Years ago, Stephanie Miner’s high school classmates voted her most likely to succeed. They were right.

The 39-year-old Democrat was elected mayor of Syracuse Tuesday, winning 50 percent of the vote to defeat Republican Steve Kimatian (39 percent) and Conservative Otis Jennings (10 percent).

Miner not only becomes the first woman mayor in Syracuse’s 161-year history, she’s also the first woman elected mayor in any of upstate New York’s Big Four cities – Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.

That’s even more remarkable given central New York’s legacy as a 19th-century hotbed of abolitionism and the birthplace of the women’s suffrage movement. The first Women’s Rights Convention was held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, 50 miles to the west, which is now home to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and many of history’s leading women’s rights advocates spent time in Syracuse.

“People think of New York as progressive … but New York is not necessarily as progressive as we like to boast to the outside world,” said Marcia Pappas, president of the National Organization for Women of New York State.

“It’s a proud moment, but it’s disheartening in a way that we are still at a place in our nation’s history that we continue to be in awe of women’s firsts, even with all the rights that women have secured,” Pappas said.

Source: Record Online Continue Reading This Article Here