Howie Hawkins will declare his candidacy for mayor of Syracuse today, Thursday, May 4 at 2 pm the The Event Center at the corner of S. Salina St. and Brighton Ave.
Hawkins will outline his strategic vision for the future of Syracuse during a Hawkins administration, his action plan for realizing that vision, and his plan for winning the election.
Howie Hawkins for Mayor
Media Advisory
For immediate release: Thursday, May 4, 2017
For more information: Howie Hawkins, 315-425-1019h, 315-200-6046c, hhawkins@igc.org
What: Announcement, Hawkins for Mayor
When: Thursday, May 4, 2017
Time: 2 pm
Location: The Event Center, 2809 South Salina Street (corner of Brighton Ave.), Syracuse
In 2005, Hawkins ran for mayor on the theme of building a Sustainable Syracuse as an alternative to development centered around giving long-term property tax breaks to Destiny USA, which the other candidates, Democrat Matt Driscoll and Republican Joanie Mahoney, supported. He called for a public power utility for more affordable and renewable energy, a community hiring hall to get more city residents and minorities into city-funded jobs, a municipal development bank focused on developing worker cooperatives, inclusionary zoning to expand affordable housing and reduce segregation by race and class, and neighborhood citizen assemblies for participatory budgeting and community planning.
The vision for a Sustainable Syracuse that he released, complete with maps and pictures to illustrate it, called for mixed-income, mixed-use, ecologically-designed redevelopment of the Inner Harbor, the old Erie Canal corridor, the Onondaga Creek corridor, and the I-81 corridor, with the viaduct replaced by new residential and commercial neighborhood street grid.
Hawkins was the Green Party candidate for Governor of New York in 2010 and 2014. In both races, he secured the Green Party a ballot line for the next four years by receiving over 50,000 votes. In the 2014 campaign, he received 184,419 for 5% of the vote, enough for the Green Party leap over the Independence and Working Families parties to take the fourth line on New York ballots. Even though Governor Andrew Cuomo as a candidate opposed or would not take a position on many policies Hawkins championed, Cuomo has since adopted several of them, including the millionaire's tax, the ban on fracking, the $15 minimum wage, and tuition-free public universities.
"One of my supporters urging me to run told me she wants to vote for me because I'm always 20 years ahead of the curve," Hawkins said. "But I thought, 20 years is too long to wait for children in our city who are growing up in poverty or for all of us in the face of radical climate change."
Hawkins received 48% of the vote in his 2011 run for 4th district councilor and 35% citywide for city auditor in 2015. He expects to be competitive in what is likely to be a four-way race for mayor.
