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Carrie Ingersoll-Wood said she gets lots of questions – especially from men – about why she wants to leave her job as director of the Disability Cultural Center at Syracuse University to run for the Onondaga County Legislature.

While enjoying her time in the county, she has noticed a trend: people, particularly young people, are leaving in droves. From 2021 to 2022, Onondaga County saw a 0.51% decrease in population, according to syracuse.com. She believes that the current county government’s mismanagement is partially to blame, which spurred her to run for District 10, which includes Fayetteville, Manlius and Minoa.

“I raised my kids while putting myself through school and I worked and I got these degrees and I’m still doing it,” said Ingersoll-Wood, a Democrat. “I know that there are individuals living in my district that are doing the same thing, and I’ll be there to uplift them. I think that’s the real job of the legislator.”

One of Ingersoll-Wood’s main issues with the Republican-led government is how it allocates its budget. While the county is trying to invest $85 million into an aquarium, the county isn’t doing enough for the county’s lead crisis, she said.

In September, County Executive Ryan McMahon announced that the county would put $1.5 million toward lead abatement on top of the federal government’s $5.6 million in 2018.

A report by the Onondaga County Health Department showed that 458 children in Syracuse tested for elevated blood lead levels in 2022. In a statement where Attorney General Letitia James announced she was suing a local landlord for lead poisoning, she wrote that lead poisoning in the county is highest among children of color.

“There’s money to do things with but there’s no initiation,” Ingersoll-Wood said. “We don’t have someone to coordinate this, and we don’t have people properly trained for mediation … I need to do that now. Not tomorrow.”

Besides lead abatement, she wants to direct the county’s funding toward economic development, sustainability and accessible mobility. With Micron soon entering Clay, she’s also focused on making sure the company is proactively integrated in the central New York region.

Sophie Clinton – director of media and engagement for Ingersoll-Wood’s campaign and a senior at SU – said Ingersoll-Wood is an advocate for people of all backgrounds, especially due to her experience in the Disability Cultural Center.

Before she came to SU, she met Clinton through Ingersoll-Wood’s daughter, Morgan, as they grew up in the same community. Now studying Spanish, political science as well as women’s and gender studies at the university, Clinton reconnected with Ingersoll-Wood at an SU Abroad event.

“Having somebody who was so familiar with the struggles of a lot of students and so familiar with the ways in which people (feel) comfortable in a space, I think that she’s a really great person to facilitate dialogue and create community space and safe spaces,” Clinton said. “That’s one thing that I think a lot of politicians lack.”

Ingersoll-Wood said that she teaches individuals within the Disability Cultural Center about their disability identity. She encourages people to embrace that “disability is diversity”.

Prior to her work in higher education, Ingersoll-Wood worked as an English teacher at H.W. Smith Pre-K-8 School in the Meadowbrook neighborhood. Ingersoll-Wood said she feels a direct connection to the community, especially the younger residents. She explained that with the current government, people’s voices aren’t being heard enough in the community.

“What educators do, we create community. That’s what I do here,” Ingersoll-Wood said. “I build community, and I create really great opportunities for people to come together and learn more about the ways that we all function inside of society, and we also teach how to improve lives and how to really just coexist, and embrace what makes us beautiful humans.”

To better connect with her constituents, she said she would make herself readily available to speak to constituents about issues important to them. Casey Cleary-Hammarstedt, who previously was on the Manlius Democratic Committee with Ingersoll-Wood, said that when Ingersoll-Wood says she is going to meet and have town halls, she means it.

“(Ingersoll-Wood) is articulate enough to make the case to the public on a variety of issues that will help the public to understand that they do have choices,” Cleary-Hammarstedt said.

Ingersoll-Wood will have a difficult pitch to sell given that the seat has been held by a Republican since at least 2010, according to county records. Incumbent Republican Mark Olson has been representing District 10 since 2022 and has been the mayor of Fayetteville since 2004.

Apart from the District 10 community and the Disability Cultural Center, Ingersoll-Wood said the most important part of her life is her family. She married her husband, Jim, when she was 18 years old after meeting him through Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had three children not long after, which she said made her feel as if she “grew up alongside them.”

She and her husband consistently disagreed with the religious group and left it together to give their children opportunities they didn’t have, she said. They decided to immerse their family in the Manlius community because of its “excellent school districts.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses largely reject secular higher education, with only 9% attaining a bachelor’s degree. Ingersoll-Wood wrote a research paper on the topic, “The Educational Identity Formation of Jehovah’s Witnesses,” in 2022.

Ingersoll-Wood said that by working her way up to her current position after leading a “restricted” life in her religion, she can better connect to and advocate for the people she may serve.

“We really need to ask ourselves, ‘Why don’t our kids want to live here?’ and they are telling us, we need to listen (to) why,” she said. “They see a lot of money being wasted on projects like the aquarium. If students can understand that that is a waste of our money and we can better invest it in other places, the adults in the room also need to understand that.”

Published on November 1, 2023 at 1:17 am

Contact Roxanne: rmboychu@syr.edu