Inspiration. Opportunity. Representation. Why Sharon Owens’ win is more than a Syracuse milestone

Syracuse — The congratulatory messages came from all over the country in the hours after Sharon Owens won the Syracuse mayoral race.

They included Facebook posts from media companies with more than a million followers, including Essence magazine and TheGrio media network. Nonprofit groups such as the African American Mayors Association and Higher Heights for America chimed in with kudos.

Even the former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, called the mayor-elect.

News of Owens’ victory Tuesday spread far and quickly because she’s the first Black resident elected mayor in Syracuse’s 177-year history. The Upstate cities of Buffalo and Rochester experienced that milestone 20 years and 31 years earlier, respectively. Joining Syracuse this year was Albany, where voters made chief city auditor Dorcey Applyrs their first Black mayor.

In Syracuse, where about 26% of the population is Black and 50% is white, voters have elected 54 white mayors before making Owens the 55th person to hold the job.

The African American Mayor’s Association reports that 60% of the nation’s 75 biggest cities have had a Black mayor. Five of the 10 largest cities in New York had never elected a Black mayor before this year.

Black leaders and political observers in Syracuse said this moment’s importance goes well beyond what naysayers would describe as identity politics.

It represents a key breakthrough for generations of residents of color who have slowly seen the slate of local elected officials include more people who know the same challenges they and their families have faced.

It provides inspiration for young minority citizens to jump into public service and politics at a time when there’s been considerable pushback nationally against diversity-focused initiatives.

And it presents an opportunity to craft policy that’s more effective at addressing socio-economic obstacles that have disproportionally affected communities of color.

“Black people have been in the city of Syracuse since the 1800s, so now that they see it, they can actually believe that they can do it, too,” said Deka Eysaman, a lifelong Syracuse resident who has worked in leadership posts at multiple nonprofit organizations, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, in jobs focused on advancing racial and economic justice.

“This really kind of shatters stereotypes about who is fit to lead in high-ranking positions,” Eysaman added.

Owens herself made a similar point in her election night victory speech before more than 300 racially diverse supporters. She embraced what her win meant for older Black Syracusans, especially those who told her how moved they were to vote for her.

“You are my elders, all of you who I’ve met and said, ‘I walked into a booth today and I’ve voted for a Black woman to be the mayor of Syracuse,’ ” Owens said. “‘Not only is she a Black woman, but she’s qualified to do the job!’”

Running on records first

Although Owens discussed the history-making potential of her election during the campaign, it was not front-and-center.

That jumped out to Nina Moore, a political science professor at Colgate University and a Black city resident.

“On the surface, it was stunningly irrelevant,” Moore said about the Owens campaign’s messaging. “You didn’t hear her cloak herself with her being a Black woman.”

Moore said that approach can help candidates of color reach a broad spectrum of voters who, regardless of their race, care first and foremost about kitchen-table issues like the economy, safety and city services.

Syracuse’s highest-ranking Black city official, Common Council President Helen Hudson, has taken this approach herself. She did not endorse any of the four candidates in the general election, but did publicly back her council colleague Pat Hogan, a white man, in the Democratic primary.

Both Hudson and Owens, registered Democrats, endorsed Mayor Ben Walsh in his two campaigns against candidates of color. Hudson said minority candidates need to avoid making campaigns mostly about race.

“I think when we do that, we’re really hindering ourselves,” she said. “Let’s look at the best-qualified candidate. Let’s just don’t say, well, because it’s a woman or it’s a person of color or it’s whatever. Let’s just look at the overall candidate and go from there.”

The other Black candidate on this year’s general election ballot, independent community activist Alfonso Davis, agreed.

“Why would I, or even Sharon, make that overture to say ‘Elect me, because I’m the first’? Everybody knows we will be the first,” Davis said. “It’s about saying that I’m the best candidate and let’s make history.”

But in this year’s race, Moore said, there was also “an undercurrent” that was particularly palpable in predominantly Black church congregations in the city.

Owens herself is a pastor who for many years has preached at her mother’s church in Geneva. She’s made strong connections with clergy leaders in the city.

Those include Bishop H. Bernard Alex, pastor of Victory Temple Fellowship Church in Syracuse. He was among a group of clergy leaders who endorsed Owens ahead of the primary on Juneteenth Day.

“The African American church, from slavery to Reconstruction, Jim Crow, all the way through, has served as the motivator spiritually but also actionably,” he said. “It is not just isolated to singing inside the walls of the church, but it is to take that motivation and then be engaged in the process and let that be your grounding.”

Alex was also part of a key moment in the race. As president of the Syracuse chapter of the National Action Network, he helped organize a rally in February to denounce comments that one of Owens’ opponents, Tim Rudd, made comparing Owens to a slave mother used by the master to break the children.

Rallygoers said the comments were a racist attack aimed at belittling the accomplishments of Owens, the deputy mayor since 2018 who had previously worked for decades in nonprofit leadership posts and as a city neighborhood development commissioner.

“We had to remove that, to say ‘We’re not going to have that,’” Alex said of Rudd’s comments. “You’re not going to make those kind of statements about her.”

The primary and general election campaigns that followed focused largely on issues and records.

