To fill Dale Sweetland’s political shoes, three candidates are running for the Onondaga County Legislature’s 12th District seat.
Sweetland has held the 12th District seat for 14 years. But this year, Sweetland was campaigning for county executive instead. He lost the Republican nomination to Joanie Mahoney and can’t return to his old seat on the county legislature. One of the candidates who wants to fill his shoes is Lee Stemmer of the Conservative Party. He praises Sweetland for his work in the district.
“As politicians go, this guy is pretty clean and ethical and principled.” [Lee Stemmer]
The two other candidates competing to fill this open seat are Republican Robert DeMore and Democrat Victoria Lightcap. The 12th District includes Here’s look at each candidate:
Robert DeMore is on the ballot for both the Republican and Independence parties.
He’s a lawyer by profession—and has worked in local government for over 14 years. DeMore says he enjoyed serving as both Fabius town supervisor and Fabius town justice.
“I’ve been doing it as 14 years as supervisor and town justice for six years, or eight years. And I’ve seen how local government can help people with problems.” [Robert DeMore]
If elected, he says some of the issues he plans to tackle are taxes, economic growth, and protecting the farms.
“To save money we can go back to shared services and governments working together. We can reduce taxes — if you reduce taxes you make the area more attractive to businesses and then for farming.” [Robert DeMore]
For the Democratic party, the 12th District candidate is Victoria Lightcap. She also has the endorsement of the Working Families Party.
She has worked as a trial lawyer. She says she’s studied political science since the 7th grad. But she’s only recently had the chance to run for office.
“I really have the ability to do it when my kids got a little older. I’ve always been involved in the community and with my kids, trying to be a part, an active part of the community.” [Victoria Lightcap]
Lightcap suggests her district has the potential to move forward by lowering taxes and making Onondaga County a place people want to live.
“Students want to go outside Onondaga County for better opportunity. We need to turn that around and do that by bringing a new generation of business here — business that is going to be founded on high-tech green industry.”[Victoria Lightcap]
Lightcap also suggests getting people more involved in the political process.
“By implementing firehouse chats when we have a public dialogue, not just me speaking to people. I want to have perspective and hear people.” [Victoria Lightcap]
For the Conservative Party, the candidate is Lee Stemmer.
He’s worked in marketing, served in the U.S. Army and taken thousands of photographs in his travels to Europe.
But now Stemmer is retired. Stemmer says he’s running for the 12th District seat for two reasons.
“Number one, I didn’t want to give the conservative position up to a liberal. Essentially that was the main reason. Then I thought if Sweetland wins he could use a political friend on the legislature.” [Lee Stemmer]
Stemmer admits that, if he’s elected, his biggest challenge is convincing companies to come to Syracuse. He says businesses go where the markets are and the taxes here in Upstate New York make it an undesirable.
“The main thing would be to find a sensible, intelligent, and workable way to attract more jobs to Syracuse. They ain’t coming just because we need them.” [Lee Stemmer]
The election is Nov. 6.
For Democracywise, I’m Amy Aaronson.
(Amy Aaronson is a junior broadcast journalism student.)
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