This is WESA Politics, a weekly newsletter by Chris Potter providing analysis about Pittsburgh and state politics. If you want it earlier — we'll deliver it to your inbox on Thursday afternoon — sign up here.
The “Super Tuesday” primaries this week presented a challenge for political journalists: How do you say something interesting about results that confirm what everyone knew — that Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be their parties’ nominee for president? OK, sure, a sizable number of Democratic ballots were cast for “uncommitted” rather than Biden, but how do you interview “none of the above”?
I did the next best thing: Instead of watching CNN and eating Fiddle Faddle Tuesday night, I interviewed Green Party presidential hopeful Jill Stein in an East End bar.
“We’re offering people a completely different way forward at a time when they are really suffering from business as usual,” she told me.
Stein was in town to meet with supporters hoping to get her on the ballot again after runs in 2012 and 2016. She was back in the area after a recent stop talking to residents affected by the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — a disaster that offers a perfect metaphor for how she sees democracy going off the rails.
And if she’s disheartened by her earlier losses, it hasn’t dented her upbeat demeanor or changed much of her message.
“I think we were ahead of the curve in 2016 and in 2012,” she said. “We basically launched an agenda of an economy that works for all of us, [including] access to housing at a time when half of renters are economically stressed trying to pay their rent. Abolishing student debt, calling out the climate crisis — we’ve really been validated as far as calling for what needs to be done.”
Still, her return isn’t likely to be welcomed by many Democrats. Back in 2016, the last time Stein appeared on the ballot with Trump, she pulled just under 50,000 votes in Pennsylvania — slightly more than the margin by which Trump won the state. If all those voters had stuck with the Democrat …
“And if pigs could fly, what a beautiful world this would be,” interjected Stein.
Among aggrieved Democrats, she said, “We hear loud and clear from the enemies of Donald Trump. But there are just as many, if not more, who revile Joe Biden and who feel that he has thrown working people under the bus.”
Democrats “jump through all kinds of hoops to try to deny that fact” but “have no one to blame but themselves” for a lack of enthusiasm, she said.
Nor is Stein particularly impressed by Biden’s efforts to advance progressive goals.
“He has done a few things,” she acknowledged. “He made some good appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Great.” (He also just got one of Pittsburgh’s own, Moshe Marvit, placed on a federal mine safety commission, establishing a Democratic majority after a long delay and despite the opposition of U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, no less.)
And while Stein sees student loan debt as a key issue, Biden has relieved $138 billion of it. That’s less than a dime for every dollar of student debt out there — but it’s more than any other president has done.
Still, when asked whether Biden deserves credit for such things, Stein said, “On balance, no.”
Take Biden’s decision to pause the approval of natural-gas export terminals, a bid for time to consider factors such as the industry’s climate impacts. The move was sharply criticized by the gas industry and celebrated by environmentalists, but Stein surmises that it’s just political theater.
“He hasn’t said anything about permanently pausing this program,” she said. “This is paused until the election, and you can be sure that there’s enough momentum behind this and dollars behind it. It’s not changing.”
Democrats won’t have trouble finding fault with this perspective: It’s easy to talk about the use and misuse of power when you don’t have it and don’t need to compromise to exercise it.
But getting mad at Stein may be beside the point when tens of thousands of Democrats are casting ballots for “uncommitted” or “no preference.” And widespread disenchantment appears to be a bipartisan concern, given the sizable GOP vote for Nikki Haley’s last-gasp bid to topple Trump. It might be more accurate to see Stein as a symptom rather than a cause of such trends.
Many of those Democratic no-confidence votes reflect outrage that Biden has not done more to rein in Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. In fact, the other political story unfolding while Stein and I were speaking was a protracted discussion of an Allegheny County Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.
Stein, who grew up in a Jewish household, says her faith demands such denunciations of a conflict she refers to as a “genocide.”
But what’s at stake, she said, is not just Israel’s moral identity but our own. The conflict in Gaza, she said, galvanizes people partly because of a sense that “the world has shifted” — along with our place in it.
“This is an empire in its final stages,” she said. While the United States has long been accustomed to the idea “that it has monopoly control over the world …we are no longer in that space.”
