Communist Councilwoman from Ithaca: Hannah Shvets defeats landlord candidate

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By Jason Villarruel, People's World

ITHACA, N.Y.— In a stunning victory, local Ithacan, student organizer, and member of the Communist Party USA, Hannah Shvets decisively defeated Gepe Zurenda in a hotly contested race for the Fifth Ward Common Council seat. Shvets was propelled to her seat by a growing coalition composed of labor unions, community organizations, and the numerous local formations of the progressive left.

Ithaca, a Democratic stronghold, has long dealt with persistent wealth inequality, food insecurity, exorbitant housing prices (with resulting rampant homelessness), and an intensifying cost of living crisis. Democratic Party dominance, however, has done little to provide long-term solutions to these seemingly endemic problems. Many residents feel a lot of the explanation for this failure was embodied in Shvets’ opponent.

Zurenda, a landlord and former factory CEO, ran a campaign based on the traditional moderate playbook: vague allusions to reaching “across the aisle,’ invocations of “affordability” while offering no solutions beyond reverence to the market, dismissals of proposed progressive reforms as a “wish list,” and repetitive condescension toward the young progressives proposing those reforms.

By contrast, before Shvets launched her campaign, she’d already been an activist in social justice movements and an organizer both on and off Cornell University’s Ithaca campus for years. During her studies in Ithaca High School, she reported and agitated around injustice in the city as the editor for the school paper, The Tattler.

She’s staffed the Workers’ Rights Hotline at the Tompkins County Worker Center, helping aggrieved workers win back stolen wages from exploitative employers. Shvets helped organized student solidarity efforts with UAW Local 2300’s strike in 2024 and ITA’s contract negotiation actions in 2025, standing alongside union workers at their picket lines. And she’s contributed to, and participated in, the Cornell student body’s numerous protest movements for the liberation of Palestine since 2023.

As a member of the Ithaca Club of the Communist Party, she helped establish and grow the Ithaca Just Cause Coalition, which is carrying on a fight to legislate and codify “Just Cause” employment protections, regulations prohibiting arbitrary and unfair terminations of workers in Ithaca, and to create a “Workers Rights Committee” at the city level to enforce those protections.

Class struggle election

In her campaign, Shvets ran on a platform developed through these experiences and stayed focused on the needs of working people in Ithaca.

Zurenda’s thin veil of ambiguity about where he stands on the issues important to workers fell during a February interview with the Ithaca Voice. In conversation with Jonathan Mong, Zurenda repeatedly hinted at city staff layoffs, admitting that such a measure “would make sense” and that its implementation “may be through attrition.” When pressed on the human cost of layoffs, he merely emphasized his experience as a factory owner, said that “it would really suck to have to worry about [being laid off]” and “stressed the necessity of cutting what he referred to as ‘bloat.’”

Following his loss to Shvets in the Democratic primary, Zurenda established a makeshift third political vehicle for himself—the “Affordable Ithaca Party.” This move, a familiar tactic when capital’s preferred candidates are rejected by the Democratic base (think: Andrew Cuomo’s failed “Fight and Deliver” party and Eric Adams’ failed “Safe Streets, Affordable City” party), demonstrated that his allegiance was not to any political line but to the class interests of his donors.

Despite his candidly unpopular platform, Zurenda garnered enough funding to—at least initially—stir some doubt in the confident Shvets campaign. Though Zurenda saw little support among students, workers, and tenants alike, he found ready support and sponsorship among Ithaca’s exploiting classes.

Indeed, a platform such as Zurenda’s survives unpopularity among working people due to its necessarily inverse popularity among the wealthy, who enthusiastically donate large sums of money to the candidates which take it up.

However, Zurenda’s active subordination of working-class interests to those of Ithaca’s big business and real estate interests had been resoundingly rejected by voters long before the general election. This reality is immediately recognized upon a review of each campaign’s fundraising efforts and endorsements.

Zurenda had approximately 23 donors with an average donation of $362 each. The “highlight” donations included: “$1,000 from the Realtors Association of New York;” “$2,000 from [the] President of Assets Resolution, a debt buyer company;” and “$250 from Lambrou Real Estate, which owns many apartments in Collegetown [a popular residential area among Cornell University students].”

He received endorsements from some longtime local politicians, including Rich John, Tompkins County Legislator, Martha Robertson, former Tompkins County Legislator, and Margaret Fabrizio, Ithaca Alderperson.

Shvets, on the other hand, had approximately 448 donors with an average contribution of $15.64 each. Her “highlight” donations included: “$500 from union workers at Starbucks, Greenstar [a local grocery store], Gimme Coffee, and more;” “$15 from [a] Cornell Sophomore working at Cornell Dining;” “$20 from [a] local Ithacan, Vet Assistant;” and “$20 from [a] Cornell Junior working as a Research Assistant.”

