A special election is less than a week away to fill Congresswoman Summer Lee’s former Pennsylvania House seat, which is split between affluent Pittsburgh suburbs like Edgewood and less affluent ones like Braddock.
Pennsylvania Democrats need to sweep three special elections in Allegheny County next week to win a majority in the House. Of the three, the easiest place to win could well be the 34th district. Democrat John Fetterman received more than 82% of the vote there in his 2022 Senate race – about 30 percentage points more than his statewide average. Turnout for special elections is typically low – a factor that could play a role in shaping the outcome.
The Republican, Robert Pagane, is a former police officer and he said he would focus on attracting more funding and try to hold judges more accountable when they provide lenient sentences. Pagane said that a lack of police officers is a more pressing issue than police accountability and that more people would want to become officers if the public stopped second-guessing the police so much.
The Democrat, Abigail Salisbury, has pushed to make police hiring in Swissvale borough more open – and to include more discussion of how to avoid police shootings. She thinks the small municipalities in Allegheny County will have to begin to share police resources more in order to beef up their ranks.
'The whole system's failing'
Currently a security guard at UPMC, Pagane has more than 30 years of experience in local law enforcement. He plays hockey, practices martial arts, teaches kickboxing and is the front man for the Robert Michaels Band.
Pagane grew up in Penn Hills, and said he had aspirations for office beyond the 34th district. And he’s not afraid to buck the GOP orthodoxy on issues like abortion.
“I know the Republican Party is real firm on the pro-life stuff, which I am, too,” he said. “However, I don't believe that rushing to Harrisburg and making all abortions illegal makes any sense. It's a law that is unenforceable.”
2023 Special Election
- Background: Allegheny County voters are electing three new representatives to the Pa. State House on Feb. 7.
- Why it matters: The elections will determine whether Republicans or Democrats win control of the state House.
- Voter Guide: Read WESA overviews of the races for the 32nd (Joe McAndrew vs. Clayton Walker), 34th (Robert Pagane vs. Abigail Salisbury) and 35th (Matthew Gergely vs. Don Nevills) districts.
He doesn’t think the state should try to ban assault weapons because there are already too many assault weapons in circulation. But he does support some regulations on guns, such as background checks to prevent people with mental illnesses from owning a gun.
Pagane thinks it’s unfair that elderly people like his grandparents have to continue paying school taxes even though their kids have long since graduated. Instead he wants to fund schools with taxes on marijuana and gambling. “The last thing you want to do with your Social Security check or your pension check income every month is give a big chunk of it to the school system,” he said.
Pagane’s own law-enforcement experience makes him wary of changing state laws that govern policing without a comprehensive look at controversies over police shootings. He says the public should attend classes that would help them understand how difficult police work is.
“They use that word ‘accountability,’ and it's really so vague. Accountable for what? They're trying to do a job that most people don't want to do and most people couldn't do.”
Pagane says the debate over policing reflects a broader failure in the justice system. He pointed to the recent shooting of Brackenridge’s police chief by a suspect accused of illegally carrying weapons. “The whole system's failing, whether it's police shootings or police accountability or just bad guys getting arrested and released,” he said.
'Next time, we don't know we'll have a miracle'
Abigail Salisbury works as a lawyer whose clients include a number of small nonprofits. But she decided to get involved in Swissvale Borough council meetings after Donald Trump was elected President in 2016. “Think global, act local,” she thought.
The council members at the time were all white, lived near each other and didn’t listen to community members, she thought. Salisbury, who is Jewish and identifies as bisexual, ran to take their place and won. A borough survey said residents cared most about environmental issues and activities for children. So that’s what she focused on.
Then in 2020 the borough building collapsed. Nobody was inside at the time, but Salisbury said the experience made her think more about infrastructure problems across the district: crumbling sewers, the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, even the sinkhole her own car wheel fell into.
“We can't keep relying on saying, ‘Oh, it was a miracle that nobody was killed.’ And yeah, it is a miracle nobody was killed. But the next time we don't know that we'll have a miracle,” she said.
She has since schooled herself on such concerns as sewer lateral financing, municipal stormwater infrastructure, and road infrastructure at a proposed Amazon warehouse in Churchill.
On Swissvale’s council, she said, she helped change the hiring process for police, so that more people are involved. Now they ask questions such as how a prospective officer would respond to a situation like the one that led to the killing of George Floyd.
Salisbury, who said she doesn’t care for political schmoozing, said she calls people out even if it risks making her unpopular. As an example, she cites her willingness to criticize the University of Pittsburgh for its treatment of adjunct professors when she was an adjunct and voted to unionize, she said.
Salisbury cares about core Democratic issues, like abortion rights. She opposes fracking in the county and supports investments in energy alternatives. And she wants to raise the standards for charter schools because of their adverse impact on local public school finances. But she acknowledged the Republican-controlled Senate will limit what Democrats can accomplish.
She’s used to trying to set realistic expectations, she said. “You can't necessarily promise people the moon and the stars. Or you can, but you're lying.”
