse University, he began to handle trial assignments. In 1999, he became the senior deputy county attorney and ran the litigation department until he retired this past March.
Sharon and his wife of 23 years, Mary Barbara, have three children. She couldn’t say no to him running for office, she said, because he is always doing something to help other people. On their third date, she recalled, he received a call to investigate a major car accident. His reaction, she said, convinced her she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.
“He just went from being personable, friendly, who he is, to business,” she said. “When I saw that transition I said, ‘Wow, that’s a very responsible person’.” She had to go with him to the accident, she said, and he parked far away so she wouldn’t have to see it.
In his campaign, Sharon has been going door-to-door. The campaign has visited over 2,200 households, he said. Voters, he said, tell him that they are concerned about jobs, like the rest of the country.
“This community was built by manufacturing,” he said. “We got to get out there and market it, and we got to look into the tax and regulatory policies that make business feel uncomfortable with New York State.”
He also wants to confront the issue of crime on the city’s Southside, he said. He recalled a recent a community meeting about a shooting there. “These people are talking about people getting killed right down the street from where they live, bullets going through their windows in the middle of the night,” said Sharon. “People shouldn’t have to live that way.”
Now, said Sharon, he wants to help people the same way Congressman Jim Hanley helped his family. Voters, he said “have the resource of somebody like an assemblyman for help, information.” Sharon added: “That’s an important piece of state government that they pay for, that they ought to be aware of.”
(Tom Magnarelli is a graduate student in broadcast and digital journalism. Jamie Hoskins also contributed to this story.)
-30-
