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“Ok, but now they’ll have to govern.”
I’ve been hearing that refrain ever since the primary election last month delivered another round of wins to Allegheny County progressives, starting with Democratic county executive nominee Sara Innamorato.
Sometimes it comes across as a coping mechanism: Some of the same folks who said Innamorato and others were too young and too liberal to win office are consoling themselves with the thought that they can’t actually do it.
But other times, it reflects genuine uncertainty. It’s natural to wonder, for example, whether Innamorato can be independent from a campaign backer like SEIU, the powerful labor group that spent six-digit sums supporting her in the primary. Maybe it’s inevitable to have some doubts when the entire political system is suddenly remade by a new generation of leadership — which includes Innamorato as well as Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee and a number of other state and local leaders.
That’s why news like Innamorato’s endorsement Thursday by Gov. Josh Shapiro, which follows on her embrace by outgoing county executive Rich Fitzgerald, might be a bit more important than you may think.
“Sara has the passion, drive and experience to lead Allegheny County into the future,” asserted Shapiro in a statement. “Throughout her time as a state representative, [she] has worked to deliver results for her constituents [by] advocating for more affordable housing, protecting our clean air and water, and standing up for the union way of life.”
A Democratic governor endorsing a Democratic candidate for county office might seem like a “dog bites man” story. And sure, it would have been a much bigger story if Shapiro had somehow endorsed Republican Joe Rockey. Endorsements don’t move many votes in any case — you’ll recall that Rich Fitzgerald endorsed Michael Lamb for county executive in the primary, after all.
But the support of established pols such as Fitzgerald and Shapiro can help neutralize messages that try to portray a candidate as too extreme. They also send a message to, say, Democratic donors who may be on the fence about their next move: If Innamorato is good enough for Josh Shapiro, isn’t she good enough for you?
Or more to the point: Is it worth risking an irritated governor for the sake of backing a Republican underdog in a heavily Democratic county? It’s a question whose answer may help determine how much support Rockey gets from unions with misgivings about the progressive agenda.
Innamorato also has been able to burnish her legislative credentials in Harrisburg after the state House passed her anti-gentrification bill to enable the city to protect longtime residents from property-tax hikes that result from spiking neighborhood home values.
That measure passed on a nearly party-line vote despite opposition from local Republicans who contend it could raise tax burdens in the suburbs, and it faces uncertain prospects in the Senate. But that’s true of just about everything being done in the House these days. And a line of attack that was dubious in the first place — that Innamorato should have more legislative accomplishments in a seniority-driven legislature long held by the other party — just got weaker.
Summer Lee, meanwhile, has lately been making public appearances like a veteran pol. In just the past couple of weeks, she’s attended the announcement of more than $50 million in federal water infrastructure funding, a discussion of establishing a “Keystone Space and Defense Innovation District,” the establishment of a CMU transit research center, and the announcement of $150 million in federal money for a bus rapid transit system.
Of course, it takes more than a first-term representative to land investments like that. The feds laid down a marker on the transit money three years ago, for example. But you don’t get far in government by being shy about taking credit. And while no one is going to confuse Lee for Mike Doyle, her much more moderate predecessor, she appears to be answering one of the biggest concerns about her victory last year: that her take-no-prisoners rhetoric would be ill suited to continuing his legacy of bringing home federal dollars.
Lee herself joined the unity picnic at which Fitzgerald backed Innamorato last weekend. In a characteristically fiery speech, she told a story about speaking with a donor who’d backed a rival in her own Democratic primary fight last year. The donor, she said, told her that the only thing they shared in common was a need to protect voting rights.
“I needed that money, so I wasn’t going to fight too much,” Lee joked. But she ran through a list of Democratic priorities they, and the audience, shared: education equity, better wages and infrastructure, environmental protections.
”If you are here because you believe in the future of this country,” she said, “we are on the same team.”
It’d be easy to roll your eyes at such assertions, or to overstate the significance of a ritual like a unity picnic. While Fitzgerald shared a stage with county council nemesis Bethany Hallam that day, for example, they still don’t share much else. Within days of the event, Hallam was blasting Fitzgerald for vetoing a minimum wage bill she’d sponsored. Lee herself noted that she “came up out of an ugly primary” in 2022, “and I’m sure I’m about to walk into another one.”
Still, she said, Democrats from across the county had joined to establish “the most diverse slate of elected officials that has ever existed in Western Pennsylvania.” And “that’s why we’re beating Philly” in terms of Democratic turnout, she said. “We’re beating Philly because people feel like every election cycle … that they have a reason to come out to vote.”
Unifying a diverse group of constituents around a noble cause like dissing Philadelphia? If that’s not the stuff of leadership, I don’t know what is.
