Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette
	A happy Bob O'Connor waves to supporters last night after winning the Democratic nomination for Pittsburgh mayor. MORE COVERAGE Pittsburgh City Council, School Board races A Primary Election Day photojournal More Primary coverage

Bob O'Connor, the onetime fast food executive and foil to Mayor Tom Murphy, won the Democratic primary yesterday, putting him well on his way to becoming Pittsburgh's 56th mayor.

O'Connor, 60, beat back challenges from two younger, idealistic Democrats -- William Peduto and Michael Lamb -- to win the party's nod and is therefore the favorite to win the mayor's job outright in November, when he is set to face lesser-known Republican Joe Weinroth.

O'Connor, who left Pappan/Roy Rogers restaurants in 1992 to begin a late career in government, finally caught up with the job that has eluded him since 1997, when he first challenged Murphy, the North Sider who was elected to the first of his three terms in 1993.

Murphy will leave office as Pittsburgh's second-longest serving mayor, after David L. Lawrence.

Seizing on growing anger at Murphy from his unpopular drives to publicly finance stadiums and strong-arm Downtown redevelopment plans in 2001, O'Connor, of Squirrel Hill, came within a hair's width of beating his longtime rival that year, but failed. This time, with the battle-scarred Murphy staying out of the race, O'Connor easily took the job on his third try.

Pittsburgh, as ever, was caught in a time warp in this race, as many of the issues in the mayoral campaign were tied to things that happened four years ago.

After winning re-election in 2001, Murphy fought state legislators for three years for reforms to the city's out-of-date tax system, and he dragged the city through layoffs, service cutbacks and tax increases before finally winning state help in November. The next month, as he also faced a federal investigation of a contract reached with the city's firefighter union on the eve of the 2001 election fight with O'Connor, Murphy announced he would not run for a fourth term this year.

Murphy was not in the race but his ghost was. At almost every campaign stop this year -- from meetings with aging city residents at bingo games to artsy crowds in Shadyside -- O'Connor reminded voters that he warned them of Pittsburgh's financial problems four years ago.

He then claimed, repeatedly, that he had the financial and management experience, from his 20 years working in restaurants to his two years with Gov. Ed Rendell, to yank the punch-drunk city off the ropes.

Around 10:35 last night, flanked by county Chief Executive Dan Onorato and many state and local officials, O'Connor appeared before hundreds of supporters in a Sheraton Station Square ballroom.

"My mother always told me three's a charm," he said. "For us to be successful we have to start believing in ourselves. ... We have great people who are going to turn this city around and put it on the right track."

While Peduto and Lamb split the main opposition vote to O'Connor, the former council president showed strong support in every corner of the city.

O'Connor won majorities citywide, from predominantly African-American wards to the Greenfield streets where he grew up. Yet he lost his home ward, the 14th, to Peduto, just as he lost it to Murphy four years ago.

O'Connor also won a smaller but still significant victory last night, as Sala Udin, the greatest thorn in his side on City Council, lost his nomination fight to Tonya Payne, who had the support of O'Connor and the city's Democratic committee.

Lamb, 42, the Allegheny County prothonotary, and Peduto, 40, a city councilman (who was renominated to his council seat last night) tried to counter O'Connor's fiscal arguments by noting he was a city government leader as it sunk into fiscal quicksand through the 1990s. After joining council in 1992, O'Connor was the body's president from 1998 to 2001, leaving council in early 2003 to work as Rendell's representative to southwestern Pennsylvania.

Lamb's criticisms got sharper in the last two weeks of the campaign, when he noted O'Connor signed a pledge to the firefighters in 2001 similar to Murphy's, promising not to close any of the city's 35 firehouses. Lamb also warned that O'Connor's 2005 campaign was partially funded by money from potential slots casino interests. It proved too little too late.

"I think we came into the thing the underdog and were never able to get beyond it," Lamb said last night. "While we reached out to a number of people it's difficult when you're running against somebody who almost had incumbent status coming into the thing."

Noting that he led the drive to restructure county government in 1998, Lamb tried to position himself as an experienced government reformer who could change Pittsburgh more effectively than O'Connor. Drawing on his deep roots within the Democratic Party -- his father Tom was a former state senator and a member of Gov. Robert P. Casey's Cabinet -- Lamb also tried to get the message across that he was the only realistic challenger to the better-known O'Connor.

Peduto also held the reformer banner aloft. He reminded voters that he was the first city official to call for Act 47 distressed status for Pittsburgh -- several months before Murphy sought it -- and led a council task force on merging city and county services.

Peduto's campaign was full of new ideas for the city, such as basing yearly city budgets on citizen focus groups and surveys, and turning the city's stodgy Urban Redevelopment Authority into a grass-roots neighborhood planning department. He actively courted young and socially-attuned voters, and the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh judged him as running the most positive campaign.

It did not work, but Peduto may have come out of the mayor's race stronger. He was easily renominated for his District 8 council seat and may become the main opposition voice to O'Connor in city government.

"We had a campaign built on twigs and mud and we built a castle," Peduto told cheering supporters at Doc's Place in Shadyside.

Four other Democrats also ran yesterday: Gary Henderson, Louis "Hop" Kendrick, Les Ludwig and Daniel Repovz.

O'Connor's Republican challenger Nov. 8, Weinroth, is a Squirrel Hill native who works as a lawyer Downtown. He has done some campaigning, largely repeating complaints that the city is burdened with too much debt and the Republican mantra that Pittsburgh can make ends meet by selling off property and other assets.

Weinroth's campaign has been rather pessimistic, in other words. Voters in the primary seemed to feed off the positivity and familiarity O'Connor represented, so, matched with the 5-to-1 city registration edge the Democrat O'Connor enjoys over his party, Weinroth has a long way to go before winning in November.

O'Connor has already come a long way. The former steel worker with no college education, who flourished under the Dale Carnegie motivational classes he took as a budding restaurant manager, is now poised to take over Pittsburgh after eight years of fighting.

O'Connor may find that was the easy part. Should he enter office in January, O'Connor will inherit a city that still has barely balanced budgets, a weak municipal pension fund swelling with retirees and two state-appointed fiscal oversight boards that have strict, long-term budget strategies in place for him through 2009.

That is also the next mayoral election year. Lamb, Peduto and the other man O'Connor beat this year, Tom Murphy, will be watching.