“Deputy Mayor Owens was someone who is really focused on the issues and selling herself as someone who is qualified,” Moore said. “I was struck by the degree to which she wanted to show how knowledgeable she was, that she wasn’t simply there in the shadows. ... And that’s a meaningful advancement for all politics to get away from the ad hominem and focus more on what matters.”

Hope for better representation

Eysaman said the challenges candidates of color have faced in getting elected often stem from “deeply entrenched racial segregation” in cities like Syracuse. That leads to disinvestment in those neighborhoods, promotes stereotypes about who is fit to lead and contributes to lower turnout in elections.

When candidates of color win races, Eysaman said, especially in high-profile posts such as mayor, it can shatter those barriers.

“I think that this representation can inspire other people of color ... especially our younger folks, to aspire toward careers in politics,” she said. “And it could also have the effect of sparking increased political participation of residents of color and further greater trust in government in the democratic process. This really could ignite that or could be that spark that reignites disinvested, politically active residents and ignites new ones.”

In an interview the morning after Election Day, Owens said she spoke to many young Black residents, especially women, during her campaign. Many were deeply hurt when Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump last year, but have found a new sense of hope because of this year’s mayoral race.

“It is important for people because it does mean that what you work hard for, what you believe, is a possibility,” she said. “When people galvanize under the unified statement about who we are, who we represent, it is possible.”

Eysaman recently became the first executive director of the South Side Community Growth Foundation, which aims to help struggling neighborhoods with financial investments in housing and community engagement. She said the benefits of diversity in government also include tangible improvements for citizens.

“Adding elected officials of color can diversify perspectives at the decision-making tables,” Eysaman said. “And I think that supports or will drive more creative and equitable policy solutions.”

An example of that in Syracuse could materialize with the redevelopment of the area under and around the I-81 viaduct that’s coming down, Eysaman said.

“Representation alone can kind of build greater trust in government, in the democratic process,” she said. “So do I think that electing the city’s first Black mayor will invoke hope for people that they’re not for that they’re not going to be left out of the investments? ... I think the answer to that is absolutely yes.”

Owens agreed, but said the dynamic is nuanced. The trust is not something she or any other elected official of color can take for granted, a lesson she learned after becoming deputy mayor.

“Even though I had been a long-standing community person, because I came to government, all of a sudden people were looking at me like something about me had changed, and it had not,” she said. “But those same individuals call me now if there’s something they’re concerned about. ... I want to build on that, build on the ability for people to feel that they have in City Hall the voice, the sound, the experience that they can resonate with and that they can trust in.”

Decades of breakthroughs

In an interview the morning after her win, Owens was quick to praise the political trailblazers who broke down racial barriers in Syracuse politics.

They included Malchester Reeves, the first Black person elected to office in the city when he won a race to represent the 15th Ward on the Onondaga County Board of Supervisors in 1961.

Reeves protested the urban renewal program that destroyed hundreds of homes in his district, even getting arrested at a sit-in outside then Mayor William Walsh’s office. More than 60 years later, Owens, the deputy mayor under Walsh’s grandson, Ben, won on a campaign that included promises to protect residents in the same area of the city when the Interstate 81 viaduct comes down.

Other milestones followed Reeves. In 1966, Robert Warr was the first Black candidate elected to the Syracuse school board. Clarence “Junie” Dunham was elected to the Onondaga County Legislature in 1973. Warr was elected to the Syracuse common council in 1975.

In 1987, Langston McKinney and Sandra Townes were elected Syracuse City Court judges.

Council leadership barriers fell after the turn of the century. Bethaida “Bea” González was the first Latina elected Syracuse Common Council president in 2001. In 2009, Van Robinson became the first Black council president.

Black and Latina mayoral candidates have made the general election ballot prior to this year. Otis Jennings was the Conservative Party candidate in 2009. Juanita Perez Williams became the first person of color to win a major party nomination when she became the Democratic nominee in 2017. Khalid Bey was the first major party Black candidate on a mayoral ballot in 2021.

“It is standing on people’s shoulders,” Owens said. “Each generation built a foundation that you stand on and you’re able to climb.”

For Owens personally, the most influential political mentor she had was Robinson, who died at age 87 last spring. The had many conversations in City Hall on subjects ranging from city operations to Robinson’s groundbreaking calls for the I-81 viaduct to come down long before others joined him.

Robinson got to witness the first seven months of Owens’ campaign. She would have lunch with him and his wife, Linda Brown-Robinson, to get some encouragement and guidance.

On Election Day, Owens and Brown-Robinson saw each other at a breakfast that morning held in the Dunbar Center, the place where Owens started her work in public service as an intern more than 40 years ago.

“She became teary and she said, ‘I just wish Van was here to see this,’” Owens said.

Brown-Robinson herself has been a trailblazing Black community leader, serving for many years as president of the local NAACP chapter and on numerous other community boards and statewide advisory panels. She spent much of Tuesday with Owens, going from the breakfast to the spaghetti lunch at Our Lady of Pompeii to the election party venue itself, watching Owens interact with hundreds of people.

“I got a chance to actually see Sharon with her best feet forward,” Brown Robinson said. “She’s really a natural. And it’s not phony, and it’s not contrived. She just does what Sharon does best.”

Brown-Robinson said she’s certain Van has been looking down from Heaven, feeling “pleased and proud.” And if he could speak directly with Owens, she knows he would have just three words to say: “You go, girl.”