President Trump’s executive order rechristening Lake Ontario as “Lake America” has united an unlikely coalition against him: the very Republican-leaning towns that helped elect him.
New York mayors of lakeside cities are refusing to go along gracefully with the widely unpopular rebrand, Politico reported Thursday.
Oswego Mayor Robert Corradino (R), whose city rests on the lake’s southeastern shore, put out a statement arguing the lake’s name is “rooted in history, geography, and the shared identity of the communities that surround it,” noting it has carried its current name for hundreds of years.
“It just seems like the country is heading in a direction that we’re not all happy about,” Corradino told Politico.
Sackets Harbor Mayor Alex Morgia (D) and Sodus Point Mayor Pat Nolan (R), whose villages both draw tourists to the water each summer, have echoed the pushback from their own lakefront communities, according to the report.
The revolt isn’t confined to village halls.
Oswego, a city with a population of about 17,000, has about equal shares Democrats and Republicans, but its larger county is one of the reddest in the state — in 2024, 61 percent of Oswego County voters voted for Trump, according to Politico.
“Yet on Monday, several Oswego County legislators from both parties approved a resolution rejecting the new name, out of concern for the cost of the rebrand on taxpayers and businesses,” the report stated. “The resolution said it does not intend to diminish the authority of the federal government, rather it aims to ‘recognize the longstanding historical and regional significance of the name Lake Ontario.’”
Republican Mayor Pat Nolan of Sodus Point — located along the southern border of the Great Lake — said he’s “disappointed” by the name-change as “Ontario” is rooted in the “Indigenous history of the region.”
“My hope is that, rather than allowing this decision to become another wedge that further divides people, it can encourage a broader discussion about the history of this great body of water, the Indigenous people who first gave it its name and the generations of communities that have grown along its shores,” he wrote in an email.
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