Mayor Bob O'Connor of Pittsburgh died tonight, almost two months after being diagnosed with primary central nervous system lymphoma, a rare form of brain cancer. He was 61 years old.
I'll admit to not being very excited after Mayor Bob first won the Democratic primary in 2005 (which virtually assured that he would be our next mayor). If anything, I leaned more towards his opponent, Bill Peduto, and I was cynical enough to expect the worst for anyone who had to go onstage after Tom Murphy, the twelve-year incumbent and one of the most venal politicians Pennsylvania has seen in the last few decades.
Mayor Bob began his career as a steelworker, and spent his years on the City Council fighting as the counterwight to the Murphy adninistration. He ran against Murphy twice, in 1997 and 2001, losing the second time around by 699 votes.
The mayor began his administration with the little things, like cleaning up Pittsburgh's neighborhoods and abandoned buildings through the "Redd Up" campaign, and celebrating in the streets with the rest of the city after the Steelers' Super Bowl win in February. He kick-started the Downtown development plans, which seemed all but dead under the previous Mayor, and seemed interested in cooperating with Allegheny Executive Dan Onorato on consolidating the county's unwieldy political structure. Perhaps most-importantly, he was focused on balancing the budget and finally ridding Pittsburgh of the "distressed" moniker it has borne for the last few years.
We'll never know now what else he had in store, and whether he could have equaled David Lawrence and Richard Caliguiri, two other mayors who reinvigorated Pittsburgh. I'm just sorry that after twelve years of fighting to fix this city, he had to be taken just after he was given the chance to do so. My condolences to the O'Connor family and friends.