Ukiyo reviews the First Public Mayoral Debate.

Politics in Pittsburgh has been kind of a messy thing of late, following a lightly heated but ultimately futile challenge by Bill Peduto two primaries ago, and a couple of months of business-as-usual by the victorious Bob O’Connor, which was surprisingly ended with his sudden death. 27 year old Darlene Harris protege Luke Ravenstahl, showing that life sometimes does indeed imitate Putney Swope, was elected to be city council president and as such inherited the mayoral throne upon Bob’s departure. Luke behaved like you’d expect a twenty-something who rose to political power by familial connection and dumb luck would: promoting wife-beating cops in the police force, stalking Tiger Woods, borrowing federal armored vehicles to attend local country music jamborees, and letting the experienced politicians make all the decisions. Peduto acted like he was going to run again, then dropped out, leaving Republican Mark DeSantis the sole potential foil to the Machine’s will. The whole thing stank of quiet doom for the city leadership, and I was more than content to ignore the whole depressing thing, putting in a pointless vote against Luke on my way to work. But as luck would have it, my neighbor called asking if I wanted to come along to see the mayoral debate at the Heinz History Center, and I figured it would be good for a laugh if nothing else.

We arrived in the Strip just as things were getting underway. The two ‘real’ candidates were joined by the Libertarian Party candidate, an ex-paratrooper and Oakland resident, and the Socialist Worker Party candidate, described by an online acquaintance as “a 24 year old who works in a coal mine and thinks that it’s 1922″. The introductory statements were pretty much what you’d expect, paraphrased thusly:
DeSantis: Pittsburgh is great, but we’re up against the wall and things are going to fall apart if we don’t get some innovative leadership
Ravenstahl: Pittsburgh is great; Bob O’Connor was great and he entrusted me to carry out his vision; I’ve been doing this for 13 months now and I pretty much have it down
Libertarian Guy: Pittsburgh is great; we are being strangled by big government and brutal taxation
Socialist Guy: The workers must unite and overthrow the tyranny of the ruling class.

More or less, that was the tone of the evening. Especially the Socialist Guy. He would respond to a question about his favorite flavor of ice cream with some kind of random, inarticulate rant about how the cops are destroying the proletariat, like some kind of life-sized, Marxist Teddy Ruxpin doll. This may sound kind of amusing, but after a couple rounds of this my nervous titters were replaced with embarrassment which quickly devolved into contempt for his wasting of everyone’s time. If you’re going to say that democracy is a sham and the only winners are politicians, that’s one thing. You could have fun with it, and maybe raise some good points along the way. Be the Wacky Candidate; criticize the whole circus that politics has become, throw in a zinger or two. People may not agree with you or vote for you, but they’ll at least have a good time and maybe buy you a beer after the fact. This guy was like being cornered by a religious maniac who can’t even come up with a convincing spiel to get your attention on the corner.

Anyway. Ravenstahl said a bunch of stuff that was so vague and uninteresting that two days later I can’t even remember what 90% of it was. He championed his balancing the budget (which was helped by the fact that the state now pretty much controls our budget, so there’s not really anything any way to not balance the budget), adding 100 new cops (which DeSantis pointed out is also required by Act 47), and the ‘Pittsburgh Promise’, a plan to give all Pittsburgh School District students who get a certain GPA a scholarship to colleges in the area. DeSantis pointed out that in the 8 months since the Promise was announced, the city has raised $10,000 dollars, all of which came from one donor. That was basically it, except that Luke at point substituted the word “floated” for “flouted”, but, again, the rest of what he was saying was so boring that I’ve already forgotten the context.

