Finding Ulysses

Most people are now becoming aware that our congressional district – New York’s 24th – is the site of one of 2006’s hottest elections. Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican who has represented the district in the US House of Representatives since the early 1980s, announced this year that he will not be running for re-election. That makes our seat in Congress open to all challengers. What’s more, the 24th District is a swing seat, with almost exactly the same degree of support for Democrats and Republicans overall. So, the attention of the national political establishment will be focused right here for the rest of 2006.

What a lot of people in Trumansburg don’t realize is that their congressional district stretches all the way over to Herkimer County in the heart of the Adirondacks. That’s a gerrymander for you. The shape of our district includes the cities of Rome and Utica in Oneida County, as well as Auburn in Cayuga County and Cortland over in, wouldn’t you know it, Cortland County.

Oneida County has a large portion of our district’s population, and Oneida County politicians like to play on this fact to claim that only a candidate who comes from Oneida County can win the election. Two of the four candidates for the Democratic nomination to run for the open seat, Leon Koziol and Michael Arcuri, come from Oneida County.

The truth is that Oneida politicians’ claim of political dominion over the 24th district by Oneida County is overblown. As the Take Back the 24th District blog recently noted, the majority of Democrats in the 24th District – over 69 percent – live outside of Oneida County. That means that, in order for a candidate to win the 24th District Democratic primary election, that candidate has to get the votes of most of the Democrats outside of Oneida County.

Believe it or not, that makes the town of Ulysses a major political player. Ulysses Democrats have a way of turning out in large numbers to participate in political activities in large numbers that is unrivaled anywhere else in the District. Consider our recent march for peace in Trumansburg, in which over 125 residents participated. None of the big cities of our district has had any kind of peace demonstration anything close to that size in the whole 3 years of the Iraq War.

Realize that, in a primary election, only 4-8 percent of Democrats typically turn out to vote, and you’ll see that, although the population of Ulysses is much smaller than a city like Utica, our proven record of high turnout makes Ulysses a prime player in the Democratic primary race. Yet, not all the campaigns are recognizing the opportunity in Ulysses. Only one candidate, Les Roberts, has visited Trumansburg and Ulysses – and so far, only Les Roberts has made concrete plans to do so. Josh Lozman, the campaign manager for the Les Roberts campaign, has made repeated visits to Trumansburg, and Les Roberts plans a second visit at the end of April – to meet with members of Back to Democracy and the general public in our Fire Hall.

For the record, there are four Democrats who are officially declared candidates for Congress in our district: