The Political Makeover of a Rust Belt City
Pittsburgh finally banished the old boys' network—but it took a generation.
By JIM O’TOOLE
February 04, 2014
On Jan. 10, his fourth day as Pittsburgh’s new mayor, Bill Peduto told a left-leaning crowd that his very arrival heralded a new dawn. “There has become a chasm, a canyon, between the haves and the have-nots,” he said. “Tuesday, Pittsburgh changed from an old boys’ network city to a progressive city.”
That may have been premature, and a bit self-congratulatory, but it was not too far off the mark. The city has changed, but in recovering from the steel bust and the crackup of the old order, the old boys’ club that steered the city through the bad times has faded. Gone are the days when a small group of white men could sit in the Duquesne Club downtown and hash out the city’s future; the industrial labor unions that for years dominated urban machine politics here have a less privileged seat at the table. Pittsburgh’s political world today is much more multipolar, with new groups competing for the resources of a government that continues to struggle financially despite the region’s overall economic turnaround.
The newer political players include most prominently the powerful “eds and meds” community—the universities and hospitals that long ago surpassed manufacturing as the region’s largest employers. Service unions have taken a place alongside the city’s traditional labor establishment, while brainy high-tech entrepreneurs, foundation executives and neighborhood groups vying for development dollars all jostle for position as they press the new city administration to back their priorities.
As for party politics, Pittsburgh is still an overwhelmingly Democratic town. The city hasn’t elected a Republican as mayor or even as a council member since before the Depression. Its Democratic Party still has an active structure of ward and committee officers. But the party’s clout has waned over the last generation, as have the influences of the industrial unions, the Roman Catholic Church and other large organizations that once provided an unchallenged and seemingly unchanging civic structure.
The city’s political shifts reflect the dramatic demographic changes of an old city getting younger—and helped produce it. Peduto, an enthusiastic 49-year-old former councilman who tweets almost as much as Cory Booker, ran on appeals to “the new Pittsburgh.” He embraced a trendy, bottom-up, community-based approach to development, in contrast to rule of power brokers that have characterized much of the city’s history. At the same time, he has forged alliances with the city’s large foundation community, whose resources are the heritage of the 19th-century fortunes of the industrialists who once made it the Steel City.
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