Democratic candidate for Mayor of Pittsburgh, City Councilman Bill Peduto, right, walks with his communications director Sonya Toler on his way to vote in the Pennsylvania primary election on May 21. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic/File)
Conventional wisdom holds that low voter turnout favors candidates appealing to older voters because they are more reliable than young voters. All things being equal, that should have given Jack Wagner an edge in last week’s Democratic Primary for mayor of Pittsburgh.
But all things were not equal. Bill Peduto’s superior organization, honed steadily over the course of two previous mayoral campaigns, got his voters to the polls, and did so decisively in the city’s Black neighborhoods.
“Oh it was huge. We’ve managed to forge a partnership between the progressives and the Black community. If you take Jake out, and look at just me and Jack, I won Black neighborhoods. A lot of that came with support from people like Bill Robinson, Ed Gainey, Mark Brentley and Valerie McDonald Roberts,” he said.
Peduto ran first in several East End communities adjacent to his council district such as Homewood and Lincoln-Lemington, as well as in the lower North Side and Manchester, capturing as much as 80 percent of the vote in some ward districts. In the Hill District, which went heavily for state Rep. Jake Wheatley, Peduto finished second in nearly every district.
In Downtown and Uptown districts, he battled to a three-way tie with Wagner and Wheatley. The fourth candidate, A.J. Richardson, was not a factor in any ward, gathering less than 1 percent of the vote citywide.
Though Peduto captured those parts of Wheatley’s state legislative district on the North Side and South Side, that did not harm Wheatley ally city Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle, whose district is nearly a mirror image.
Lavelle finished with 2,032 votes, almost twice the 1,101-vote tally of his closest rival former Councilwoman Tonya Payne, and more than three times the 666-vote total of attorney Franco “Dok” Harris.
No Republican filed to run in Council District 6 and Lavelle is unlikely to face a challenge from an Independent candidate in the November General Election. Peduto, on the other hand, will face Republican Josh Wander, whose 2,017-vote winning primary total was less than 10 percent of Peduto’s 23,597.
It is also possible he could face a challenge from city council President Darlene Harris. After briefly jumping into the Democratic Primary race, Harris changed her registration to Independent just hours before the deadline to do so on April 22.
Harris has not yet said what her plans are and has until Aug. 1 to decide. She would need to collect only 485 petition signatures, 2 percent of the most recent citywide election total, to get on the ballot.
(Send comments to cmorrow@newpittsburghcourier.com.)