Fatigue with American commitments abroad is accompanied by a sense that government isn’t working at home, she said. “So we’re in a very chaotic moment, where all bets are off about the direction this election may take.”
OK, maybe not all bets: If you want to gamble on Stein winning in November, you’ll have little trouble finding pundits to take the other side of that wager.
But even as election-turnout statistics show American political participation rising, polls suggest their faith in government, and in each other, has cratered. The national imagination has been seized not so much by what we can do if we win, as by fears about what will be done to us if we lose.
And even if you don’t share Stein’s policies, it’s comforting to spend an evening discussing alternatives to that.
*****
Postscript: After this newsletter went out Thursday afternoon, word came of the passing of Jim Roddey, Allegheny County's first county executive and a fixture within the local Republican Party.
Roddey, who was 91, will be remembered for his political legacy, but these days it may also be worth recalling how naturally he could step outside of politics — a gift that has become increasingly rare and is rarely even celebrated.
As every other obituary will tell you, Roddey was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and a successful businessman who in the late 1970s came to Pittsburgh, where he would later head the board of the Port Authority and serve on the boards of other civic groups.
Eventually, he was called in to resuscitate a local Republican committee on life support. He salvaged its finances and helped set it back on its feet, and he became Allegheny County's first county executive, having won a 1999 race against celebrity coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, a larger-than-life figure in Democratic circles.
Roddey served only a single term in office after his reelection hopes foundered amid a countywide property tax assessment — an experience that has taught county executives to shun reassessments ever since. But as Roddey's administration laid down the ground rules for county government, he also sought to shake up the region's direction.
A "New Idea Factory" convened by his administration solicited ideas and volunteers to help shape a new direction for the region. While such transition teams are common, Roddey's led to the creation of the Sprout Fund, which provided seed money for civic ventures that still help define the region. GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick, in a statement on Roddey's death, recalled taking part in that effort and celebrated it as "an innovative initiative that spurred so much unity and hope."
Sam DeMarco, who now hold's Roddey's old post as chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, celebrated him as "a civic leader unlike any other." In a statement, he hailed Roddey for having “helped to reimagine a once-moribund party and turn it into a force for change."
And Roddey kept a hand in local politics almost until the end of his life, serving as the chairman for Republican Joe Rockey's county executive bid last fall.
But Roddey represented a moderate Republican wing that in recent years has been increasingly at odds with the direction of his party. He stepped down as the local GOP chair in 2016, at a time when the party was being remade in Donald Trump's image. And as with other moderate Pennsylvania Republicans like Tom Ridge, Roddey didn't keep his misgivings quiet.
"Trump doesn't have the intellect, the training, the skills to be president," he told me at the time. "He should not be the most important person in the world."
Perhaps the most lasting part of his legacy is the fact that he maintained a bipartisan roster of friends and admirers. Many of those were hailing him Thursday evening: They included Dan Onorato, who defeated Roddey in his reelection bid and who issued a statement saying, "His counsel was wise, and his wit was contagious."
But Roddey's most public bipartisan ties were the ones he shared with Duquesne University law professor Joe Mistick, who had been a staffer for Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff. The two men argued politics for years on local TV shows, but off-camera they were close friends.
"Jim never burned a bridge, and he never held a grudge," Mistick told me Thursday evening.
Roddey, he said, hailed from a time "when you could joust in politics, but everything wasn't a blood feud. His first priority was to get things done. Politicians today just want to win the next primary."
Roddey and Wecht "went hammer and tongs at each other during that campaign," Mistick recalled, "but they became friends afterward." A key moment in developing that relationship, Mistick told me, was when Roddey got word that Wecht was having an event catered at his home — and then arranged to show up dressed as one of the caterers.
Roddey could display a wicked sense of humor — one that got him in trouble on occasion — and there are Democrats who will never forgive his efforts, ultimately unsuccessful, to privatize the Kane hospital system.
But it may be fitting that the last time he appeared in a local political debate, it had to do with whether he, like current County Executive Sara Innamorato, had tattoos.
I have been assured he did not. Still, the fact that you can't be entirely sure is a part of his legacy too.
