When voting for mayor in November, Syracuse residents have three options: a high-profile incumbent, a first-time candidate and a staunch conservative.
The incumbent is Mayor Stephanie Miner, a Democrat. Challenging her is Ian Hunter, a Republican businessman running on the Conservative Party line; and Green Party candidate Kevin Bott, who runs a political theater group called D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival.
On Sept. 10, Miner won the Democratic primary with 54 percent of the vote for a second term as mayor. She beat out her two Democratic challengers — Common Councilor Pat Hogan and Alfonso Davis, an insurance agent. In the primary, Miner received 3,651 votes, compared to 1,936 for Hogan and 1,172 for Davis.
The general election is Nov. 5.
Essentially assured of her reelection, Miner will likely spend little time debating or acknowledging her opponents before November’s election, according to political experts.
The pattern among candidates who — like Miner — are overwhelming favorites is to run a low-key campaign, said Grant Reeher, a political scientist at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Typically, he said, those candidates highlight their accomplishments and positive attributes.
“It’s something that’s always been the case, in my experience,” Reeher said.
Here are snapshots of the candidates still in the mayoral race:
Stephanie Miner (incumbent, Democrat)
In her 2009 win, Miner made political history: the first woman to become mayor of Syracuse.
Stephanie Miner
Before that victory, Miner, 43, had a long political resume: In 2001 and 2005, she was elected Common Councilor-at-Large. While on the council, she was chairperson of the Education and Human Development committee; a member of Airport, Finance Taxation and Assessment and a member of the Inter-governmental Services Consolidation committees.
Both as mayor and on the Common Council, Miner earned a reputation for being something of a maverick and often controversial. For example, she was an early opponent of tax breaks for mega-mall Destiny USA. In February, she was in a dispute with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, over what she called his failure to address the dire financial condition of most of the state’s cities. Miner urged legislators to reject Cuomo’s budget – which proposed that cities reduce their pension payments and make up the difference in the future. In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, she called Cuomo’s plan “an accounting gimmick.”
Outside of politics, she works as a partner at Blitman & King law firm.
In her bid for re-election, Miner cites as a top priority the redevelopment of The Hotel Syracuse into a usable property — part of her vision for downtown revitalization. The hotel has been closed for nearly a decade with stalled progress from out-of-county developers. Miner is working to find a developer who can give the hotel a modern twist, said Miner’s campaign manager, Kyle Madden, in an email interview.
Another goal, Madden said, is to begin the second phase of the Joint Schools Construction Board project to renovate all the city’s schools. The funding has passed the state legislature and now awaits the governor’s signature. During Miner’s first term, the project renovated four schools: George W. Fowler High School, the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central, Dr. Weeks Elementary, and H.W. Smith K-8.
Crime and violence — two of the largest challenges Syracuse faces — are also on Miner’s agenda, Madden said. Miner wants to continue data-driven policing, in which crime statistics help police allocate resources to areas where crime is highest.
Her views toward the city’s more controversial projects, such as Interstate 81 and Destiny USA, are straightforward, Madden said. Miner argues that I-81 is a physical barrier dividing the city as well as an eyesore that needs to be torn down. Miner has been a longtime critic of the tax breaks Destiny USA developers have received at the taxpayers’ expense.
“She will not support,” Madden said, “any additional tax breaks for Destiny USA.”
Ian Hunter (challenger, Conservative Party)
Hunter, 71, is campaigning on a platform of empowering individuals to make their own decisions on many public and consumer issues.
“What about the choice of where to send your kids to school? The choice to pick which television channels you’re paying for?” he said. “Whenever I mention it to people, their eyes light up. It’s really very popular.”
Hunter is project manager for Last Chance Recycling, his wife Joy’s mulch recycling company in DeWitt. He’s a life-long native of Syracuse, and has lived in the same house in the Ward 17 for 44 years, where he raised eight children.
During the 1970s, Hunter ran for the Syracuse Common Council, and later ran for a seat on the Onondaga County Legislature. In 2001, he ran for mayor on the Republican Party line.
Hunter originally wanted to run on the Republican ticket this year, but the party rejected his candidacy. He now runs on the Conservative Party line.
One of his priorities for the city, he said, is giving students the freedom to attend better schools. Parents would get a government voucher of about $2,500 so that they could homeschool their children or send them to a private school, he said.
He would also pursue the privatization of garbage pick-up and waste from the city, he said. He cites his background in the recycling business as giving him insight into the city’s needs. By privatizing trash collection, Hunter calculates, the city could save about $300 a household.
He often finds himself frustrated with Time Warner Cable’s channel services, he said. So he wants to force the company to put together an a la carte service, where people could simply pick and pay for whatever channels they want.
His odds at winning the election are a toss-up, he said. “I’d say it’s 50-50,” he said. “I’m coming after Miner. I’m coming after her with the issues. If people listen to what I have to say it’ll be close.”
Kevin Bott (challenger, Green Party)
The Green Party has never won a race in Syracuse. Kevin Bott argues that he could bring them their first victory with his candidacy for mayor.
“I’m pretty confident our ideas will resonate with people,” Bott said.
But Bott’s challenge is to get his ideas heard. As a candidate running outside the two-party system without resources or contributions, it’s difficult for him to broadcast his platform, he said.
To get the recognition, he has challenged Stephanie Miner to a televised debate. On Sept. 23, Miner told him she’d consider hearing his platform, Bott said, and would have her campaign manager get back to him.
Bott, who has never run for public office, has a doctorate in educational theater from New York University. He’s worked as director at Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a downstate prison arts non-profit organization.
In 2010, Bott moved to Syracuse to work for the group Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, an association of 100 colleges and universities. He opened the political theater group D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival in Syracuse soon after.
In his bid for election, Bott cites public education as a top priority. In a live Sept. 18 Q&A on Syracuse.com, Bott suggested resisting high-stake testing, arguing that it undermines critical thinking and is a source for failure of public schools.
He hopes to use a dialog and collaborative approach, he said, to solving what he calls Syracuse’s day-to-day realities, such as the poverty level, war on drugs and crime.
“We have a serious gang-violence problem,” he said, “and the highest number of homicides the city’s had in its history.”
Despite the poor success rate of the Green Party during elections, Bott expresses confidence in chances and in the power of democracy.
“It’s about standing at the side of regular people,” Bott said, “who are trying to live decent lives.”
(Marwa Eltagouri is a senior with dual majors in political science and magazine journalism.)
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