Sharon Owens celebrates her mayoral race victory at The Palladian Hall on Nov. 4, 2025. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Less than an hour before polls closed in Syracuse, Syracuse Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens entered the Palladian Hall in Hanover Square, walking into history.

More than a hundred Owens’ supporters cheered the soon-to-be mayor-elect’s arrival. By the time Owens took the stage, the ballroom had become a who’s-who of public figures in Syracuse — from current and former elected officials, to grassroots organizers and community activists.

In that room, surrounded by ceiling murals depicting monumental events in the city’s past — such as Father Le Moyne’s “discovery” of salt and the Jerry Rescue — Owens took the stage to raucous applause from more than 300 attendees. Community stakeholders rubbed elbows with state and federal representatives, all gathered for the woman on the verge of a historic victory.

In the center of the hall, above the podium where Owens addressed her crowd, a mural’s caption reads “First Mayor of Syracuse – Harvey Baldwin 1848”. 177 years after that moment, Syracuse elected its 55th leader, the city’s first Black mayor: Owens.

“‘Syracuse, you adopted me. I’m your daughter, and you are my elders. All of you who I’ve met and said, ‘I walked into a booth today and I voted for a Black woman to be the mayor,’” Owens said in her speech, to thunderous applause. “‘Not only is she a Black woman, but she is qualified to do the job.’”

Owens won the general mayoral election in a landslide, claiming almost 75% of all votes. Republican candidate Tom Babilon earned fewer than one-fifth of all votes, ending with 3,506. Independent candidate Alfonso Davis won 681, while Tim Rudd earned 616 votes, also on an independent ballot line. 

Owens’ victory built on a wave across New York, in which Working Families Party-endorsed candidates also won mayorships in Buffalo, Albany, and New York City. 

The 62-year-old Owens has spent the past eight years working with Mayor Ben Walsh as the second-ranking employee at City Hall, where she has worked to combat gun violence, revitalize neighborhoods, and improve the city’s housing stock. Owens in 1985 graduated from Syracuse University a student-athlete, and has lived here ever since. A community leader and assistant pastor, Owens has made deep inroads with Syracuse’s community stakeholders from all walks of life.

Those connections culminated in a ballroom packed with hundreds of other people who have devoted their lives to improving this city, all gathered to celebrate Owens’ achievement. 

Prominent Owens supporters in attendance included Congressman John Mannion, State Senators Rachel May and Chris Ryan, Assemblyman Al Stirpe, and Onondaga County Clerk Emily Essi, Walsh, and City Auditor Alex Marion.

“We’re in this beautiful building, one of the first historic buildings right here at the crossroads of Central New York and the crossroads of the state,” Mannion said. “As I stand here in the middle of the history of Syracuse, I’m a part of a very historic moment, an important moment, and a moment that Sharon Owens absolutely deserves and has earned.”

Even District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick, the longest-serving elected Republican in Onondaga County, attended the watch party. Fitzpatrick called Owens a “uniter,” and said he has developed a great working relationship with Owens as the two collaborated to fight gun violence.

“…We need somebody with a steady hand,” Fitzpatrick said. “And most important to me, she’s as committed to law enforcement as I am — in the right way.”

A bulk of the Syracuse Common Council were present throughout the hall, including Rita Paniagua, Jimmy Monto, Corey Williams, Patrona Jones-Rowser, Rasheada Caldwell, and councilor-elect Hanah Ehrenreich. Owens and the councilors clashed earlier this year when Walsh’s administration and the common council battled over the city’s budget — but Owens said after her victory that she looks forward to collaborating more with the council in her administration.

Paniagua, who ran unopposed for council president, lauded Owens and also expressed excitement for the chance to strengthen collaboration with the mayor-elect next year. Owens and Paniagua have been meeting regularly to discuss mutual priorities — chief of which is improving communication between the administration and council, especially for the budget process.

“Before we present something to the council, let’s have conversations,” Owens said. “I’m looking forward to working with Rita.”

Monto echoed Paniaugua’s and Owens’ eagerness to forge a new chapter in City Hall with the leadership changes at both branches of city government. Beyond Owens’ City Hall experience, Monto said he hopes the mayor-elect can also draw on her experience meeting with residents in their homes and communities.

Monto once made history as Syracuse’s first openly LGBTQ+ Syracusan to win a seat on the Common Council, and noted the importance of Syracuse having its first Black woman mayor.

“There’s a lot of kids out there that look like Sharon, that now can see her in this office,” he said. 

After eight years at City Hall’s helm, Walsh said the concept of passing that role on to a successor felt “a bit surreal – but it feels really good, too.”

Chad Ryan and some other Democratic candidates for Onondaga County Legislature — soon to flip party control of that body for the first time in decades — appeared throughout the night to support Owens. Syracuse Housing Authority commissioners Ryan Benz and Walt Dixie attended, as did a slew of city hall staffers and department heads.

Citizen Review Board Chair Don Johnson and community activists Hasan Bloodworth and Clifford Ryan came to support Owens, as did Linda Brown-Robinson — wife of the late-Van B. Robinson. Van Robinson, who passed away earlier this year, was a titan in Syracuse politics for five decades.

Former Blueprint 15 executive director Raquan Pride-Green said that Owens is the right person to see the city’s East Adams Revitalization Project through. Outside her duties as deputy mayor, Owens served as board president at Blueprint 15, the non-profit tasked with performing community outreach for the project.

Pride-Green believes that that experience, and Owens’ deep connections with both the residents and the activists working in that neighborhood, position Owens to restart the project, which was hit with major setbacks at the beginning of the year.

“She knows some of the people who live there. So it’s not just a bunch of names and numbers. There’s faces to those names,” Pride-Green said.

Marion, the city’s auditor, said Owens’ ascendance to the mayor’s office embodies the essence of the city itself.

“Syracuse has always embraced progress,” Marion said. “That’s who we are at our core.”

He described the historical bedrock underlying a historic Tuesday night: The Haudenosaunee roots of Western democracy; an emergent city at the epicenter of the Erie Canal and the Empire State itself; a hotspot of abolitionist thought, embodied by the Jerry Rescue; the open embrace of immigrants from all corners of the world.

“What we’re doing tonight, this is the next piece of progress we are making,” Marion said, “and it won’t be the last.”

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Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...