Former Syracuse Mayor Balks at Bid for Congress, Her Eye on Cuomo’s Seat

Stephanie Miner, the former Democratic mayor of Syracuse, announced Thursday afternoon that she would not challenge a Republican congressman in her central New York district, but instead was seriously considering a run for governor.

To date, no serious candidate has stepped forward from either party to oppose Gov. Andrew Cuomo this fall, and Miner’s public ruminations about such a challenge was sure to rankle state Democratic Party officials.

“I’m still seriously considering it,” Miner said about a campaign for governor.

In 2014, a relatively unknown candidate, Zephyr Teachout, a law professor, took on Cuomo and garnered a surprising 34 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary.

Just as Teachout highlighted some of Cuomo’s perceived shortcomings, suggesting that he had tilted too far to the right, Miner, an unapologetic progressive, wasted no time in pointing out Cuomo’s vulnerabilities. In an interview in Midtown Manhattan, Miner, who is teaching a course on municipal finance at New York University, chastised the governor for his handling of the transit crisis, with the subway system troubled by delays and breakdowns.

“Anywhere and everywhere I go, people talk about the transit issue,” she said over coffee at Pennsylvania Station, where she was preparing to board an Amtrak back to Syracuse. “People’s frustration and anger is palpable. I think he bears a great deal of responsibility. I’ve had people tell me that their kids were abandoned at school for two hours because they couldn’t get on the train or it stopped or didn’t come.”

Miner’s decision is sure to disappoint some Democrats who were hoping she would challenge Rep. John Katko, a Republican who represents the district that includes Syracuse, where she was mayor for eight years until term limits forced her to step down on Dec. 31.

The district has swung back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, and some observers believed that Katko might be vulnerable since he voted for the Trump tax plan, which hurts high-tax states like New York by capping the deductibility of state and local taxes.

Katko is one of eight members of the New York Republican congressional delegation that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted in this year’s midterm election. (Peter King, the well-known Long Island congressman, is the only representative whose seat seemed unassailable.)

This is the second time Miner, 47, has publicly declared that she would not run for Congress. After the tax vote, she said she would reconsider an earlier decision not to challenge Katko. But this time, she sounded resigned.

She said she did not relish the idea of “getting on a plane on a Sunday night and coming back on a Thursday and having to raise money five hours a day, every day.”

As for antagonizing state Democratic stalwarts for flirting with a run against the Cuomo, the leader of the party, Miner said such concerns would not factor into her decision.

“I think now more than ever people realize that in a democracy, all of us have a responsibility to be active and voice our opinion about where we think we are going,” she said. “There are lots of different ways to be active. Sometimes that means running for office.

“Sometimes that means standing up and saying things that are uncomfortable. Sometimes that means making tough decisions. Ruffling feathers is a natural part of being a leader.”