As voters across Pennsylvania head to the polls Tuesday, nowhere are the stakes higher than in Allegheny County.
For the first time in more than a decade, county government will get a new chief executive in either Democrat Sara Innamorato or Republican Joe Rockey. And for the first time in nearly a quarter-century, the top prosecutor, District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., faces a real risk of being replaced by Democratic nominee and former chief public defender Matt Dugan.
At the same time, the state’s second-most-populous county will weigh in on races for state Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth court, and choose a new treasurer for the first time this millennium. The top races have saturated the airwaves for months, and the candidates for the leading offices offer voters starkly different choices at a pivotal moment in the region’s history.
Polls open Tuesday at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Here’s what to look for as voters decide what’s next.
National v. local
With a two-to-one registration advantage, Democrats running county-wide cruise to victory when their voters show up. Ms. Innamorato has tried to make that happen by hammering on the national-level issues that motivated their supporters in the last presidential and midterm elections: abortion rights and former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 results. Mr. Rockey, meanwhile, has focused his campaign on the kitchen-table issues that typically drive local elections like this one: property taxes, public safety, and jobs.
Worth noting: The Innamorato campaign has tried to paint Allegheny County GOP chairman and at-large County Councilman Sam DeMarco as one of the fake electors Mr. Trump attempted to deploy in key swing states, and noted that a Rockey win would give the GOP two of three votes on the county elections board. But Mr. DeMarco successfully pushed back against those Trump campaign efforts.
What to watch Tuesday: What’s on voters’ minds? Whether they’re motivated by national or local issues could swing this county race. Post-Gazette reporters will be talking to voters throughout Election Day and sharing their perspectives at post-gazette.com.
Will the Democratic coalition hold?
The candidacy of Ms. Innamorato, a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America, will test whether old-line Democrats in suburbs such as Bethel Park will stick with perhaps the most progressive nominee their party has ever put forth. At the same time, Mr. Rockey’s attempt to appeal to the broad middle of the electorate could help him whittle down her margin in the blue bastion of Pittsburgh by peeling off conservative Democrats in neighborhoods such as Beechview and Brookline. Their candidacies have already split unions, the bulwark of Democratic success in the county: Major labor unions like the building trades have thrown their support (and hundreds of thousands of dollars) behind Mr. Rockey, while Ms. Innamorato won the enthusiastic support of ascendant service-sector unions.
Worth noting: The traditional coalition Democrats have assembled has given the party control over county government for a generation. Both national parties will be keeping a close eye on these results as they gear up for a monumental presidential election in 2024 — one that will pivot in part on Western Pennsylvania voters, perhaps the biggest prize in the country’s largest swing state.
What to watch Tuesday: Once reliable Republican areas such as Upper St. Clair and McCandless have tilted towards Democrats in recent years. Whether that trend continues could shape this race — and the future of county politics.
Did the ad wars break through?
Both Mr. Rockey and Mr. Zappala outraised the Democratic nominees — a rare occurrence in Pennsylvania's second-bluest county (although Mr. Zappala, the Republican nominee, is a lifelong Democrat; more on that later). In Mr. Rockey's case, that allowed him to introduce himself to voters, unanswered, in weeks of television ads. At the same time, outside groups on both the Democratic and Republican sides have recently swooped in to flay their opponents. If voters internalized those early messages before last-minute negative ads could sway them, Democratic candidates could find races coming down to the wire when, according to registration numbers and recent history, they should’ve cruised to victory.
Worth noting: Mr. Rockey’s campaign and the pro-Rockey PAC Save Allegheny County have bombarded voters with about $2.1 million in TV ads during the general election, compared to less than $450,000 from Ms. Innamorato’s campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.
What to watch Tuesday: Your mailbox. While Republicans have dominated the airwaves, the progressive Working Families Party has spent nearly $100,000 on mailers attacking Mr. Rockey on Ms. Innamorato’s behalf.
Prosecutorial discretion
The pandemic-era surge in crime has been in steady decline, but ongoing violence in some of the city’s highest-profile areas, including Downtown and the South Side, have for months driven a conversation about the right approach to public safety. The avowedly progressive Mr. Dugan rode the support of billionaire donor and philanthropist George Soros to an upset win over Mr. Zappala in the May primary. But Mr. Zappala captured the Republican nomination thanks to a write-in campaign by GOP leaders. Normally, a candidate in the mold of Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner like Mr. Dugan would allow Republicans to run a simple, familiar soft-on-crime playbook against them. But this time, the GOP nominee isa lifelong registered Democrat — and the incumbent prosecutor.
Worth noting: Mr. Dugan has continued to outsource nearly all of his campaign’s spending activities to the Pennsylvania Justice and Safety PAC, which is funded by Mr. Soros, a longtime champion of criminal justice reform. He raised just $67,000 during the heart of the general election campaign to Mr. Zappala’s $684,000. But the Washington-based PAC provided Mr. Dugan $1.1 million in support, including paying for all of his TV ads.
What to watch Tuesday: How voters sort out the convoluted dynamics of this race could be just as important as the contrast between two fierce opponents with vastly different views on how to wield the power of the prosecutor’s office.
Judge for yourself
While the pertinence of national issues in the county executive contest is debatable, abortion rights and potential future challenges to elections are undeniably front and center in the race for an open seat on the state Supreme Court. Democratic Superior Court Judge Daniel McCaffery and Republican Common Pleas Court Judge Carolyn Carluccio are in a high-stakes battle to replace the late Chief Justice Max Baer, who died just over a year ago. A hard-won Democratic majority on the seven-member court led to monumental victories for the party in recent years. In 2018, the court undid a Republican gerrymander of the congressional map that helped Democrats retake the U.S. House (albeit for just four years). In 2020, the court knocked down a series of challenges to Pennsylvania’s election results by Mr. Trump and his allies. A win by Judge Carluccio would bring the court to a narrowly-divided 4-3 majority for Democrats, down from the 5-2, Baer-era majority that Judge McCaffery is trying to reestablish.
Worth noting: Allegheny County voters will have to swallow their parochialism. Chief Justice Baer, a giant of the legal profession, was a born Pittsburgher. Both judges Carluccio and McCaffrey hail from the heart of Wawa-land — Montgomery County and Philadelphia, respectively.
What to watch Tuesday: A key test of how much the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade reshaped the political landscape will be whether abortion rights supporters remain engaged enough to turn out in an off-year election for an office that previously was often an afterthought. It’s also the last major statewide race before the 2024 presidential contest in a state the entire country will be watching.
Mike Wereschagin: mwereschagin@post-gazette.com; @wrschgn
First Published: November 6, 2023, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: November 7, 2023, 6:02 p.m.
