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.
Permits for tables outdoors had expired when Samadee joined the Has Been and the Wannabe for drinks on Hanover Square on Election Day evening. Two of the three bars on the Square’s Southside had gone out of business, social life support centers turned statistics in a working class town with most of the factories closed. Still, the space was appropriate. De Toqueville had paused there on his horseback survey gauging the early progress of a fledgling democracy in America. Activists on the way to Seneca Falls had stepped off Erie Canal boats to leaflet and, at times be beaten by resident hooligans, as did their abolitionist counterparts, agitating from Albany to Buffalo...
On schedule to keep the first-in-line tradition at his polling place, Samadee joined the queue awaiting the 5:30 a.m. opening of the downtown Y locker room, showered quickly and skipped his daily five minutes in the jacuzzi. Arriving in red tie and socks and blue shirt for the 6 a.m. commencement of the franchise, however, he found the lower level of the Civic Center already populated with waiting lines at each of the Election District stations. At 6:07, he became the seventh voter to pull the levers in District 1 of the 9th Ward. The lone poll watcher recognized him, knew which page bore his signature, the one spelling out the full name he never used and on this occasion did not immediately recognize.
“Never saw so many people this early,” the poll watcher said...
The day after the election someone asked Dale Sweetland if he was retired. He had lost the Congressional race to Dan Maffei, after losing a Republican primary for the County Executive nomination to Joanie Mahoney the year before, giving up his seat as County Legislative Chair in the process. “I thought about it,” he said a week later as we sat to talk about the future of Onondaga County and its relation to the city. “I said I didn’t know if I’m retired or unemployed. But not many people get to run of Congress. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of it wasn’t. I really hate asking people for money.”
Asked if he would consider running for office again, he replied that he had learned never to say never after the primary loss, when he thought he never would...
The City School District plans to renovate its buildings. Budget figures are proposed. There are delays. Local activists of color ask about hiring patterns. Representatives of local unions have concerns, as well as the representative of a national organization advocating opportunities for non-union workers. A series of meetings is held with elected officials. As time goes by cost estimates increase and the different school communities, scheduled for different time phases of renovations to their buildings, grow apprehensive, some seeming to be forced into competition with each other within the overall program. The governor announces massive state budget cuts are necessary and must be forthcoming...
In his time on the County Legislature, Dale Sweetland encountered many instances of people at TNT, or other meetings of citizens concerned about city issues, complaining about county government not doing enough for the city. From committee work on the legislature, he became conversant with those issues. “Several years ago,” he recalled, “I said to Bea Gonzalez, ‘I know what’s going on in the neighborhoods. That there’s no more mom and pop grocery stores on the corners, no more hardware stores, no more this, no more that. But it’s happened everywhere.’ The magnitude is certainly different because of the number of people in the city. But I live a mile from a beautiful village...
