The city council races have been a little more interesting.  It looks like Dowd and Kraus are doing well – their opponents haven’t put up much of a challenge.

District 1 and District 9 have had a few shenanigans.  Darlene Harris is facing 3 challengers in the primary.  Her office was vandalized over the weekend.  Ricky Burgess who currently represents District 9 has 2 challengers.  Lucille Prater-Holliday seems to be getting a lot of support.  But Burgess has had some interesting press on campaign finance lately.

Surprisingly the County Controllers Race – has become pretty heated.

George Matta has been going after Chelsa Wagner for missing votes – you can read his press release here.

It was looking like Chelsa Wagner had a pretty solid campaign – but she sent out a mailing last week that has raised a few eyebrows as it gives the impression that Chelsa Wagner is was endorsed by the Post-Gazette. (Image via North Pgh Progressive – you can see the other side of the mailer here.)

The Post-Gazette did not endorse Wagner – the Post-Gazette did endorse Valerie McDonald-Roberts for Controller – “Roberts for the Dems: She She understands best the role of the controller.” The Wagner campaign edited some of the Post-Gazette editorial for this mailer.

From the mailer:

her view of what the controller can accomplish  seemed broader than the tasks that are the statutory responsibility of the officeholder.

From the Post-Gazette endorsement:

She is very well informed on local issues, but her view of what the controller can accomplish, as articulated during a meeting with Post-Gazette editors, seemed broader than the tasks that are the statutory responsibility of the officeholder.

The bloggers quickly took notice of the mailer as well, the following posts have popped in the past few days…

• North Pittsburgh Progressive – “Chelsa Wagner’s bold mailing”
• Early Returns – “Dirty Tricks Monday”
• 2 Political Junkies – “Not really a glowing endorsement (or any other kind)”

Both Chelsa Wagner and Valerie McDonald-Roberts are running ads on TV.  George Matta has this ad on YouTube – we aren’t sure if this is also running on television.

Valerie McDonald Roberts

Chelsa Wagner

George Matta

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

This time the mayor is removing himself from the commission and making it smaller 15 people instead of 35.

While I would love to be excited about the Propel Pittsburgh commission actually meeting – this does look like some sort of PR attempt from the Mayor’s office.

The PG interviewed Anthony Smulski Jr. – former Vice Chair of the commission.

• “However, he said organizers repeatedly struggled to get all 35 members to a meeting, even though they applied for the slots, went through interviews and promised to serve.”
  • According to the City’s website – only 21 of the 35 spots were ever filled – the city lists 14 of those (10 of which were to be appointed by the mayor) as vacant.
• “In theory, it was a great idea,” Mr. Smulski said of the commission structure. “In practice, it was hard to execute.”Mr. Ravenstahl missed some meetings, too, he said.
• “Membership is limited to city residents, so Mr. Smulski, who moved from the North Side to the south suburbs, no longer is eligible.”

Also fascinating that the city still hasn’t updated the Propel Pittsburgh page on their website.

If we blog about it the mayor will talk about it… if only it were that easy.  But it is interesting to note that this announcement comes just a few weeks after a blog post about the Propel Pittsburgh commission was posted on a Pitt Students blog – The Publius Foundation - here (Progress Pittsburgh linked to it here and the PG’s Early Returns linked to it here).

Also fun to note – Matt Hogue (the blogger formerly know as the Pittsburgh Hoagie) left the following comment on the post on The Publius Foundation:

Screenshots of Propel Pittsburgh Websites:

From the BikePGH blog and newsletter…

In 2010, the City of Pittsburgh installed about 5 miles of bike lanes and sharrows, mostly in East End neighborhoods.  These lanes were a welcome addition to the emerging city-wide bike lane network, and showed that the City was serious when, upon receiving the “Bronze Bike-friendly Community” status, Mayor Ravenstahl proclaimed that there will be “25 miles of new bike lanes and sharrows in two years.”

We want to make sure this momentum continues, so we decided that we’d deliver to him a bunch of “Thank You” notes to demonstrate how much support Mayor Ravenstahl has for his bike initiative, and how bike lanes have positively impacted the lives of thousands of Pittsburghers.

We want you to write or draw fun, creative responses on our kinda boring form letter on how more bike lanes will change your life.  The idea is that hand-written letters are more effective than emails, form letters, and post cards, so write-away!

Click here for details on how you can help.

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday – Congressman Jason Altmire stated that he would vote no on health care reform bill.

