Syracuse, NY – Manika Gautam just gave birth to her youngest child. But she needed immediate and intensive treatment for thyroid cancer.
Her marriage was falling apart and she needed someone to take care of her newborn. Nicole Watts didn’t hesitate.
She took little Ossum home when he was three days old. She fed him and rocked him. She saw the sun rise with him, set with him in the middle of the night.
For the first month of his life, when his own mother was too ill to care for him, Watts was his mother.
“It was one of the most beautiful adventures,” Watts said.
Gautam is cancer-free and her son, now 7, calls Watts “Mama Coley.”
Watts, 43, has had a life shaped by saying “yes” when many others back down. Challenges are gifts, he says.
The most recent one started in April. Watts was about to turn off her phone as she boarded a flight to California. She took the last call. He was a friend of the Onondaga County Working Families Party. Would Watts, a Democrat, consider running for the Onondaga County Legislature representing her district on the north side of Syracuse? She would be a last-minute start in the triples.
She slept on it overnight. And then she did what she does in the face of difficult things: Watts said yes.
What followed was an unexpected rise to one of the most powerful positions in Onondaga County government. Watts rode a blue wave with other freshmen who won as Democrats swept the Legislature.
Afterwards, Watts was selected as majority leader of the Onondaga County Legislature. The only other first-term legislator to become chairman was current County Executive Ryan McMahon.
For the first time in 50 years, Democrats are in power in the regional legislature. Generations of Republicans bucking the will of Republican county leaders will be replaced by denial, challenge and negotiation. Watts, who has no political experience, will lead the prosecution.
“It’s got to be about the people”
“We need to get back to making decisions about people, not about partisan politics,” Watts said. “It has to be about the people.
Technically speaking, Watts has no political experience. But he has more than ten years of experience in leadership and building consensus. She founded and continues to lead Hopeprint, a non-profit organization that serves refugees and Syracuse’s North Side.
Watts chaired the Syracuse Refugee Alliance for several years and worked with it and other groups to advocate for some of Syracuse’s most disadvantaged people.
Watts came to central New York after graduating from college with a ministerial degree. She completed an internship in youth ministry at Eastern Hills Bible Church in Manlius, but ended up staying for 11 years after her internship ended.
During that time, she made friends in the refugee community on Syracuse’s North Side. She found herself there more than in Manliu.
“I used to drive into town to come to my friends for dinner a few times a week,” Watts said. “They would give me this beautiful gift of a sense of family and home cooking.
Watts would help her friends, often refugees, with things that might seem simple to someone from here, but so difficult when you’re a newly settled refugee. It was during the years when the US resettled up to 1,000 refugees a year to Syracuse.
Watts would help with reading the mail, the children’s schoolwork, where to find necessities like furniture or underwear.
“I didn’t need a degree or an education in social work to just show up and be a friend and a neighbor,” she said. “I have seen the transformational difference that relationships make in the lives of the families I have befriended.
Watts and some friends moved into the house on Lilac Street together about 15 years ago. They started calling the house “Hopeprint” based on the idea that everyone has a unique hope, like a fingerprint they brought to the world. The house had one rule: If you met a new person, you had to invite them to dinner.
Since the collective became a full-fledged non-profit organization in 2016, family dinners were held every Tuesday. The door is open and there is never a shortage of food. At one point, Watts, who is barely over 5 feet tall, stood on a chair and counted heads. There were more than 90 refugees and new Americans and 30 others who came to help and learn.
This was family too.
“It’s a community-wide effort, through and through.”
Watts is the oldest of four children. She lived in Northern Virginia until the fourth grade and then moved to Colorado. She went to college in Chicago where she majored in youth ministry. Watt’s parents were both ministers.
Dustin Watts, Nicole Watts’ younger brother, remembers her always leading the way.
When they were little, Nicole played Christmas games with her younger siblings.
“She would make us all dress up,” recalled Dustin Watts, who is seven years younger. His sister would choreograph the dance moves. She never made her younger brother dance, but even then her power was to make people see things her way.
“She had this compelling spirit where everyone just kind of lined up,” Dustin Watts said.
As he and his sister grew up, she became someone he confided in because she wouldn’t hold back when she didn’t agree.
“He means business,” Dustin Watts said. “He doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff, which makes him a good person to confide in.”
He works in computer security but also has a tea company with his wife called “Thereabouts”. His sister’s travels and experiences with the people of Syracuse’s Northside helped shape the flavors they offer.
Dustin Watts and his family came to visit Nicole this fall during the campaign. They came to one of those dinner parties at her house in the Northside.
Nicole had a busy day, Dustin said, and dozens of people were expected to show up in less than an hour. Nicole’s answer: Don’t worry. I can do it in 15 minutes.
She started cooking, knowing the others would come with more. They did not come to be served, but to be a part of it. Some people were cooking. The others served. And when it was all done, people cleaned up as if they had been quietly assigned the job.
“It’s a community effort, through and through,” Dustin Watts said.
A short, impressive year
Nicole Watts’ new job is another extension of how she cares for her community. Her tenure is only one year, which means she needs to move quickly to make an impact. She had been thinking about it ever since she said yes.
It starts with ensuring that those who have the least, like the majority of people in the neighborhood where it has been rooted for more than a decade, remain at the center of government work.
This means that economic development should focus on helping those who are struggling. Watts has his eye on Plan Onondaga, a land use plan the county adopted to focus development efforts during Micron’s expected boom. The plan identified the city’s Northside as a target for development, and Watts said she wants to make sure people who already live there aren’t displaced. Instead, they should benefit the most.
“It’s a difficult, very, very difficult line,” she said.
He also has plenty of questions about what the county is doing to protect its immigrant and refugee communities as ICE raids increase and target a wider range of people.
“The district has the option to choose whether or not to assist ICE,” Watts said. “I want to make sure they choose to protect our people whenever they can.
Watts said she plans to return transparency to the decisions county lawmakers make. This will range from budget hearings to committee meetings on issues within county government. For example, Watts said she wants to better understand what happened when two children died in the care of Onondaga County Social Services.
“We need to have someone to be the voice of our community in these really important conversations,” she said.
Watts said she is realistic about where the power lies. although. Although she and other Democrats opposed the aquarium project, it is already under construction. They can’t stop it.
One thing she has committed to is making sure departments present themselves to the committees that oversee them at least once a year outside of budget season. This small change could dramatically improve transparency, she said.
Watts begins her term Jan. 2 and is eager to turn one of the shortest legislative terms in county history into one of the most impactful.
“This is one incredibly important year,” she said.
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