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Ed Gainey's mayoral inauguration to be online-only

In this file photo from Oct. 13, 2021, Ed Gainey, Democratic candidate for Pittsburgh mayor, addresses people gathered for Josh Shapiro's campaign launch for Pennsylvania governor, in Pittsburgh.
AP
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AP
In this file photo from Oct. 13, 2021, Ed Gainey, Democratic candidate for Pittsburgh mayor, addresses people gathered for Josh Shapiro's campaign launch for Pennsylvania governor, in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh mayor-to-be Ed Gainey’s swearing-in ceremony next week will be conducted virtually, a concession to the tenacious coronavirus which already has cast a shadow over local governance for nearly two years.

Gainey’s team announced Tuesday that the Jan.3 event and a prayer service the day before will be viewable by the public online “in accordance with guidance from public health officials.”

The move was not a total surprise: Gainey himself disclosed an exposure to COVID-19 last week. Although a subsequent PCR test confirmed it was a false alarm, concern about the virus prompted Gainey to move a previously scheduled press event — the unveiling of his transition team — to Zoom. At the time, Gainey suggested that with the threat of the omicron variant looming, his team already had been planning to shift events online. His own potential exposure was a reminder of “why we need to protect one another," he said.

Gainey’s inauguration will be carried out at 1 p.m. Monday, Jan. 3, and broadcast on the city’s cable channel as well as its social media accounts on YouTube, Facebookand Twitter.

An “Interfaith Prayer for Pittsburgh’s Future” will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 2, and — as a non-official event — be streamed on Gainey’s own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Nearly three decades after leaving home for college, Chris Potter now lives four miles from the house he grew up in -- a testament either to the charm of the South Hills or to a simple lack of ambition. In the intervening years, Potter held a variety of jobs, including asbestos abatement engineer and ice-cream truck driver. He has also worked for a number of local media outlets, only some of which then went out of business. After serving as the editor of Pittsburgh City Paper for a decade, he covered politics and government at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has won some awards during the course of his quarter-century journalistic career, but then even a blind squirrel sometimes digs up an acorn.