Dem
47
GOP
53
The yinzers held their mayoral primary yesterday. And inasmuch as the last time Pittsburgh elected a Republican to that office, Herbert Hoover was the president, the Democratic primary was the de facto election. In that primary, incumbent mayor Ed Gainey, who is Black and progressive, was defeated by Allegheny County Controller Corey O'Connor, who is white and moderate, 53% to 47%.
The angle that most national outlets have taken is that this result is "another setback" for progressives. For example, Billy Witz, writing for The New York Times, declared: "Mr. Gainey's defeat is the latest in a string of losses in deep-blue cities, most notably in San Francisco and Oakland, that have raised the volume on questions about progressive officeholders, as their wing of Democratic Party seeks to wrest control from centrist leaders who have struggled to counter President Trump."
Presumably, readers will not be surprised that we are very, very leery of drawing broad, national conclusions from local elections, particularly local election primaries. First, across both the Democratic and Republican primaries in Pittsburgh, about 65,000 people voted. That's a turnout of around 25%, and not likely a representative 25%.
Second, these local elections tend to be shaped by—wait for it—local considerations. We will give you two dynamics, specific to this election, that likely played a role in the outcome. The first of those is that the city budget, like most city budgets these days, is in rough shape. And O'Connor hit Gainey hard on not fixing that, in particular not compelling major nonprofits like UPMC, AHN, Pitt and CMU, who don't pay taxes, to kick some money into the town's coffers. That sounds more like a "throw the bums out" argument to us, not so much a centrist vs. progressive argument. Meanwhile, the second of those local considerations is that O'Connor's father Bob was mayor a bit less than 20 years ago, and died in office from a brain tumor. There were almost certainly some "we like this family" votes, or even some "complete your dad's unfinished work" sympathy votes.
Third, in our experience, when it comes to how blue a city (or state) is, pundits tend to confuse "wide" with "deep." What do we mean by that? Well, we don't know Pittsburgh very well, but we do know San Francisco. And while that city has many, many Democratic voters, they are largely moderate Democratic voters. This is the city that gave us Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Xavier Becerra. None of these people is going to be confused with Karl Marx. Or even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The point here is that Pittsburgh probably isn't a flaming lefty city rejecting progressivism, it's probably a flaming center-left city returning to its historical norm.
Anyhow, that's our take. Readers' opinions may vary, of course. (Z)