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Petition challenges narrow field in Pittsburgh races but contested primaries remain

90.5 WESA

Voters in Pittsburgh can expect a number of contested races in the May 16 Democratic primary, though the field has been winnowed somewhat after a series of petition challenges worked their way through the local court system.

When petitions were first filed to appear on the spring primary ballot, it seemed as though every City Council district would be contested, with a four-way battle for city controller in the offing. But candidates can be removed from the ballotfor such problems as not having enough valid signatures on petitions or failing to hand in paperwork on time. Several Pittsburgh hopefuls faced court challenges regarding such issues. Most have survived — at least for now.

Khadijah Harris, for one, satisfied concerns about whether she's lived in council District 9 long enough to represent it: “I find that Ms. Harris had resided at the challenged address during the necessary time period,” Common Pleas Judge John McVay ruled on Tuesday.

Harris is poised to face Khari Mosley in City Council District 9, where the two will compete to replace outgoing City Councilor Ricky Burgess.

In several cases, McVay upheld petitions because of paperwork problems with the efforts to have those petitions tossed.

Filings that object to a petition, like the petitions themselves, must be presented to the county’s Board of Elections by a deadline that this year fell on March 14. But challenges lodged against a handful of candidates — City Council hopefuls Steven Oberst and Jordan Botta, as well as city controller candidate Tracy Royston — were deposited at the elections office after staff had gone home at 5 p.m., with no one left there to receive them.

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In each case, McVay ruled that “no one was present to receive the copy of the challenging petition … until the next day, which was after the deadline for challenges had passed. Therefore, I find the nominating petition challenge was not timely filed.”

McVay’s order can be appealed, though no candidate has announced plans to do so yet. For now, Oberst remains on the ballot to challenge incumbent City Councilor Bobby Wilson in District 1, and Botta is still poised to challenge incumbent Deb Gross in District 7 .

Not everyone was so lucky. Another City Controller candidate, city school board member Kevin Carter, withdrew from the race last week amid a challenge. City Council candidates William Reeves and Matt Mahoney also withdrew from their races in Districts 3 and 5, respectively.

Carter’s withdrawal still leaves a competitive race for city controller, in which Royston faces Rachael Heisler and Mark DePasquale. Mahoney’s departure, meanwhile, still leaves Lita Brilliam to challenge Barb Warwick for the District 5 office, which Warwick won last year in a special election.

But the disappearance of Reeves leaves Bob Charland, an aide to outgoing council member Bruce Kraus, as the only candidate in the race — and the only city office-seeker assured of victory on May 16.

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.