Wednesday, November 05, 2003

By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

One of Jim Roddey's final television campaign ads was a bright vignette that followed the 70-year-old as he prepared for a daybreak jog, but the ad may as well have been forecasting Roddey's run into the political sunset.

	Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey thanks Republican matriarch Elsie Hillman for her support after he conceded the race to county Controller Dan Onorato last night. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

Roddey, a Republican and Allegheny County's first chief executive, conceded the election to Democratic challenger Dan Onorato just before 11 last night. Had Roddey won, he'd said previously that his second term would be his last in public office. Now that he's lost, his political career will be over in two months.

"We raised the money, we executed the plan, but we could not overcome the registration disadvantage," Roddey told supporters at Downtown's Westin Convention Center hotel.

Roddey, never able to close the gap between himself and Onorato, was hoping for a miracle finish similar to the one that four years ago catapulted him into a brand new office, which was being labeled as the third-most powerful job in state politics behind the governorship and the Philadelphia mayoral post.

A month prior to the 1999 contest between Roddey and county Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, Roddey trailed Wecht by 8 percentage points. That figure nearly mirrors poll numbers from the run-up to this election -- a month ago, Onorato led Roddey by 9 percentage points.

In 1999, though, Roddey was able to overcome the lead and scratch his way to a narrow victory, winning by a margin that amounted to just three votes in each precinct. The election was a stunning blow to a Democratic Party machine that had dominated county politics since the New Deal.

But this time around, Roddey -- affable and even-tempered -- found in Onorato an opponent his equal not only on many policy issues, but also on the likeability scale.

Roddey started his day yesterday by voting at the Schenley Park golf course along Forbes Avenue, and by 8 a.m., he was greeting voters at Dible Elementary School in Penn Hills. After that, he did some last-second campaigning in Shaler, Whitehall, McCandless and Mt. Lebanon, where he'd hoped to accumulate suburban majorities large enough to offset Onorato's stranglehold on the city.

He couldn't.

In the mid-afternoon, Roddey visited with volunteers at his Bethel Park and Downtown campaign centers. He spent the evening much as he did four years ago, at the same hotel. But this time, instead of celebrating an 11th-hour victory, he contemplated the end of a short-lived but meteoric flash across the Western Pennsylvania political horizon.

His tenure, if not already regarded as such, will go down as an historic one locally, if only because Roddey led Allegheny County into a new century and was the first man to supplant the three-headed executive branch that ruled the county for 200 years.

But "historic" is different than "successful," and the jury is still out on how Roddey's first and only turn as county chief executive affected the region's long-term economic prospects. Soon after he was elected, the national economy turned sour, and local business opportunities have been slow to come.

Roddey, a media and advertising entrepreneur with slight interest in politics before arriving in Pittsburgh late in 1978, will not fade into obscurity. He still sits on numerous philanthropic and business boards, and doubtless will remain politically active in a behind-the-scenes fashion.

And in a 1999 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he said: "I can't imagine wanting to retire before I'm 90. ... I just can't imagine not having activities and things to do and things to be concerned about."

But after he relinquishes his seat in January, no longer will Roddey's job require him to make two, three, sometimes up to six public appearances a day, as he did during the height of his campaigns. He may not relax exactly, but he'll have more time for jogging and tennis, at least.

Roddey said simply, "I don't know what my plan will be."

Bill Toland can be reached at btoland@post-gazette.com or 1-717-787-2141.

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