Dave Fawcett isn’t suggesting some “little froufrou park.”
He says his plan to build a sprawling countywide park would help make the region a destination, rejuvenating hard-up communities with more than 100 miles of riverfront biking and walking paths. Mr. Fawcett, a Democrat running for Allegheny County executive, has said that for an estimated $500 million to $600 million, the county could be “reclaiming our riverfronts for public use — which is worth every penny.”
But if anyone else gets the top job, none of that will happen, he told supporters at a Downtown news conference last month. “We’re going to stagnate, and we can’t afford it.”
While union support and high-profile endorsements flowed to bigger names this year, Mr. Fawcett, a Pittsburgh trial lawyer, boosted his under-the-radar profile with a slew of television commercials, a moderate platform and the occasional dig at rivals.
Eight percent of likely voters in the May 16 Democratic primary backed him in a poll released last week, leaving him well outside the top tier of the six-candidate field. But for Mr. Fawcett, 64, of Oakmont, that represented a big climb from just 1% in the same poll over the winter. The new survey, one of the only polls of the race made public, put Mr. Fawcett in fourth place behind state Rep. Sara Innamorato, with 32%, and Pittsburgh City Controller Michael Lamb and County Treasurer John Weinstein, who had 20% apiece.
Mr. Fawcett’s backers see hope in undecided voters — 18% hadn’t made up their minds in the new polling — and in so-called “soft” support for some opponents. Eleven percent of likely voters in the survey, commissioned by the business-labor coalition Pittsburgh Works Together, named Mr. Fawcett their second choice.
A Democratic strategist watching the race gave Mr. Fawcett credit for running a smart campaign, engaging well with audiences and focusing on issues that matter to them. His TV commercials — which he has spent considerable sums airing — “really convey a message that he’s a fighter for the people,” the strategist said.
“Unfortunately for [Mr. Fawcett], it’s nearly an impossible task for him to win them over,” said the strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating campaigns in the race.
Mr. Fawcett has little hope in part because he lacked the name recognition of his much better-known rivals, and because “so few voters are truly up for grabs right now,” the strategist said.
As of midday Monday, only Mr. Weinstein’s campaign had put up more money airing ads — just more than $1.1 million for TV, radio and digital placements, including about $220,000 for commercials in the last eight days of the race. Mr. Fawcett had put up about $830,000, including roughly $37,000 for those final days.
The tallies come from AdImpact, which tracks political advertising. Campaigns can add to, reduce or drop future ad buys.
Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Lamb spent decades in public office building relationships and cultivating support. Mr. Fawcett served two four-year terms on the smaller stage of County Council, leaving office after 2007.
He mentions that experience while campaigning but says he’s not a “career politician. “I’ve had a real job for many years,” he told KDKA radio on April 18.
Mr. Fawcett’s campaign emphasizes economic development, environmental sustainability and criminal justice reform.
The countywide riverfront park would attract residents and help make the region a model for sustainable practices, he said at the April news conference. Legislative mechanisms to begin the years-long development work are already in place, passed when Mr. Fawcett was on council.
He called it a leadership failure that the idea hasn’t moved forward since then. His pitch imagines collaboration with railroad companies to relocate tracks from riverfronts. The park and its biking and walking paths would run down one side or the other of each river — county line to county line — with bridge connections tying segments together.
Other links would bring trails into communities, letting residents commute to work and beyond. The effort would stoke recreation and economic recovery, including in old industrial towns, while shifting freight trains carrying hazardous materials away from waterways that supply public drinking water, Mr. Fawcett said. (A recent study found most derailments in the region happen near major rivers and communities designated as environmental justice areas.)
State and federal infrastructure grants, philanthropic and foundation money, and perhaps a voter referendum on local taxpayer funding could enable the plan, he added.
Sean Brady, 55, a Fawcett friend and bicyclist in Observatory Hill, said it’s hard for Pittsburghers to think in “transformational terms.” He called the park a chance for county government to go big.
“Usually in Allegheny County, it’s the nonprofit organizations that are actually providing the leadership, and if you’re lucky, the county comes along for the ride,” Mr. Brady said.
Another supporter, retired state Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Baldwin, attended St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in McKeesport with Mr. Fawcett when he visited on a recent Sunday. Lingering afterward, she said it’s important that he showed up in the Mon Valley.
“The fact is that people forget us. People don’t come,” said Justice Baldwin, a McKeesport native. “They forget McKeesport and Clairton, Rankin and Braddock and all of those little towns because the mills aren’t here anymore.”
During an earlier visit to Justice Baldwin’s own church, Bethlehem Baptist in McKeesport, Mr. Fawcett encountered a cousin of someone he helped free through the Innocence Project. The woman ran up to Mr. Fawcett with tears in her eyes, Justice Baldwin recalled. (The nonprofit assists those thought to be wrongly convicted.)
Mr. Fawcett says he has won release for men who collectively served 86 years for crimes they did not commit. He brought legal action against the Allegheny County Jail over conditions for pregnant inmates.
In his most high-profile litigation, he challenged coal giant Massey Energy in a series of cases, one of which led the U.S. Supreme Court to create a new standard for judicial recusals. That inspired John Grisham’s 2008 novel “The Appeal.” Author Laurence Leamer also documented the years-long battle with Massey in “The Price of Justice,” released in 2014.
More recently, Mr. Fawcett ran briefly for Pennsylvania attorney general in late 2015 and early 2016.
“He only cares about the human condition and how we are all doing,” said Fawcett campaign chairman Timothy K. Lewis, a former federal appeals judge now in private practice in Pittsburgh. Mr. Fawcett’s kindness is a quality “very simple but too often too elusive” today, he said.
That didn’t stop Mr. Fawcett from targeting Mr. Weinstein early on, criticizing the longtime treasurer in candidate events and before TV cameras — and being the only candidate to consistently target the race’s initial front-runner. After the Post-Gazette reported on a secret attempt to return Mr. Weinstein to the local sewer board following his removal, Mr. Fawcett suggested the treasurer had abused official power for his own gain.
Mr. Weinstein has denied making any attempt or having knowledge of any attempt to get him back on the Alcosan sewer authority.
More recently, Mr. Fawcett said a local election fraud investigation in the early 2000s that included disappearing ballots and raised questions about Mr. Weinstein and his father could have dire implications if the younger Weinstein becomes county executive. Former President Donald Trump and his allies have made attacks on supposed malfeasance by local elections offices a key part of their campaign to sow groundless doubt about election outcomes — and Mr. Fawcett says they could find a ripe target in Mr. Weinstein.
No charges were ever filed in the decades-old matter. But the executive’s job includes sitting on the county elections board and Mr. Weinstein’s oversight there could “be disastrous,” Mr. Fawcett said.
“It’s not the right look,” Mr. Fawcett, who once served on the election board himself, said last month. “It doesn’t inspire confidence or credibility.”
The Weinstein campaign said Mr. Fawcett, “a lifelong Republican,” was peddling a “politically motivated string of falsehoods” and that the investigation in question was “the antithesis of ‘independent.’”
Mr. Fawcett has said he shed his Republican registration to become a Democrat in 2008 over disillusionment with the GOP. At the time, the Post-Gazette wrote about his support for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Back at St. Stephen’s, Mr. Fawcett said investing in the Mon Valley could bring manufacturing jobs into economically depressed places like McKeesport as the robotics industry blossoms.
As he put it during an earlier candidates forum at Point Park University: “Do we want to be a thriving innovation hub with plenty of manufacturing jobs? Do we want to be a beacon of sustainability? Or do we want to shrivel on the vine?”
“We need a plan,” he said. “We need someone that has experience in taking on big challenges and effecting a plan.”
Adam Smeltz: asmeltz@post-gazette.com, @asmeltz
First Published: May 9, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: May 9, 2023, 11:22 p.m.
