Remember The Woman!

That Syracuse’s next mayor is a woman is a footnote to the extraordinary accomplishments of the weaker sex in our region.  In her victory speech last night, Stephanie Miner expressed gratitude to her grandmothers who illuminated the path to a career in public service previously reserved only for men.

Miner now joins another attorney at the top tier of local government, Republican Joanie Mahoney, elected the first female Onondaga County Executive in 2007.  Just a generation ago Miner, Mahoney, Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Onondaga Community College President Debbie Sydow would have met for a gentle game of bridge and little more. Today they oversee governments and institutions of higher learning with thousands of employees and multi-million dollar budgets.

Mahoney angered some county workers last month by suggesting jobs would be cut in order to have a budget taxpayers can afford.  Now there’s a public official who knows kitchen table economics!  When the checking account runs low, you stop spending.  You buy school clothes at Target and not Abercrombie if you can afford school clothes at all.  Sometimes you just have to make due with what you have, including last year’s jeans which are now high waters on sprouting children.  Tough.  We’re lucky enough to eat.

Mahoney also showed a mother’s grace by realizing the large and vocal crowd protesting in front of the OnCenter represented the workers at risk and not the taxpayers who have to choose between medicine and heat.  As the empathizers of the universe, women are skilled at identifying the motive behind the complaint.   I never listened to how terrible was a teacher before asking my child if they had received a bad grade that day.

I had the good fortune of working for one of the nation’s first female commercial television station general managers and for that Cathy Creany suggested in 1989 I reduce my work schedule when managing three children under the age of four and a career wore me down to the point I wasn’t particularly good at either.  It was just what the doctor ordered.  My babies were happy, and my station was happy at the top of the ratings.  Ten years later along came a man who fired me for doing what Creany suggested I do; work part-time.

I immediately found work at WSYR-TV and was very happy there, until I was enticed to return to WTVH by, you guessed it, another female general manager.  Maria Moore was sent to stop the bleed in the ratings. It was the last real shot we had at becoming number one again.  With sharp instincts and a democratic management style, Maria knew what she was doing.

It was a great second run but it came to a halt 11 years later.  See the pattern?  Yup, another male general manager at WTVH and another door shown to me.  From now on, if I’m ever hired again by a female television executive (are you listening Theresa Underwood, WSYR?)  and a man takes over,  I’ll write a resignation letter prophylactically and spare us all the suspense.

Which calls to mind the single most effective political campaign phrase I ever heard.  In 2002 attorney Deborah Karalunas ran for New York State Supreme Court Justice.  Her TV commercials featured an enthusiastic male announcer directing us to “Remember the Woman!”    What woman?  It didn’t matter!  The woman! Today I’m not sure how many viewers from that time could recall the name of the candidate, but the demand we “Remember the Woman!” in language so simple a four year old could understand it, heck, it sounded like the way a four year old talks, was enough to get Karalunas elected to the bench where she remains today.

2010 will go down in the record books as the year women seemed to run everything.  WSYR-TV, CXTec, other businesses both big and small, households, private and public colleges and the top offices of city and county government will all simultaneously be run by women.   In 2002 we heard it and we ran with it. Bring on 2010.  Remember the Woman!

Tagged as: government, Joanie Mahoney, Politics, Stephanie Miner