This is WESA Politics, a weekly newsletter by Chris Potter providing analysis about Pittsburgh and state politics. Sign up here to get it every Thursday afternoon.
“What’s in a name?” asked Shakespearean heroine Juliet Capulet. With a mindset like that, it’s a good thing she was a lovestruck Verona teen rather than a Pittsburgh politician — or else things might have ended really badly for her!
While it’s no longer quite so true that a name like Flaherty or Costa can make a local politician’s career, this is petition-challenge season — a time when a name can derail your rise to power.
Here's how it works, for those just joining in. To earn a spot on the primary ballot, candidates must circulate petitions and gather a sufficient quantity of signatures from registered voters who: a) live in the district, and b) belong to the party the candidate is running in. How many signatures you need depends on the office you're seeking: Pittsburgh City Council candidates need 100, for example, while a county executive candidate requires 500.
(Candidates also must file a financial-interest statement with their petitions — and drop off a copy at the office of whatever governmental body they are running to join. Keep that second part in mind — it’s gonna be important in a bit.)
Since being filed last week, those petitions have been combed over by curious reporters, election fetishists, and rival campaigns looking for a way to dislodge a foe.
The deadline for filing such challenges was Tuesday, and hearings will take place in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court next week. The outcomes will determine which candidates actually appear on the May 16 primary ballot. If those challenges succeed, just about every Pittsburgh City Council race will end up with a single candidate, the race for city controller will tighten significantly, and Allegheny County Council could lose a progressive incumbent.
So who got challenged this year? At the top of the Democratic ballot, county executive latecomer Theresa Scuilli Colaizzi faces objections filed by Nathaniel Yap, an avid supporter of rival county executive candidate Sara Innamorato. Yap alleges that 700 of Colaizzi’s 1,000-plus signatures had defects of some kind, such as signers who weren’t registered Democrats, and those whose information was incomplete or illegible.
Such line-by-line challenges involve lawyers and court officials comparing each challenged signature against records in the voter database. After two hours of such drama, you will long for the sleeping potion that Romeo consumed to make it look like he died. After four hours, you will wish for the actual poison.
But perhaps this spring’s thorniest challenge involves Liv Bennett, who is running simultaneously for re-election to her county council seat and competing for county executive. As I noted in this space last week, Bennett was assembling her paperwork and filing fees right up to and beyond the 5 p.m. deadline. David Bonaroti, who is seeking to replace her on county council, challenged her petitions by alleging multiple defects, along with the fact that some of the material was time-stamped after 5 p.m.
Notably, Bonarati is challenging Bennett’s eligibility to run for only county council, not her bid for county executive — even though some of his objections arguably could apply to that filing as well. So no matter what happens with Bennett’s council bid (and the circumstances there are complicated) she’s very likely to remain on the ballot running for executive.
In other action, two of the four candidates running for Pittsburgh city controller, Kevin Carter and Tracy Royston, face line-by-line challenges. Both candidates gathered just under 300 signatures — and if the challenges succeed, they could both end up with less than the 250 signatures they need. If both are removed, it would leave Rachael Heisler and Mark DePasquale on the ballot.
Meanwhile, Royston herself has joined an effort to challenge another candidate for city office: District 9 Council candidate Khadijah Harris. Royston is one of two objectors to Harris’ campaign, citing a number of defects related to her petitions. (Royston is a long-time ally of Chelsa Wagner and her husband Khari Mosley, the other candidate running to replace outgoing incumbent Ricky Burgess.)
Other Council candidates facing challenges include Steven Oberst, whose effort to take on incumbent Bobby Wilson must first prevail over a line-by-line challenge, as well as a claim he doesn’t live in the district. William Reeves in Council District 3 and Matt Mahoney in District 5 are facing line-by-line challenges, and Jordan Botta in District 7 is being challenged by incumbent Deb Gross.
If all these challenges succeed, Lita Brillman’s effort to topple District 5 council newcomer Barb Warwick would be the only contested city council race on the ballot May 16.
But the challenge to Botta is worth flagging as a potential cautionary tale. Remember how I said earlier that candidates must file financial-interest statements in two places — with the county and with the government they hope to join? Gross alleges that Botta failed to do the latter by the deadline last Tuesday.
Botta declined to respond directly to Gross’ filing, which on Wednesday he said he hadn’t seen. But he called the challenge “predictable, and shows this race is close.” (He very nearly beat Gross for the endorsement of local Democratic Party members nearly two weeks ago.)
We’ll find out who prevails in court. But I have seen a candidate get bounced off the ballot for this reason almost every election cycle. And it often happens to people running for city office, even though they have to go only to the City Clerk’s office — located across the street from where they turn in petitions.
You know how Romeo assumes Juliet is dead and then kills himself, only to have Juliet wake up from the sleeping potion a moment later? Whether you considered that tragic or just tragicomic, not filing your statement of financial interest properly is the political equivalent. Don’t let it happen to you!
