Walt Shepperd is a veteran of Central New York's political scuffle, having covered government and politics in Syracuse for more than four decades before being asked for press credentials.
He is the Senior Editor of the City Eagle and the Mayor of Montgomery Street in downtown Syracuse.
Shepperd is also the producer of the The Media Unit, Central New York national award winning teen performance and production troupe.
Samadee is his alter ego. At least that's the rumor.
John DeFrancisco has been winning elections continually since 1978 when he began a three-year stint on the city school board, followed by seven years as a Common Councilor-at-Large and two as Council President before settling into his seat as State Senator from the 50th District. Sitting for a mid-morning discussion of the coming election in his Hanover Square office, he reflects that he got into politics as a parent.
The city school district was considering the Triangle Plan for racial integration that would clump students in buildings by grade: K-3, 4-6 and 7-9...
Election Day lunch at Our Lady of Pompei has long been an obligatory stop in the waning hours on the local campaign trail. The mythology of whether spilling spaghetti sauce on a tie guarantees victory or defeat at the polls has long been lost, but over the 57 years since its founding, the annual event has become a mainstay in the fundraising efforts for Pompei’s school.
Each year seems more crowded than the last, with aisles between tables seemingly less passable. There is an atmosphere of extended family, with candidates, office holders and active party stalwarts sensing a commonality as they celebrate their connection to that one day each year in which one person can indeed make the difference in how the political future is conducted...
Back home after an intense and frustrating statewide tour campaigning for U.S. Senate on the Green Party ticket, Howie Hawkins says the experience was a relearning of the degree to which all politics is local. “We have to build a grassroots infrastructure,” he says. “We have do politics the old way, door to door and face to face. We’ve got to get people who support us to be active and we’ve got to start identifying people who would support us if given the opportunity.” And its time for the local Greens to win one, Hawkins agrees.
He is fond of citing the 234 Greens holding office nationwide before last week’s elections, and the 40 others who won this year’s races...
Last month, Ebony magazine asked on its cover whether Jesse Jackson was still relevant. A February AP-AOL black voices poll had determined that he ranked first as the most important black leader with 15 percent – Condoleezza Rice was second with 11 percent.
But a scandal made public in 2000 had forced him out of the front ranks of activism. As he was stumping for Democratic candidates in the 2000 election campaign it was revealed that he had an affair with a staff member at his Rainbow Push Coalition office, and fathered a child. Jackson used more than $400,000 of the organization’s funds to relocate mother and daughter to California...
