SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — The spaghetti supper at Our Lady of Pompeii Church is an Election Day tradition. From 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., the cafeteria served a line of hungry politicians and residents on a day that, for many, is the culmination of several months of work.
Tim Burtis, chairman of the Onondaga County Legislature, was one of those people.
“Everybody’s here,” Burtis said. “Your opponent’s probably here. It’s a good time to shake their hand and congratulate them on a good campaign.”
The spaghetti supper has fed candidates and non-candidates for the past 76 years. While the food served inside the church has stayed roughly the same, some say the world outside has changed.
“You know, people don’t talk anymore,” one attendee said. “It’s nice to talk to people rather than have a text or email.”
While the supper had people from both sides literally breaking bread, that isn’t always the case elsewhere. Data shows that the dehumanization of American politics has increased between 2016 and 2022, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report. Specifically, Republicans and Democrats are growing increasingly hostile toward each other.
Mark Brockway, a political science professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said there’s something bigger causing this divide than simple political polarization.
“I think that political polarization, as we typically think about it in U.S. politics, is really nonexistent,” Brockway said. “There’s something much, much different going on in American politics.”
Modern American politics are less about differences in policy and more about differences in party, according to Brockway.
“There’s no foundational ideology,” Brockway said.
While that makes bridging political divides difficult, Brockway said events like Our Lady of Pompeii’s spaghetti supper can help bridge the personal divides modern politics can cause.
“It just becomes almost impossible, right?” Brockway said. “If you’re a connected community, you can actually talk to somebody else. And that can be a really important solution to the kind of craziness and disconnectedness that is our current political system.”
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Annual Spaghetti Supper
Woman singing
Tyler Oldano: “Hear that? That’s the sound of the 76th Annual Spaghetti Supper at Our Lady of Pompeii. It’s an election night tradition, one that Bea Gonzalez says gives her the energy and the fuel to get through Election Day.
Bea Gonzalez: “Coming to this luncheon is very energizing. It kind of gives you the energy to get through the rest of the day, because it’s going to be up, you know, by the time those results come in, it has been a long night.
Tyler Oldano: “For those actually running for office, though, it’s a time to break bread with the other side, especially after the long campaign trail.”
Tim Burtis: “Today, there’s nothing more that we can do except to make it through the day. Frankly, there’s no better time than today to get to know the other candidates. My campaign is over and there’s nothing more to talk about.”
Tyler Oldano: “And it’s not just attendees saying it’s pretty cool. Political Science Professor Mark Brockway says that events like these are a great way to fight political polarization.”
Mark Brockway: “You know, it’s very hard to see another group of people as like, horrible and evil and out to get you. If you’re looking at that person across a spaghetti dinner table.”
Tyler Oldano: “Brockway even says that Syracuse itself is a great example of what happens when a community separates from the world of national politics.”
Mark Brockway: “I think that a place like Syracuse, which is somewhat insulated from the insanity of national politics and maybe actually has a little bit more community identity than some other places.”