Joe Rockey has done just about everything a Republican can do to win an election in Allegheny County. But it might not be enough to push him over the finish line ahead of Democrat Sara Innamorato.
That’s the conclusion of political experts watching the final days ahead of the critical Nov. 7 general election for county executive. Mr. Rockey has run a GOP campaign seemingly tailor-made to winning a Democratic county, and has capitalized on an opponent whose staunchly progressive views have threatened to push away some moderate voters in her party.
But running in a blue county has the Republican facing a tough battle.
“He’s run the exact kind of campaign he would need to, to have a shot at winning,” said Mike Butler, a longtime Democratic political analyst. “But it’s hard to change the contours of the race. [At] the end of the day, I don’t know if he’s done enough.”
Mr. Rockey is finishing his campaign with the same structural disadvantage he faced at the beginning, one that might prove too steep to overcome: Democrats outnumber Republicans by about two-to-one in Allegheny County. Voters haven’t picked a Republican for the county’s top elected office since 1999.
But, “there is always a path to victory,” said Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia-based public affairs consultant who has worked on Democratic campaigns and has an office in Pittsburgh.
For Mr. Rockey, that means a big Republican voter turnout coupled with success at the kind of crossover appeal he has built his campaign on, Mr. Ceisler said.
Mr. Rockey has to get Democrats and a “decent chunk” of independents to back him, Mr. Ceisler said. Independents and third-party voters make up about 15% of the county’s electorate.
“He cannot win the election without Democratic votes,” Mr. Ceisler said.
That’s easier said than done.
Mr. Rockey, a former PNC executive and political newcomer, acknowledged in an interview last week that he faces a “registration disadvantage.”
“But that’s when you look at the county as Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “When you look at the county as the middle, we are actually in a registration advantage. The middle is the true majority of Allegheny County.”
But there is “such a partisan divide” in Allegheny County that those middle-of-the-road voters Mr. Rockey is targeting are “going to have a hard time voting for Republicans,” Mr. Ceisler said. “Because when they see Republican, they see Donald Trump.”
Mr. Rockey has consistently campaigned as a centrist, focusing on adding officers to the county police force and bringing more jobs to the region. He has said he does not and will not support Mr. Trump. That distance from the former president, Mr. Rockey said, gives Democrats “air cover to understand” that they can vote for him.
“This is not a Trump candidate,” said Dennis Roddy, a spokesman for Mr. Rockey’s campaign. “This is not an extreme conservative. This is a guy who was raised by union Democrats, appreciates private sector unions. … There’s nothing extreme here.”
Ms. Innamorato, a former state representative, has a much smaller hill to climb. In May’s six-candidate Democratic primary, she won with about 38% of the vote.
“It would be a fallacy to think that the people who didn’t vote for her [in the primary] are up for grabs,” Mr. Ceisler said. “She did very well in a crowded primary where at least two of her opponents were well-resourced.”
Mr. Roddy said the “big registration edge to overcome” would be a bigger challenge against an opponent representing a wider coalition of Democrats, not just the party’s far-left wing.
He pointed to Ms. Innamorato’s past membership in the Democratic Socialists of America. Facing criticism following the far-left group’s response to the Hamas attack on Israel, she said earlier this month for the first time that she had left the group in 2019.
Mr. Rockey’s campaign has repeatedly criticized Ms. Innamorato’s ties to the DSA and accused her of “extreme politics.” At a news conference earlier this month, an assortment of local Democratic voters and two of Ms. Innamorato’s primary opponents gathered in a show of cross-party support for Mr. Rockey. Some said Ms. Innamorato’s progressive politics mean she doesn’t represent the Democratic Party as a whole.
But Ms. Innamorato has enjoyed support from elected Democrats across the spectrum, from progressives including U.S. Rep. Summer Lee and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders to more moderate officials such as Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey.
Party leaders have increasingly rallied to her side as the race appeared more competitive in the homestretch, with Mr. Casey visiting Pittsburgh earlier this month to campaign for her and Mr. Shapiro appearing in a new ad for her last week.
“Had this been pre-Trump, I think Sara would be in a lot of trouble,” said Mr. Butler, the Democratic analyst, who also helped run the campaigns of one of her primary opponents. “But in this environment, I think she’ll be fine.”