Today the Steelworkers responded to Representative Altmire’s decision at his office in Aliquippa.

We noticed this little widget on the side bar of The Digging Pitt blog (a great blog about art and transit in Pittsburgh) for Streetsblog.net – some of the articles looked like they would be of interest to the Progress Pittsburgh community. About  Streetsblog.net …

Bringing together the best of the nation’s bloggers on sustainable transport, smart growth and livable streets, Streetsblog Network is a place where we can learn from each other and move the discussion on these issues forward.

These are all topics that we have tried to cover here at Progress Pittsburgh and that are important to making Pittsburgh a great place to live.  We have added the Streetsblog widget to the side bar and hope you find the information useful too.

If you blog about these issues on your blog or know of other bloggers – you can nominate a blogger for the Streetsblog.net network here.

Some of the other Pittsburgh blogs on the Streetsblog list include:

• Reimagine an Urban Paradise
• Urban Velo
• Bike Pittsburgh

Some additional blog posts about Streetsblog

• Awards for Streetsblog and GothamSchools (openplans.org)
• How Can Bicycles and Buses Share the Road More Safely? (streetsblog.net)
• Happy Birthday, Streetsblog Network (streetsblog.org)

Just before the close of business on the final day that petitions could be challenged, the Onorato campaign filed objections trying to block Joe Hoeffel from being on the ballot.

The Hoeffel campaign fired back in a statement from co-manager Lauren Townsend:

“We filed petitions with 7,632 signatures from 33 counties…”

[State law requires gubernatorial candidates to have at least 2,000 signatures in total and have at least 100 signatures from 10 counties.]

“Dan Onorato has good reason to be scared, and now he has turned desperate.  This is a cowardly act.”

Press was rough for team Onorato all across the state.  For example, NEPArtisan  said, “Dan Onorato has gone the low road.”

Throughout the campaign, Onorato has been attempting to paint the race as a fait accompli. If this is the case, why challenge someone who clearly had exceeded the signature requirements?

Maybe it has something to do with these polling results, touted by team Hoeffel a few days ago. They show that, in a general election matchup, in vote-rich Southeast PA (a region that a Democratic nominee MUST win big to have any hope of winning statewide), Hoeffel leads Corbett, while Onorato trails.

Things got even stranger later in the day when Onorato withdrew his challenge. Their explanation raises more questions than it answers. In a statement to Politics PA, team Onorato said–and try to stay with me here–that they filed the suit, because they thought that Hoeffel might challenge Williams’ petitions. In what universe is this how a serious candidate for governor makes decisions!?  For his part, Hoeffel called it a “lame-ass” excuse; a “cynical effort to play around with the Democratic process”, and it’s hard to disagree.

So what is really going on? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think these poll results (and what we can infer about Onorato’s internal polling) must have a lot to do with it. It’s not unusal that when campaigns of so-called front-runners start to spudder or slide, they begin to show signs of disorganization, bad political decision-making, and irrational behavior.

Photo from The Pittsburgh Hoagie Sidebar

We were hoping that some of the usual Pittsburgh political bloggers would be following the Jeff Dzamko story. Dzamko is a good friend of Luke Ravenstahl who was just arrested on Friday for an outstanding bench warrant from 2008 on some bad checks.

Former Spring Garden Activist Arrested –  Post-Gazette, February 27, 2010

Since the Pittsburgh Comet’s retirement last month – we are running out of political blogs to follow.  We stopped by the Pittsburgh Hoagie to see if Matt H had anything to say about the situation.  Matt is passionate about helping his neighborhood – we would like to some of his past posts – but his entire blog has been taken down.  We thought he might have some interesting commentary about Jeff Dzamko and Spring Garden.

But word on the street is that Matt H is now working for councilman Bruce Kraus and apparently no longer blogging.  We kind of miss his blog posts.

You’ve probably heard of the “Anybody But Luke” crowd, right? Well, I can tell you where everybody who is anybody will be on the night of Dec. 3.

They’ll be hanging out with city councilor Bill Peduto.

Here’s the details on that party, from billpeduto.com:

Here is how you can show your support for Bill – and build a better Pittsburgh! We need you to help us to make this event even more special.
Please join us and bring your friends.

For more information or to RSVP, please call 412-414-1430 or email Mike Devanney at Mike.Devanney@gmail.com.

