Last week saw the first two public forums to gather the Democrats running for county executive, and the race is off to a congenial start, with few outright policy differences emerging between the candidates: At a forum Saturday hosted by the 14th Ward Democratic Committee, for example, each of them said they would oppose “the expansion of fracking in Allegheny County.”
Similarly, they all bemoaned conditions at the Allegheny County Jail, but none spoke supportively of privatizing functions there or at the now-closed Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.
And while it’s still early in the campaign, candidates showed little rancor on Saturday, or at an earlier forum Wednesday in Hampton hosted by Democratic and grassroots groups. Instead, they stressed their varying life experiences, and how those shaped the priorities they would pursue as county executive.
County Councilor Liv Bennett, the first Black female candidate to run for the post — and the first to be living in public housing — made clear that inequality is an existential issue for the county.
“My beacon would be equality and equity,” she said. “We have seen so many reports that show that we are inequitable … and I’m tired of seeing those reports.”
The county scores woefully on indicators of equality such as home ownership and Black infant and maternal mortality, and, Bennett said, “I want to solve those issues.”
Bennett was the only candidate on Saturday to suggest the county might be better off with someone else enforcing environmental regulations. Fines levied by the county, she said, were “not really impactful,” and she worried that local officials would be susceptible to political pressure.
“I would love to have that be independent,” she said.
Attorney David Fawcett has been out of government since he left county council in 2007. But he said he’s already fought over issues in a courtroom that he would address as the county’s top official. In regard to criminal justice concerns, he has done pro bono work for the Innocence Project, which seeks to overturn false convictions, and challenged the county jail’s treatment of pregnant inmates, he pointed out Saturday.
But above all, he focused on the notion that “we should be a beacon of sustainability” — a vision that has at its center a county-wide riverfront park.
“It’s a matter of the county executive saying yes to alternative energy … so that 20 or 30 years from now, our kids will say, ‘We want to stay here,’” he said.
State Rep. Sara Innamorato has talked about housing — and her own teenage experience with housing insecurity — since the launch of her campaign. She has hewed to those themes in early debate performances, pointing to transit-oriented development — the creation of affordable mixed-use developments close to public transportation — as a key.
Innamorato’s campaign is the latest effort by a progressive movement of left-of-center unions and activists, and she is depicting that coalition as a model for how she would govern.
“We need to think about who do we trust?” she said toward the end of her remarks Saturday. “Who do we trust to put the right people in place and to build the coalitions necessary to [create] a county that works for us all?”
Since he launched his bid, City Controller Michael Lamb has emphasized his credentials as a reformer with a technocratic bent. He is quick to connect such issues as police accountability to governmental dysfunction, noting for example that disparities in officer training are especially vexing where scores of communities operate their own police.
Lamb last week announced a central theme for his campaign: a proposal to offer the equivalent of a two-year associate’s degree in free tuition at the Community College of Allegheny County. It remains to be seen how his “Allegheny Achievers” initiative will be funded. But while economic development often involves handing out tax incentives, he said on Saturday, “I think about it [in terms of] investing in ourselves. … It’s about investing in our people, particularly our young people.”
Former Congressional candidate Erin McClelland has continued the messaging with which she launched her bid last summer. McClelland emphasizes her work with the late U.S. Treasury Secretary (and former Alcoa CEO) Paul O’Neill and her experience working as a contractor for the county’s Department of Human Services.
She paints a grim picture of conditions for county employees, and thus of the services they can provide. She pledged to run a campaign on “operational integrity,” and criticized current leaders for terminating unvaccinated bus drivers at a time when bus service was already struggling.
“All this big, high-and-mighty stuff, I love it all. It’s wonderful,” she said. But first, she said, the county had to disprove “the Republican fallacy that a [government] bureaucracy can’t perform better than big business.”
Will Parker, who ran for Congress last year and finished with less than 1.5 percent in the Democratic primary, emphasized that he and Bennett “were the first Black candidates to run for this position. … Representation matters. So we win either way.”
And while Parker said the county jail is “not a hotel that’s supposed to be nice,” he appears to be the lone candidate to oppose reopening the Shuman Center detention facility for minors, saying he opposed doing so “until we first start talking about creating recreation centers for children.”
County Treasurer John Weinstein’s answers usually begin by noting the fact that he has served for a quarter-century in county government — long enough for him “to remember the legacies that were created [by earlier leaders] of Kane Hospital, Community College, the airport.”
Weinstein did not articulate a specific initiative of that kind himself, though he said such visions depend on the economic growth on which he would focus.
“That’s really the true role of the county executive: to be the marketing cheerleader for western Pennsylvania,” he said Saturday.
Weinstein, a skilled retail politician from the old school, touts an ability to work closely with others. He touted his skill to bring together leaders from business, labor and the nonprofit community to bring all of these people together. … Everyone’s voice will be heard.”