One way to sway voters’ opinions, Mr. Ceisler said, is by “raising several million dollars to do a lot of television and digital media.” On that front, Mr. Rockey has far outpaced Ms. Innamorato.
So far, Mr. Rockey’s campaign has spent close to $1.1 million on advertising, which has been bolstered by another $608,000 from an outside pro-Rockey group, according to AdImpact, which tracks political ad spending.
Between early June and late October, Mr. Rockey’s campaign raised about $1.7 million and had about $367,000 left for the race’s closing weeks, according to financial disclosures filed Friday.
Ms. Innamorato’s campaign, by contrast, has only spent about $319,000 on general election ads, according to AdImpact. She spent about $558,000 on TV during the primary, on top of another $500,000 from the Working Families Party. The progressive group has yet to buy any general election ads supporting Ms. Innamorato.
At the event earlier this month with Mr. Casey and other Democratic leaders, Ms. Innamorato noted that she was being “outspent 8 to 1 in this race.” But she said it was no cause for panic.
“That means one thing: that we are winning,” she said, according to WESA.
But Ms. Innamorato has only raised about $650,000 since early June. She had about $195,000 in the bank going into the final two weeks of the race, according to her financial disclosures filed Friday.
Part of her financial disadvantage, Mr. Butler said, comes from not building relationships with “traditional donor stakeholders,” but instead focusing on a more “grassroots fundraising” style.
“There’s really not a lot of time between May and November,” he said. “If you haven’t already built that donor universe, it’s not like a spigot you just turn on and money comes pouring out.”
He said that aside from labor groups like the Service Employees International Union, “she doesn’t really have deep pocketed folks to go to.”
Ms. Innamorato’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Rockey also got a head start on the airwaves, starting in late August. Ms. Innamorato’s first ad didn’t go live until almost a month later.
For that month, Mr. Rockey “had the airwaves to himself,” which helped close the gap between the candidates, Mr. Butler said. But once Ms. Innamorato joined him on TV, it “stopped her slide to a large extent,” he said.
In many of his advertisements, Mr. Rockey cites his plans for the county, focusing mainly on public safety and bringing jobs to Allegheny County.
“Those ads can be a little more laser-focused, where [Ms. Innamorato] has a broad coalition that she’s trying to just keep everybody content with her,” Mr. Butler said.
Her ads and other messaging have focused on “building a county for all” through initiatives like increased mental health services and bringing experts together to find a solution for a new juvenile detention center.
Increasingly over the last month, Ms. Innamorato has emphasized national issues, especially abortion — a potent electoral issue for Democrats up and down the ballot ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
“Our reproductive rights are on the ballot,” she said Wednesday on social media. Ms. Innamorato has promised to enact shield laws that would protect local abortion providers from out-of-state investigations and ensure that insurance for county employees covers reproductive health care.
Ms. Innamorato has also highlighted her opponent’s refusal to take a stance on the issue.
“My personal opinion on abortion is not relevant because the Allegheny County executive does not set policy for abortion,” Mr. Rockey said during a debate earlier this month. “I will enforce the law, whatever that law is that the state or federal government gives us.”
A strong focus on a national issue like abortion is a “really effective campaign tactic,” Mr. Ceisler said.
“Abortion is a key issue for Democrats because they know that the electorate favors their position, and they also know that it’s an issue that people will vote on,” he said.
Political observers already expected the election would be closer than previously anticipated. There has yet to be any public polling in the contest, but a recent survey by Save Allegheny County, the pro-Rockey group, found Ms. Innamorato with a statistically insignificant one-point lead.
“I do think he’s going to run better than Republicans ran against Rich Fitzgerald,” Mr. Ceisler said, referring to the incumbent executive, a term-limited Democrat. “But I think it’s a steep hill to climb.”
Mr. Fitzgerald won 62% of the vote in his first election for county executive in 2011. In 2019, he won a third term with 68% of the vote.
“It can be a very difficult circumstance to be on a campaign that the gap is narrowing and you can kind of hear the hoofbeats,” Mr. Butler said. “But at the end of the day, I’d much rather be in Sara’s position than Joe’s.”
Hallie Lauer: hlauer@post-gazette.com
First Published: October 29, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: October 30, 2023, 3:47 p.m.