She was formally endorsed by: the Working Families Party; Run on Climate; Planned Parenthood of Greater New York Votes PAC; the Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); the Cornell Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA); Ithaca Sunrise; the Ithaca Tenants Union (ITU); the Ithaca Teachers Association (ITA); Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU) – United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE), Local 300; United Auto Workers (UAW), Region 9; International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), District 4; and Workers United, Rochester Regional Joint Board (RRJB).

People’s platform

Her policies on topics like establishing the Workers Rights Committee and passing the Just Cause Employment law, which would compel employers to “employ progressive discipline” and to not “fire workers arbitrarily,” no doubt helped secure the backing of many of these labor groups.

But her platform included a whole range of other progressive policies, as well. Rent stabilization, passage of an Emergency Tenant Protection Act, and adjustments to the zoning code to increase housing supply were the hallmarks of her approach to protecting Ithaca’s residents amidst a growing crisis of affordable housing.

She also pledged to work for stricter compliance inspections to ensure landlords are maintaining property up to the proper health and safety standards. Collaboration with the county-level government to construct a new shelter, meanwhile, led off her plans for tackling the problems of the city’s unhoused population.

Improved bus service was another priority for Shvets. She said that residents want expanded routes. More drivers are needed, she said as a candidate, and they deserve fair wages. Other infrastructure priorities include home energy ratings, the deployment of battery storage, and similar initiatives to prepare Ithaca for the climate change challenge.

Regarding justice issues, Shvets promised to spearhead creation of a Community Accountability Board, which would investigate the Ithaca Police Department in instances where misconduct is suspected. She also pledge reparations for Black Ithacans, along with increased financial support for Black community organizations like the Southside Community Center and the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC).

In the face attacks on several communities by the administration in Washington, Shvets emphasized the importance of maintaining Ithaca’s commitment to Sanctuary City status for “immigrants, those seeking gender-affirming care, and [those seeking] reproductive care.” She argued that city officials should not cooperate with federal law enforcement seeking to detain people for their immigration status.

Strategic lessons

Across Ward 5, Shvets’ profound resonance with local Ithacans and newcomer students triggered a panicked opposition. The hype that the electoral battle generated resulted in a significantly higher turnout than seen in 2023. Shvets received 243 votes (64.12%) while Zurenda garnered 134 (35.36%). In 2023, winner Clyde Lederman received 171 votes while his opponent, Jason Houghton, got 146. This year’s balloting an 18.93% increase, and Shvets won her election by a much wider margin than Lederman.

Democratic establishment strategists should take a lesson from this difference: Lederman announced his campaign during his first year at Cornell University, incidentally his first year living in Ithaca at all; Shvets, in stark contrast, grew up in Ithaca and was immersed in Ithacan movements in high school.

Perhaps even more relevant is that Lederman had comparatively little involvement in local politics or working-class movements beyond his activity in the Cornell Democrats and as an unelected representative on the Cornell Student Assembly. The Shvets campaign, which leveraged a working-class coalition against a clique of property owners, demonstrated the potential for exceptional electoral success when emphasis is placed on community coalition-building rather than a strategy of public relations and personal relationships among the existing political elite.

The Ward 5 election also represented an important demographic shift on the Common Council and for the organized left in general in Ithaca. Shvets’ victory, through the replacement of a disconnected careerist man and the defeat of an older propertied man, has brought to political power a young woman rooted in the working class.

In direct opposition to a national liberal and Democratic drift toward reactionary politics (seen in quest for “bro whisperers” and a “liberal Joe Rogan” or their dark money payroll of transphobic, anti-immigrant, and anti-communist influencers), Shvets rooted her campaign in the interests of oppressed people. She proudly embraces a working-class feminist and LGBTQIA+ political agenda, earning her one of her first formal endorsements in the race—from Planned Parenthood of Greater New York.

A defiant refutation of liberal politicians’ justifications for their national right-wing turn, Shvets’ coming tenure will surely see institutional opposition. The inclusivity and unabashed progressive politics of the campaign won over a mass of the electorate frustrated with a growing Democratic abandonment of their interests. As a young woman and leader in the Communist Party—and as part of a growing working-class coalition—Shvets is now tasked with organizing an activated constituency toward a long-term plan for governance in the city.

It won’t be a smooth road ahead, though, as Shvets will assume office amidst fascist escalation, accelerated climate crisis, and politicians’ return to red-baiting. But she will take her seat at the Common Council with a unified front of unions, tenants, students, workers, immigrants, and poor who came out in historic numbers to assert a collective desire for change and the abandonment of disconnected politics.

The struggle continues, as they say.

Jason Villarruel is a student worker and organizer at Cornell University. Of Quechua descent, he works toward decolonization, militant unionism, and Pachakuti.

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