So what of DeSantis, our great elephantine hope? He certainly did a good job nailing Luke to the wall on a couple of things, including taking credit for things that he has no right to take credit for, ridiculous behavior, and the usual stuff that’s easy to mock. As far as non-negatory stands, he really didn’t say too much either, and what he said that was of substance was phrased awkwardly, making him seem less like someone who wants to turn the city around and more like someone who wants to do scary Republican things. Privatization of city services was brought up; DeSantis said that he would look into it and consider it. Is this a bad idea? Not necessarily. I’m sure there’s plenty of bloat in the services. There seem to be Public Works trucks out and about constantly, yet nothing ever seems to be fixed. The problem might be endemic to the unions, but the problem is more about the fact that the work isn’t getting done. I don’t know if threatened privatization would make a difference. Yet, anyone who looks at it in a knee-jerk fashion is going to immediately see a Republican who is wanting to replace union jobs with minimum wage, no benefits ones. I hope DeSantis is looking at it is as being a way to get what’s best for the city as a whole, but, well, let’s hope, because he sure didn’t play against preconceptions.

Similarly with his answer to the question as to what the mayor would do to convince a hypothetical person that has been offered a similar job in Pittsburgh and in Charlotte to move here. Sad to say but Ravenstahl actually won this one by talking about what makes Pittsburgh great - the views, the standard of living, the Steelers (okay, I made the last one up, but seriously: fuck the Panthers). DeSantis somehow got lost in his response and went off about the lousy job market in Pittsburgh and how we have to be creating more jobs if we want to get more residents (one of his major themes, and a relevant one, really), which kind of made him seem like Mr. Bum Out compared to Luke. What I would like to have heard (from either of them) is 1. something acknowledging all the non-employment reasons to live here; the arts, the museums, the foundations, the fact that unlike Charlotte you don’t have to spend 20 minutes in your car to get anywhere, or 2. redirecting it into a city vs. suburbs thing.

I really don’t think that the job situation here is as dire as everyone loves to make it out to be, but it’s true that most of the specialized, ‘professional’ jobs are out in the suburbs, and if you want to live in the city you’re stuck making a wretched trek out to Cranberry or Monroeville or some other godforsaken mini-Charlotte. The sad fact is, that if someone was to relocate here for a job and they’re not an artsy fartsy type already dedicated to urban life, they’re probably going to be living in some crappy development way out in the sticks and coming into the city once a month, at best. The way I see it, the suburbs are just as responsible for Pittsburgh’s lousy finances as the shifting fortunes of the steel industy or whatever, and I almost pine for the days of the late Murphy administration where Tom was actually calling the suburbanites scared racists, which comes closer to speaking truth than almost anything else done during his administration.

But back to the debate. The final question (that I remember) of the night was something about how each candidate would better connect Downtown and Oakland. Comrade Nonsequitor said something about forming one big union and breaking the necks of all the cops and bosses; Lyndon LaDouche said that public money shouldn’t be wasted on public transportation; Luke said something about building more roads and busses between the two, and DeSantis said that there’s a lot of other places in Pittsburgh besides Downtown and Oakland that people need to get to too. He didn’t follow through as much as I’d like, but he got it. Oakland and Downtown are the two places in this city that it’s actually easy to get between, and they’re the two suckiest neighborhoods. Oakland, when I was in school in the mid 90s, was an awesome place where there were tons of interesting stores and restaurants, places to see bands, places to see movies, people hanging out all the time. Yeah, it was a college neighborhood, but it was a college neighborhood in the best way. Now, thanks to my alma mater buying everything and raising rents to astronomical levels, there’s almost nothing there other than a bunch of keg parties and chain stores. Downtown was kind of creepy during the workday during the three years I worked there and dead at night, and the only thing changed by all of Murphy’s idiotic attempts to ‘redevelop’ Downtown was the creation of more empty storefronts. It’s the type of area where buildings are 3/4s empty, yet rent is still absurdly high. Everything interesting in Pittsburgh is happening far from those these areas. Yeah, there’s a lot of offices there, but there always will be. Just because people have to go to a neighborhood to work doesn’t mean it’s more important than the one where they live.

So, unless DeSantis manages to do something really, really dumb in the next month, he’ll get my vote. On the way home, we discussed how the Democratic machine is going to be in power until the progressives manage to get someone like Richard Caliguiri, a Picksburgher who actually has ideas and wants to do something more than help out his buddies or his dad’s buddies. But until that day, looks like I’m voting for the lesser of two evils, as usual.

Filed by d at October 11th, 2007 under politics