Just to distract myself from the vast amount of mathematics I'm doing lately (mmm...doctorate), I figured I'd start collating and posting infomration on Pennsylvania political items. Today's topic is the Pittsburgh Mayoral race.
First things first, the Pittsburgh Mayoral race will, unless something truly unprecedented happens, be settled on May 17th, the day of the Democratic primary. Pittsburgh has approximately 5 times as many registered Democrats as it has Republicans, and Pittsburgh is a bastion of classical machine politics. That's why its actually relevant to talk about the Mayoral race in April, Election Day is more or less just a coronation.
Second, the current Mayor is Tom Murphy, his official (and therefore hagiographic) biography is here. I'm not going to discuss Murphy personally, but I'll just touch on the core issue that dominates the election and everything else.
Pittsburgh is, for all intents and purposes, totally bankrupt. The deepest reason for this is the decline of the city: the population is aging, graying and leaving while the support services for a city with a larger population are still maintained. There are concomitant and symptomatic problems, such as sprawl, but the core issue is the shrinking of the civic populace.
Exacerbating this problem have been a variety of Pittsburghy neuroses; in particular, the city's administration is deeply enthralled with a project from the 1950's called "The Pittsburgh Renaissance" (reference to Mayor Lawrence here). ; these public-private partnerships have become something of a byword in Pittsburgh politics. In 1980, Mayor Caliguri launched Renaissance II, and there was a recent attempt to institute a "regional renaissance initiative". These are all effectively urban redevelopment plans, usually aimed at reclaiming steel or industrial sites as shopping malls, another overview of them is here.
The end result is that the Pittsburgh administration is obsessed with very large development projects, which have always been one of the two ways that Pittsburgh revitalizes itself (the other one being to absorb nearby communities, like the Borg). Murphy was totally obsessed with Renaissance-style projects and rammed several down the throats of Pittsburgh. The watchword for this in Pittsburgh is "stadium", and a history of the politics are here.
I think we actually reached Plan C on this.
Murphy's had other massive development plans, most of which involving attracting retail and revitalizing downtown. The plans have not been notably successful.
Enough Murphy bashing. The result of this is that the current candidates are basically running in the background of:
- 10+ years of white-elephant development projects
- Several extremely unpopular taxes (including a badly botched and spectacular unpopular property reassessment)
- A still continuing process of urban decay
- Act 47
Act 47,
available here, is the plan by which Pittsburgh gets financial aid from the state to keep working until its finances are stable again. Act 47 is basically immovable, although railing against it is a major topic for people on the city council; the major Pittsburgh issue for Act 47, really, is sovereignty - it's a giant honking sign that Pittsburgh isn't capable of keeping its own house in order.
With that in mind, here's the candidates running:
Bob O'Connor is your default candidate for Mayor. He's a former restauranteur and now city councilman. O'Connor's the front runner primarily for machine reasons; he's not exactly what I would call a leading intellectual light. Bob's major theme is running the city more "professionally" with more management experience.
An addendum - if you think Bob sounds like a Republican, you aren't that far off - the Republican candidate for the 2001 campaign was a philosophy professor from a local college and far more liberal than Murphy. In the primary (the first Republican primary for Pgh Mayor they'd had in 70 years), the other candidate was a Democrat up to a few months before the primary.
Mike Lamb. Lamb's the current Prothonotary for Allegheny county. The only thing I can say is that he's a very enthusiastic backer of the maglev program for Pittsburgh. Yes, maglev. Lamb's issues page is in more depth than O'Connor's, and he says he's updating it regularly, but at the moment the latter issues are covered in far more depth.
Bill Peduto. If we go on technical issues alone, Peduto should be the front-runner. His site's basically a blog. He podcasts! The DLC loves him!
Oh.
Anyway, Peduto's got the most informative issues page, but almost everything's in PDF, so you'll have to download a bunch of ancillary files.
If things go the way they traditionally do, then O'Connor will be the Mayor. My personal opinion is that he's the worst of all three candidates, but he's been racking up the traditional endorsements. Of Lamb and Peduto, I'd probably prefer Peduto, since I think he's thought out his ideas the most, and is the least insane of the three, also I kinda like his little motorcyclist site icon, but either Lamb or Peduto would be better than O'Connor.
With that in mind, I'd encourage everyone in Pittsburgh to register as Democrat. You can still vote how you like in the generals, but it's not like it matters at that point.
This is really just a starting point; I know I haven't covered the candidates in much depth, but I figured it would be a good way to at least open up the discussion for yinzers.