LIVERPOOL — When village voters cast ballots Tuesday, June 15, at the village hall on Sycamore Street, they will elect three Republican candidates who are running without opposition.
Mayor Gary White will be returned to office for his seventh term at the helm, while incumbent Trustee Christina Fadden will win her fourth election and former Trustee Dennis Hebert — who resigned in 2017 after 10 years on the village board — will be back aboard.
The mayor and the trustees each serve two-year terms.
The three candidates will be listed on two party lines, Republican and the Village Residents Party.
“We added that second line so that no one feels disenfranchised,” White said.
The Democrats have not fielded any candidate for village office in Liverpool since 2001 and have not conducted a caucus since that year. Over the course of those past 20 years, however, registered Democrats and independent voters have increased to significantly outnumber Republicans.
The most recent voter enrollment numbers from the Onondaga County Board of Elections show the village has 650 Democrats and 450 Republicans. There are 466 not affiliated with any party, 87 registered in the Independent Party and 42 voters enrolled in various minor parties.
Democrats plus independent voters — who historically tend to vote for Democrats — total more than 1,100 in Liverpool, which leaves the GOP fairly far behind at 450.
With these numbers in mind, Salina Democratic Party Chairman Christopher Shepherd hopes to revive the village Dems next year.
“We have begun the preliminaries in the village of Liverpool,” he wrote in a recent email.
This year Shepherd’s committee decided against mounting campaigns in the village.
“I’m pretty confident this will be the last [year] of our drought in the village of Liverpool,” Shepherd wrote.
Mayor Gary White thinks party affiliations are less meaningful at the local level as they are at state and federal levels.
“Partisan politics have no place in local elections,” White said. “Here in the village it’s all about serving your fellow residents. It’s not about following any particular party line.”
