Challenger ousts Roddey to become next Allegheny County chief executive on big night for Democrats

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor

Democrat Dan Onorato will be Allegheny County's second chief executive after ousting Republican Jim Roddey in a landslide climax to a campaign in which he assailed the incumbent's record on taxes and economic development.

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The Democratic county controller capitalized on his party's registration edge as he trounced Roddey by a margin of roughly 58 percent to 42 percent.

A jubilant Onorato, surrounded by family and supporters, greeted his supporters shortly after 11 p.m. to claim victory. With his 6-year-old son Danny clinging to his neck, he pledged to lead an economic revival of the region.

"We're going to focus on real jobs," he said, promising to spur infrastructure improvements and development on the land surrounding the Pittsburgh International Airport. To the county's aging river towns, he said, "We're coming back, clearing those brown fields."

After a ritual concession call to the Democrat, Roddey, 70, had publicly conceded with one last boast about his tenure.

"We'll have victories in the future," he said. "The county is strong thanks to the stewardship of this administration."

He pledged to work with Onorato, 42, over the next two months to ease the transition from the county's first to its second chief executive.

Democrats got more goods news at the other end of the state as Philadelphia Mayor John Street easily turned away a repeat challenge from Republican Sam Katz in an election that once had been expected to be a cliffhanger.

Heavy voter turnout in the two Democratic strongholds helped bring an apparent victory to Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge Max Baer, a Democrat, in his Supreme Court contest against Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin.

Melvin and the three Superior Court nominees who shared the GOP's statewide ticket with her were counting on a continuation of the party's decade-long winning streak in appellate court races. But with returns in from roughly three-quarters of the state, the Democrats maintained a clear edge.

In Allegheny County, Democrats retained control of county council, although their majority will be reduced to 8-7 after Eileen Watt upset incumbent Democrat Rick Schwartz in District 7.

After an election in which few real differences on issues had emerged, Onorato capitalized on a traditionally Democratic county returning to its partisan roots. Roddey had scored an upset over Dr. Cyril H. Wecht four years ago when he made crucial inroads with Democratic voters by casting himself as a candidate above politics.

But years of battles with a Democratic council had stripped Roddey of his apolitical patina.

Yesterday, he ran far behind Onorato in several of the Democratic areas in which he managed to defeat Wecht four years ago. In his home ward, the city's 14th, in Squirrel Hill, Roddey was losing by a margin of 63 to 37 percent, almost a reversal of his tally over Wecht. In Ross, a nominally Democratic community that he carried four years by a margin of roughly three-to-two, Roddey was losing to the Democrat in nearly complete returns, 53 percent to 47 percent.

Shaler told the same story. Roddey carried it with nearly 60 percent of the vote in 1999; last night Onorato edged him out with a narrow majority.

Roddey, a former business executive, had also built his 1999 victory on a promise to bring private enterprise savvy to the challenge of economic development in a region that lagged behind other parts of the country through the boom of the 1990s. On taking office, however, Roddey was confronted with a deep national recession.

While he was able to point to isolated economic success stories under his administration, neither he nor Allegheny County could buck national trends to instill a sense of dynamism in the local economy.

The incumbent also was buffeted by Onorato's criticism of his management of the county's property tax system after two controversial reassessments. Roddey responded that the reassessments had made the system better and fairer. But for many of those whose tax bills were boosted by the reevaluations, assertions of fairness may have offered little consolation.

Roddey's erosion compared to his first race was evident even in strong Republican areas, some of whose homeowners had been stung by reassessment. In McCandless, for example, he won with nearly 74 percent of the vote in 1999; last night his majority dropped to 62 percent. In Upper St. Clair, his 1999 majority was an whopping 82 percent. Last night it was 70 percent.

Onorato ran on a platform of time- and poll-tested issues that echoed the rhetoric of numerous recent campaigns in the region, including those of both of the chief executive contenders four years ago. He promised to overhaul the property tax system, bring leaner government, spur economic development, and keep the region's youth from moving away. But the race, inevitably, was chiefly a referendum on the incumbent.

Roddey tried to retain his seat by boasting that he had brought fiscal stability to the county, contrasting its balanced budget with the red ink of the city of Pittsburgh. The Republican tried to tie Onorato, a former city councilman, to Pittsburgh's budget woes. At other times, in fact, he seemed to be trying to run against every Democrat in the county.

He invoked the name of Democratic Sheriff Pete DeFazio in claiming that Onorato was secretly opposed to consolidation of the county row offices. He pictured Onorato with Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy in arguing Onorato's guilt by association with the city's budget woes. At other points he claimed that Onorato would be a puppet of city Controller Tom Flaherty, the Democratic county chairman.

Polls and last night's results suggested that the tactics had had little effect. A Pennsylvania Poll taken late last month showed that for the vast majority of voters, Onorato's background in city government made little difference. And the number who did see that background as a negative had not increased during the time that Roddey's advertising was most heavily assailing it.

The Roddey advertising may have backfired with some voters. In last week's survey, Pennsylvania Poll respondents overwhelmingly identified Onorato as the candidate who was running the more positive, issue-focused campaign. Onorato strategists said their own internal polls yielded similar suggestions that some voters had been turned off by Roddey's attacks.

"Dan was proud of his record on city council," said Kevin Kinross, his campaign manager. "I think the voters rejected Roddey's strategy [of pinning city's fiscal woes on Onorato]. Blaming on one person the city's problems I don't think was very realistic."

Kinross said the campaign had been confident that it could reverse Roddey's results of four years ago.

"We had identified certain key areas where we had to do well, where we had to turn things around from what happened in 1999 -- the 14th ward, the 7th ward, [of Pittsburgh], places like Ross Township, West View and Bellevue. So we focused a lot on our grass roots and our get-out-the-vote campaign."

Another major difference from the last contest for the post was that Roddey no longer enjoyed the fund-raising advantage that he held over Wecht. The two campaigns were nearly even in fund-raising in the most expensive local election in county history with each candidate spending about $3 million.

James O'Toole can be reached at jotoole@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1562.

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