A weakening Dem machine in Pittsburgh

By Fester:

Just a short post on the local Pittsburgh area primaries yesterday.  The headline news is the large win by incumbent Mayor Luke "Boy Wonder" Ravenstahl in the Democratic primary.  He won on a combination of none of the big names stepped forward to challenge him, vastly superior money (thanks to throwing his support to Clinton in the 2008 primary) and two second tier challengers who could not build a coalition outside of their natural and initial bases and not pissing off/getting enough of the wrong people indicted. 

That is not the most interesting thing coming out of last nights' results.  The most interesting thing is the declining power of the Pittsburgh machine.

 What do I mean, the machine won the mayoral primary, didn't it? 

Yes it did; however it brought about no coattails within the city.  The mayor supported candidates in two contested City Council district primaries where the primary winner is the 99.7% chance winner of the general election.  Both candidates lost.  Natalia Rudiak won in a minor upset as two opposing machines (the Warner and the O'Connor/Ravenstahl) groups beat each other senseless in District 4.  Dan Lavelle won in District 6, knocking off mayoral ally and incumbent councilor Tonya Payne.

Right now, it is safe to project that there will be a majority of Pittsburgh City Councilors for the 2010 term who were not endorsed by the Allegheny County Democratic Party and ran at least partially as the anti-machine candidate.  These councilors (Rudiak, Lavelle, Dowd, Kraus and Peduto) have some serious coordination and cooperation problems they need to resolve amongst themselves, but that is the nucleus of a potential working majority, especially as Doug Shields is frequently an ideological and pragmatic ally of some of the current non-endorsed councilors. 

Comments

[jc]

Wagner not Warner