For the third straight mayoral cycle, leading Syracuse Democrats have backed the wrong candidate.
Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens on Tuesday evening won the Democratic Party’s primary election, defeating the party’s designee, Common Councilor Pat Hogan, in the process.
Of the 7,559 votes cast by city Democrats, Owens won nearly three times as many as Hogan. The Deputy Mayor earned 4,711 votes to Hogan’s 1,723. Common Councilor Chol Majok received 1,115 votes.
Owens had already earned the Working Families Party’s endorsement, but can now run on the Democratic line in a general election against a Republican and two independent candidates.
At an election watch party for Hogan, established leaders of the Onondaga County Democratic Committee once again met with disappointment as the deputy mayor defeated the Common Council president pro tempore.
Council President Helen Hudson, Councilor Amir Gethers, Councilor Rasheada Caldwell, Councilor Marty Nave, state Sen. Chris Ryan, Onondaga County Comptroller Marty Masterpole, and assemblymembers Bill Magnarelli and Pam Hunter all attended Hogan’s watch party.
Max Ruckdeschel, the chair of the Onondaga County Democratic Committee, said the party designates its candidates based on who it thinks is best suited to win the general election rather than the primary.
Ruckdeschel did not have a vote in the party’s designation, but said he considers candidates based on who would perform best in office.
“I’m not looking at trying to predict who would win a primary, so I don’t think most of the committee is either,” Ruckdeschel said.
Now that their designee has once again lost a mayoral primary, the local Democrats will now look to work with Owens to win the general mayoral election in November.
“Obviously she had a message that connected with voters in the city of Syracuse,” Ruckdeschel said. “It’s really hard to know with somebody that doesn’t have electoral experience before, how the voters are going to connect with them and how they’re going to do electorally.”
But County Legislator Maurice “Mo” Brown thinks that OCDC knew Owens was the more popular choice, and willingly opted against endorsing her. Brown endorsed Owens and thinks her victory demonstrates the need for the city committee to reckon with its decisions.
Brown said OCDC operates with the assumption that it knows better than its voters, rather than engaging the community and acting according to its voters’ wishes.
“Not only are we not making an effort to listen to them, hear them out, but we’re purposely rejecting them,” Brown said. “I think we know what the community wants, and as OCDC, we purposely fight that, and I don’t understand why.”
Brown wrote a letter last year to the committee, calling for reflection on the party’s values. He wrote that the county committee routinely backed white men only for them to lose to candidates of color.
Owens’ win was only the latest in such a trend. In the 2017 mayoral primary, Juanita Perez Williams beat Democratic party-backed Joe Nicoletti. In the 2021 mayoral primary, Khalid Bey beat Democratic party-backed Michael Greene.
Brown thinks one part of the solution to making the party better align with its voters would be to do away with the party designation altogether.
About 54% of the committee chose Hogan, while just 24% of voters chose Hogan, Brown said.
“The committee is very off of our community, and we really need to look ourselves in the mirror and see why,” Brown said.
The trend of local party leadership picking a candidate their voters reject reflected a similar course correction in New York City, where voters embraced a progressive candidate over a titan of the Democratic establishment.
In the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral election, former state governor Andrew Cuomo – who resigned from that post in 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal – conceded to his opponent, NYC Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani is a young progressive and self-identified democratic socialist, whose apparent victory over the dynastic Democratic governor shocked the party establishment.
After Owens’ victory in the Syracuse primary, Brown compared Mamdani’s voter appeal and upset to Syracuse Democratic candidates who have won election despite losing OCDC’s candidate designation.
“We have this notion of what a good Democratic candidate looks like,” Brown said. “You kind of saw some of it in New York City where Zohran didn’t look the part and Cuomo looks the part.”
Brown said the Democratic Party establishment’s idea of what constitutes a competent or experienced candidate often does not align with its own voters’ demonstrated values.
That showed up in this year’s campaign. Brown chastised the way Hogan chose to appeal to voters.
“They spent like nine grand on billboards, dude,” Brown said. “I do this for a living. That’s a waste of money. You might as well take nine grand and throw it into the ether. Being outspent plus spending money poorly, I think that was bad.”
Owens wasn’t the only candidate neglected by the party to win on Tuesday night.
Self-described democratic socialist Hanah Ehrenreich defeated incumbent Common Councilor Amir Gethers — an OCDC designee — in the primary race for at-large Common Council seat.
Though Brown thinks Owens’ overwhelming victory in the primary proves that OCDC is out of touch with its voters, Ruckdeschel said he wasn’t sure if the party was out of step.
“If the point of the committee was to pick who was going to win the primary, then we could skip the committee and just have a primary,” Ruckdeschel said. “The committee is looking at who do they think really would be the best mayor, in this instance.”
Local Democratic mayoral designees losing their races may be a reflection that average Democratic voters are not engaging with the committee, Ruckdeschel said. He said those voter then could vote, despite not being engaged in the candidate designation process.
Some of the local Democratic establishment suggested the disparate results spoke to a lack of engagement from voters, rather than from party leaders.
Councilor Marty Nave blamed low voter turnout for the disparate results between the party’s chosen candidate, and the voters’ chosen candidate.
“For all those who stayed home, I don’t want to hear them complain tomorrow when this is done or that is done,” Nave said. “You got the government that you did not vote for. You didn’t vote? Don’t bitch.”
While Brown believes there to be a divide, he sees it as more nuanced than being just a racial or gender divide.
“Whatever our idea of a good candidate is, the Onondaga County Democratic committee does not represent the city of Syracuse Democrat,” Brown said. “At all.”
Ruckdeschel, embodying that divide, said “I can’t speak to whether or not there’s a disconnect.”
Reporting contributed by managing editor Chris Libonati.
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