It was a political contest in which there was no margarine for error.
Two candidates seeking to be the Democratic nominee for a special election in state House District 19 tied in a vote by Democratic committee members on Thursday night. And Aerion Abney beat Glenn Grayson only after having a slip of paper with his name on it drawn from an empty tub of margarine.
“I’m too young to have a heart attack,” Abney said moments after the executive director of the county Democratic committee, Joe McAndrew, pulled the name from the margarine tub, which was held aloft by party chair Eileen Kelly and supplied by Father’s Diner, the North Side eatery hosting the event.
“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Abney said a few minutes afterward. Abney had campaigned for the seat, which sprawls across much of Pittsburgh, three times against incumbent Jake Wheatley. And he was widely expected to try a fourth time, until Wheatley stepped down at the end of last month to become chief of staff to Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey.
“This has been years in the making,” Abney said. “We’ve been building up a coalition for years now, and we’re glad it finally got to a point where it went our way. They were looking for someone who was going to have an open ear and be accessible.”
The special election itself is slated to take place April 5, and the winner will fill out the remainder of Wheatley’s term this year. A separate, regular, election will be held to fill out a full two-year term in the district. That race will use new lines crafted in a statewide redistricting process.
By winning the support of Democratic Party members who represent voting precincts within the district, Abney will be the only candidate on that special election ballot to be labeled as a Democrat. That will be a powerful advantage in the heavily Democratic district.
Wednesday’s vote was 55 to 55, a result confirmed after the ballots were tallied before the candidates three times. Kelly asked the candidates if they would consent to resolving the issue by coin toss. When they declined, she called the state Democratic Party, whose executive director, citing state election law, said the tie should be resolved by drawing lots.
Kelly said she had not seen a tie vote during her tenure as party chair. “I knew it was going to be close,” she added. “We had two good candidates, and they really worked hard.”
In fact, turnout was exceptionally high: 70 percent of the 157 committeepeople eligible to vote did so on Thursday. Many committee members thought Grayson had the edge going into the balloting, which was carried out over three hours. But as the evening wore on, the consensus was that the vote would be tight.
“It was very intense,” Grayson said after the vote. “It was my first time running, and I felt it was going to be close.”
Grayson, pastor of Wesley Center AME Zion Church, has long been a community fixture in the Hill District, and serves on the board of the Sports and Exhibition Authority. He said his reaction to the events “has to be prayerful,” and said he hadn’t decided whether he would challenge Abney for a full two-year term. “It’s too early,” he said. “I need to process.”
Abney’s selection by county committee members must be ratified by the state party’s executive committee – generally a foregone conclusion. There was some confusion on Thursday, including a brief miscount of the total number of committeepeople who voted, but by evening’s end there seemed little basis to challenge the outcome.
Grayson noted that one committee member had been listed in the book but was deemed not eligible to vote. The committee member in question, Patrick Sweeney, told WESA he had not expected to be allowed to vote. He had been appointed to fill a vacant committee slot only a couple weeks before the vote, and party rules intended to prevent vote-packing preclude very recent appointees from voting.
And on Wednesday night, Abney was already looking ahead. His effort to secure the party’s nomination, he said, was “already showing that we are going to be present, and be engaged, and fight for your issues.”
