LIVERPOOL — Candidates seem to be coming out of the woodwork in the town of Salina as races for supervisor and town council are beginning to take shape.
Correction
Russ Tarby’s March 3 article about the Salina Town Board race contained two errors.
Third Ward Councilor Daniel Ciciarelli was listed as working for JAS Recruitment; he now works for Syracuse University as a student account representative in the bursar office.
Also, the vote totals given for the 2020 special election for Fourth Ward Town Councilor were incorrect. According to the Onondaga County Board of Elections, David Carnie received 1,845 votes and Denise Androvette received 1,818 votes.
We apologize for the inaccuracies.
In the First Ward which encompasses the village of Liverpool, incumbent Councilor Nick Paro has decided to run for supervisor because current Supervisor Colleen Gunnip is stepping down in order to run for 4th District County Legislator. Paro and Gunnip are both Republicans.
Another Republican, Jason Recor, an account manager for Time Warner Cable Business, will run to represent the First Ward on the town council. Recor presently serves as a Liverpool village trustee.
Town Democrats are still seeking a candidate in the First Ward.
In 2019, Democrat Joan Royle — a resident of Sun Harbor and executive director of the Westcott Community Center — lost to Paro, who drew 1,099 votes to surpass Royle’s 977.
In the Second Ward where longtime Democratic Councilor Jim Magnarelli is retiring, his party has designated social worker Leesa Paul to run for his seat. Republicans have also designated a young, aspiring politician, Matt Cushing, an outside sales representative at Henderson Products, Inc. and a former volunteer at the Minoa Fire Department.
The Second Ward includes neighborhoods such as Chestnut Hill, Sunflower Drive, Oot Meadows and the Jewell Manor tract off Buckley Road.
In the Third Ward — which covers the Mattydale area — Councilor Daniel Ciciarelli seeks re-election to a second term. The son of former Third Ward Councilor Jerry Ciciarelli, Daniel Ciciarelli works for Syracuse University as a student account representative in the bursar office.
For the Democrats, Tina Fitzgerald will oppose Ciciarelli for a second time. A widow who works as a trainer at CNY Disability Services and serves on the CENTRO Board of Directors, Fitzgerald lost to Ciciarelli by a vote of 856 to 545 in 2019.
Another rematch is shaping up in the Fourth Ward in Lyncourt, as incumbent Republican Councilor David Carnie, an associate broker at Pyramid Brokerage Co., may again face Democratic challenger Denise Androvette, who is considering another run against Carnie.
Androvette has actually run for the Fourth Ward seat twice before. In 2019, she lost to then-incumbent Michael Del Vecchio by a vote of 784 to 654. After Del Vecchio died Feb. 3, 2020, a special election was conducted that fall to fill his empty seat. That time, Carnie beat Androvette — a pre-kindergarten special education teacher and union activist — by a vote of 1,845 votes to 1,818 votes, according to the Onondaga County Board of Elections.
Two more significant races affect Salina this year.
Current Town Supervisor Colleen Gunnip won the GOP designation to run for the 4th District County Legislature seat being vacated by retiring Republican Judy Tassone. Democrat Stephon Williams, a coding analyst for Molina Healthcare, is running as well.
With Gunnip taking aim at the county legislature, current First Ward Councilor Nick Paro, who works as an analyst for the Onondaga County Legislature, will run for supervisor as a Republican. Democrats have designated Kathy Zabinski for the supervisor’s position.
Zabinski is a retired sergeant of corrections and former president of Civil Service Employees Association Local 834. She challenged Tassone in the race for 4th District county legislator in 2019 but lost the election.
All four major political parties — Conservative and Working Families as well as Democrat and Republican — officially nominate by petition in Salina, and that process runs March 2-25.
