She is a mother of four kids. She’s a former machine operator and labor-union member. She’s a first-time candidate for public office.
Meet Carol Sinesi, the Democratic challenger for the Onondaga County Legislature seat from District 4 in the Nov. 5 election.
“A call to action, stepping up when needed – that is what I do,” said Sinesi.
Sinesi is running against two-term incumbent Judy Tassone, R-Liverpool.
District 4 includes the town of Liverpool, Onondaga Lake, Geddes, and a sliver of Northside Syracuse. Voter enrollment is close between the two major parties. Of the district’s 15,655 registered voters, 33 percent are Democrats; 31 percent are Republican and 25 percent are unaffiliated with a party.
As she campaigns for the District 4 seat, Sinesi emphasizes her background in social work and in a labor union as among her strengths. She calls for more attention to the county’s budget on public safety, public access to Onondaga Lake and a more thorough examination of changes to Interstate 81. She’s also an avid traveler to Europe, hiker and a motorcyclist, said friends and family.
Sinesi got into politics when her friend and neighbor, Carrie Roseamelia, ran for Salina Town Council in 2011. She called Sinesi, recalled Roseamelia, and asked for help going door to door and handing out fliers. When Roseamelia was later elected head of the Salina democratic committee, she invited Sinesi to attend some committee meetings.
From there, Sinesi helped shape the Democratic committee, said Roseamelia. “She gave me an agenda,” said Roseamelia. “It sounds funny, but we didn’t have anything like that.”
In 2011, Sinesi became the vice-chair of the committee. From there, Roseamelia said, the two of them have tried to play a bigger role in local politics.
In Sinesi’s bid for the county legislature, Roseamelia praises Sinesi for her organizational skills and willingness to directly tackle challenges. She cites Sinesi’s work as a machine operator at New Process Gear. “She’s a former union worker. She’d worked in a plant with mostly men. She understands mechanics, she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty,” said Roseamelia. “That makes her a very interesting candidate. She understands how policies affect everyday people.”
Carol Sinesi and her husband, Robert, have four children: Chad, Rick, Samantha and Robbie. Sinesi graduated from Syracuse University with a master’s in social work. She also interned at Vera House in Syracuse, a shelter for abused women, and has done social work with the Syracuse Veterans Administration and lectured at Upstate University Hospital.
Sinesi describes political office as a natural progression for a social worker. It’s her duty to help people, she said. She describes politics as moving the one-on-one of social work to what she calls the “macro level” of policy making.
It has always been her style to get directly involved when an issue needs to be addressed, she said. She cited an incident at New Process Gear as a testament to her methodology.
One day, she says, she walked into the building and it smelled different. The company had just changed machine oils and workers started getting sick. Workers started getting rashes, nosebleed, vomiting and passing out. This went on for a week, Sinesi said, and no one did anything.
“In a split-second decision, I called my union representative down and asked for a meeting with the engineers up front,” Sinesi said.
She walked into the office with a cell phone and the numbers for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, she recalled, as well as three different news stations. Within ten minutes she had the meeting she demanded, she said.
It was her way of responding to a “call to action,” she said.
Outside of politics, Sinesi said, she loves to travel and her favorite places are in Europe. She has been to Iceland, Holland and Belgium. She and her husband, Robert, married in Norway.
She likes to hike as well, she said. She uses the local trails around Onondaga lake and travels farther to the Appalachians. For a time, she used to accompany her husband around town on his Harley Davidson motorcycle.
Sinesi highlighted the following issues in her bid for election:
Crime:
She’s received a lot of complaints about crime in the county, she said. “I approached one door and a person said to me ‘I have drug dealers living next door.’ It’s a problem,” Sinesi said.
The majority of the crimes are car and garage break-ins committed by teens and young adults, she said. She blames unemployment in the city for the spread of these crimes to the surrounding suburbs. Sinesi calls for an analysis of how the county is spending its money on public safety, which makes up 25 percent of the county budget. She does not have a concrete plan yet, she said, but plans to devote a significant amount of research to crime solutions.
Onondaga Lake:
She is proud, she said, of how the county has cleaned up Onondaga Lake, once considered one of the dirtiest and most polluted bodies of water in the country. The cleanup has invited interest from various developers. It is important that the public retain access to the lake, Sinesi said. She opposes private developers having exclusive use of the lake, she said.
Interstate 81:
As state and local government debate the future of the aging highway through downtown Syracuse, Sinesi calls for more research on solutions. “The truth is not all research has been done, not all data has been collected,” said Sinesi. “That still needs to be done.”
(Ariel Levin-Waldman is a graduate student in broadcast and digital journalism.)
-30-
