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When local pro-Palestine activists proposed a city boycott of entities with ties to Israel, the debate on the matter was bound to be contentious. But probably no one expected a casualty to be Mayor Ed Gainey’s communications director, Maria Montaño.
Montaño has been one of the city’s most prominent progressives, an openly trans woman who has been the voice for the mayor’s office. Before that, she was a union activist who spoke on behalf of a movement that was sometimes willing to chain itself to the mayor’s door. But she stepped down this week amid questions about her decision to sign a petition to put the Israel boycott before voters on the ballot this November.
Which goes to show: Ballot initiatives don’t always play out the way you expect.
As WESA was the first to report this week, if a petition drive to put the measure on the ballot succeeds, voters will be asked if the city should be barred from spending money with entities that have ties to Israel until the conflict in Gaza ends and Palestinian aid and rights are restored.
The “No War Crimes on Our Dime” effort says that would show that voters oppose tax money supporting Israel’s policy on Gaza in any way. Opponents counter that the measure amounts to guilt-by-association antisemitism and could paralyze the city’s ability to contract with anyone, given the nature of the global economy.
The ballot-question effort may not survive a court challenge next week. But even if it does, and even if voters approve it, that will be just the beginning of the argument.
For starters, City Council would have to pass enabling legislation to put the measure into effect. And history suggests the end result may not entirely be what supporters have in mind.
Consider the “parks-tax” ballot question put forward by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and narrowly approved by city voters in 2019. The goal was to impose, by 2020, an additional property tax to improve long-neglected parks, especially in struggling city neighborhoods. But council delayed implementation due to COVID, and some of the revenue has been spent on trucks and other investments that weren’t on the agenda presented to voters.
So far, we haven’t seen a ton of council enthusiasm for this measure, either.
Council is on recess this month and hasn’t discussed the question as a body. But the three top members of council — President Daniel Lavelle, President Pro Tempore Bobby Wilson, and Finance Chair Erika Strassburger — have written to city and county lawyers voicing “serious concerns that the adoption of such an amendment would have a severe and devastating impact on City operations.”
The letter echoes many previously reported concerns about the impracticality of the boycott while expressing anxiety that “this measure will disrupt the social fabric of Pittsburgh and cause pain for many in our community.”
Supporters of the ballot question note that some of their own allies are Jewish, and they say warnings about massive disruption to the city are just fearmongering. (After all, council would have a say.) But any measure that bars an otherwise qualified vendor from bidding on a contract is likely to prompt a lawsuit. And what happens in Pittsburgh is unlikely to stay here.
In 1999, for example, voters approved a ballot question requiring taxpayer-funded construction projects to employ a certain percentage of city residents. That quickly prompted Republicans in Harrisburg to draft legislation to preempt it. Given how the GOP nationally has leapt to portray Democrats as anti-Israel, it’s almost impossible not to imagine the same happening here.
Which wouldn’t be bad as a strategy to keep Gaza in public view, and the debate about a boycott may have more political impact than the boycott would. Lost computer sales in Pittsburgh might not affect Dell’s Jerusalem office, much less Jerusalem itself. But a Harrisburg fight that drew in Gov. Josh Shapiro? That’d be another story.
And Maria Montaño may not be the last person to deal with the fallout.
Gainey himself is up for re-election next year. And you can ask Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato’s campaign about the electoral impact Gaza can have. When she criticized a statement by the Democratic Socialists of America on Gaza weeks before last year’s election, it sapped energy from a base she desperately needed in a tight race.
Innamorato squeaked by, and Pittsburgh mayors don’t often lose re-election. But I’ve seen polling — also reported by KDKA’s Jon Delano — that suggests Gainey could start the race with less than 50 percent support, no matter who his rival is. And it would be ironic if the fight about this referendum hurt him: A pair of ballot questions — one about conditions at the county jail, another about the use of “no-knock warrants” by city police — may have juiced turnout among reform-minded supporters when he beat Mayor Bill Peduto in 2021.
The concern is even more urgent on the national level.
By almost any metric, replacing Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee has galvanized the party. One survey showed a near-doubling in enthusiasm among its voters. That energy was palpable last week when Tom Perez, a White House official and Democratic Party icon, spoke to a fired-up group of Democrats in a West End eatery.
“The excitement about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is across the ideological spectrum,” he told me afterward. On issues ranging from reproductive freedom to health care access and workers’ rights, “The contrast is so clear” between them and Trump, he said.
I asked: Could such excitement last with divisions over the war in Gaza looming?
Perez didn’t answer directly, saying instead, “Peace is the only option … and we’re going to continue working tirelessly toward that end.”
There’s a lot more at stake in that effort than election outcomes, and those elections will be decided by other issues, too. But Democrats have to hope their prospects aren’t shaped by whether Israelis and Palestinians can resolve their differences.
