Mayor's race taking shape

News10Now – Time-Warner Cable
Bill Carey
2009 July 17th

Video: http://news10now.com/content/top_stories/?RegionCookie=48&ArID=477421

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- There are substantial dollars being set aside for the battle to replace Matt Driscoll at Syracuse City Hall.

Democratic designee, Stephanie Miner, is the clear leader of the pack with close to a quarter million dollars in the bank. Challenger Joe Nicoletti has about half that much. Alfonso Davis, another challenger, has yet to file his funding report, while late entry Carmen Harlow has less than a thousand dollars.

Miner is touting the fact that 70 percent of the contributions to her campaign are amounts of less than $200.

"And what that shows is a really wide based support among a huge number of people. So people are really excited by my campaign of innovation and ideas," Miner said.

Republicans are also raising money. Party designee Otis Jennings has $145,000. Challenger Steve Kimatian has just over $40,000. Kimatian says being second in fundraising is not a bad thing, especially if you can avoid collecting too many contributions from too many special interests.

"When I'm running, I don't owe anything to anyone but the citizens of this city," Kimatian said.

The challenge now for the candidates is using those funds to focus voters on primary races that will end in less than two months.

"We go door to door. We send out direct mailers. We speak to people at events. Those are the things that we can be doing right at this point in time to generate interest," Jennings said.

Once the primaries are clear, a major factor in the November elections has now been cleared away. Howie Hawkins, who garnered five percent of the vote in 2005's race for mayor, has decided, this time around, he will not run for the citywide post. Instead, he's running for 4th District Common Councilor.

"We've raised the issues in these races, but we can be much more effective if we have somebody on council to keep the foot on the pedal and push these issues afterwards," said Hawkins.

Hawkins will be challenging democrat incumbent Tom Seals.

The deadline has now passed for filing petitions to win a spot on the September primary ballot. All six candidates made the deadline. Pending challenges to their petitions, that sets up a two-way Republican battle and a four-way contest for the Democratic nomination.