Host Committee
Co-Chairs

Matt H has been called quite a few names from many around the burghosphere (including by me!)  Mostly, they centered around his role as the lone apologist for the mayor on the interwebs.  That’s why his endorsement slate is probably going to catch quite a few people by surprise:

Mayor, City of Pittsburgh: Kevin Acklin

There are going to be people coming out of the woodwork to say that this doesn’t matter, nobody listens to Matt, etc.  That would be missing the point as to the significance of this endorsement.  If people like Matt H are not voting for Luke this year, then his impenetrability might just be broken in neighborhoods that have been left behind–and have traditionally been the mayor’s strongholds.  Neighborhoods like Elliott, Carrick, Hazelwood, Beechview, Homewood, Sheraden, or Overbrook.

Chris Briem will have to tell me how the math works out, but in a low-turnout race, with three candidates, and no polling, what happens to Luke’s level of support?  If much of the anybody-but-Luke crowd, the almost-anybody-but-Luke crowd, and the registered Republicans vote for Acklin along with a sizable portion of the Democrats uber alles [for the sake of this post, let's call that the Matt H vote], then could the election be closer than conventional wisdom would have us believe?

Back to the endorsement, Matt has this to say about his reasons for supporting Acklin:

This is a vote that I wrestled with for some time but lately the smoke has cleared and I am voting with my mind and for my community. I truly believe that Acklin is the best candidate for our city neighborhoods. Acklin reminds me of our late great Mayor Bob O’Connor in his community first approach to government.

He has a lot more to say about his disillusionment with this administration.  He even includes a copy of a lengthy email that he sent to Luke, expressing his disappointment with the direction of the administration:

Luke,

I am writing tonight in frustration.

“This is not going to be good,” you can hear them thinking.

For far too long we residents of District 2 have gotten the short end of the stick on EVERYTHING. We don’t receive our fair share of services and we don’t have any plan for our community.

This seems to be a theme that pops up over and over again around the city, as does the complaint below.

We also don’t see you at a meet the candidates night when you were invited. You left 50 residents of District 2 wondering where you were, including myself. You are losing control here in District 2. We don’t see you enough or hear from you enough.

And he closes with this kicker:

For far too long I have stood by you praising you and your staff. I am at a breaking point. I can’t defend something when it is painfully obvious. District 2 is falling apart and I don’t see a plan to stop the walls from falling in.

If you haven’t visited the Pittsburgh Hoagie for a while, this entire post is worth a read.  If it turns out that someone hacked Matt H’s blogspot account, then I’ll take everything above back, but it seems to me like he is completely sincere in his concern about the administration, his praise for Kevin Acklin, and his love of community. ]]> http://progresspittsburgh.net/2009/11/01/pigs-fly-and-other-unexpected-news-2/feed/ 3 http://progresspittsburgh.net/2009/10/16/dok-harris-and-residency/ http://progresspittsburgh.net/2009/10/16/dok-harris-and-residency/#comments Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:36:57 +0000 insider http://progresspittsburgh.net/?p=1157 An investigation by KDKA turned up information suggesting that Dok Harris may be ineligible to be mayor.  The home rule charter lays out the requirements for taking office as mayor:

The mayor shall have been a resident of the City for at least three years immediately preceding election

Harris held a press conference today, where he admitted (1) he only registered to vote in Pittsburgh this year, (2) he has never voted in the City of Pittsburgh, and (3) he had an apartment in the City of Pittsburgh, while voting in Sewickley.

There’s a couple of facts that are not really up for dispute:

1. As a student, temporarily living in Pittsburgh, Dok had a legal right to vote at his permanent address in Sewickley.  In other words, charges of voter fraud are ill-founded.  The U.S. Supreme court has ruled that students have a right to vote at their school address OR their permanent address.
2. Dok’s name cannot–at this point–be removed from the ballot.  Just as when a candidate dies between the time that the ballot is set and when an election occurs, that candidate’s name would likely remain on the ballot.

At the press conference, Harris produced copies of leases showing that he had an apartment in Pittsburgh, but by focusing on the two issues above, the media may be missing the boat on a bigger issue.  By exercising his right to vote from his parents’ address in Sewickley, is that an implicit establishment of that address as his permanent residence?  If this is the case, and Dok only established residency in the City of Pittsburgh this year, then would that make him ineligible to serve as mayor, if he were elected?

My guess is that the story may be over for now, but if the election ends up the way that Dok is hoping it will, then the question of residency and eligibility will be front-and-center.