Ben Walsh
Ben Walsh is the 54th and current Mayor of Syracuse, New York. Walsh took office on January 1, 2018 as the first independent mayor in the city's history and the second without major party support after Louis Will in 1913. He is the son of former congressman James T. Walsh and grandson of former congressman and mayor William F. Walsh, both of whom were Republicans. He was born in 1979
Walsh grew up one of three children in a house on Robineau Road in the Strathmore neighborhood. His family moved outside the city when he was in middle school. He graduated from Westhill High School in 1997 and enrolled at Ithaca College. After college he spent a summer doing construction for Laborers Local 633, working on projects around Onondaga Lake. From there, he got an office job in Albany, as part of the political actions staff for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. He returned to Syracuse in 2002 to run his father's congressional campaign.
Prior to being mayor of Syracuse, Walsh was the deputy commissioner of the city's department of neighborhood and business development under previous mayor Stephanie Miner where he created the Syracuse Land Bank and was part of the redevelopment of the Hotel Syracuse. He also worked for the Metropolitan Development Association, a precursor to CenterState CEO. He also served on a handful of boards and community groups, including as president of the Gifford Foundation board.
Despite coming from a Republican family Walsh refused to affiliate with the Republican Party when he turned eighteen and, when he chose to run for mayor of Syracuse in 2017, did so on two minor party lines, the Independence Party of New York and Reform Party of New York State. In what was generally seen as an upset, Ben Walsh defeated Democratic Party frontrunner Juanita Perez Williams. He won the election with 54% of the vote in what was a five candidate race involving candidates from both major parties as well as the Green and Libertarian Parties.
