Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Democracywise, an SU-based website with stories from political reporting students.

Kevin Bott lives a double life.

In one life, he’s Ebenezer Abernathy — a fictitious character Bott uses to provoke political discussion. In the other, he’s a candidate for mayor of Syracuse. And as Bott sees it, Ebenezer has actually helped him develop his candidacy.

“If I hadn’t done Ebenezer, I wouldn’t be prepared for this mayor’s thing,” Bott said. “I needed the character because as a person, I didn’t feel confident in articulating a political vision.

“It was easy to use Ebenezer as a cloak that would allow me the space in finding my voice.”

In Tuesday’s election, Bott is running on the Green Party ticket to become mayor of Syracuse. He faces incumbent Mayor Stephanie Miner, a Democrat, and Conservative Party candidate Ian Hunter.

Bott faced an uphill battle in this race. Green Party voters are a distinct minority in the city of Syracuse. Of 71,014 registered voters in the city, the Green Party has 381 supporters or 0.53 percent. By comparison, the Democratic Party has 38,813 registered voters — or 55 percent — and the Conservative Party has 665 — or 0.9 percent.

In his campaign for mayor, Bott’s platform includes five issues: creating collaborative leadership, decreasing poverty, improving education, making the justice system equitable and providing birth options for women.

The Syracuse mayor’s race is Bott’s first run for elected office. He casts this as strength, though, saying it has allowed him to observe and understand the issues plaguing Syracuse from an outside perspective. This, he said, allows him to bring a new type of leadership to the city. His life’s work has been creating a vision, he said, and then bringing people together to help define and achieve that vision.

“We’re trying to imagine a future for Syracuse that is kind of unimaginable,” he said. “Here we are in 2013 and we have no vision of how to move beyond that idea of the past, of what Syracuse is and what it could be. I’m someone who knows how to bring people together. I know how to work across all sorts of difference.”

Bott also uses what he describes as passion for democracy within higher education. He is the associate director of Imagining America, a collection of colleges and universities that create programs to engage artists and students to take action within their communities. Imagining America is based at Syracuse University.

In addition, Bott and his alter ego, Ebenezer Abernathy, lead the D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival, a theater company Bott created in 2011. The performance group writes and perform songs and shows that highlight issues such as education. After the show, audience members stay and discuss the performance.

Bott was born in New Jersey and grew up around musical theater. But, he said, he always had an interest in politics and democracy. At about the age of 31, Bott went back to school to combine these passions. He got his master’s degree in educational theater from New York University.

Michael Messina-Yauchzy is a chorus member in Bott’s political theater group. As a Green Party member himself, Messina-Yauchzy said, he was approached about Bott becoming a candidate. He easily endorsed him.

“He’s an intelligent man with the right priorities,” he said. “What has really impressed me was the way he responds to people,” Messina-Yauchzy said. “He’s willing to let go of his own view and listen to other people and make changes.”

Bott’s wife, Aimee Brill, is a childbirth educator and fellow activist. She has helped him unearth statistics showing that infant mortality in Onondaga County is higher than almost any other county in the state, Bott said. Providing birth options for women has become part of his political platform.

Brill describes Bott as “someone who truly cares about people.” He is, she said,  “very generous when it comes to working with people, respecting the different ideas that people have.”

For example, she said, this past summer, Bott hosted a two-week theater workshop at Wagner College that involved primary black and Latino communities. He helped the two racial groups create a theater piece that generated dialogue between the members about race relations.

“It was amazing to see the end result,” Brill said. “It was beautiful, it was bilingual, it was translated and it was a celebration, really, of their own community.”

When the Green Party asked him to run for mayor, Bott said, it created a great opportunity for his family and dual passion for theater and politics.

Said Bott: “This is our responsibility as human beings to use the platforms that our given to us to speak about the issues that matter.”

Published on November 5, 2013 at 1:12 am

Contact Maddy: mjberner@syr.edu