It’s time to think about elections.
There’s a sentence no one was ready to hear. The effects of the 2024 election are just barely becoming reality. The inauguration happened Monday. Confirmation hearings for Cabinet members have only begun. Congress still is finding its footing. The state House needs a special election to fill the empty seat of late Rep. Matthew Gergely, D-McKeesport.
Is anyone ready to think about a ballot box?
The voters might not be, but the candidates are. Pennsylvania will have municipal elections this year, meaning borough, township and city seats will dominate the 2025 ballots. We will pick council members, supervisors, school board members and mayors.
Municipal elections can skew in two directions. They often are the lowest turnout, as they can have the least sense of urgency. The 2024 election had more than $5.5 billion spent by candidates, parties and other groups. It was impossible to ignore. No one is spending that kind of money to pick a city council member or a township supervisor, making it easy to shrug off.
But local issues can stir local passions and drive a grassroots kind of involvement. That’s something that could happen this year, especially in Pittsburgh.
The big race is likely to be the city’s mayoral contest. Democrat Ed Gainey is facing his first reelection campaign. The city has struggled with perennial urban issues such as crime and homelessness — but also its own in-house complications such as questions of mismanagement and messaging. A primary challenge already is posed by Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor.
On Friday, retired Pittsburgh police officer Tony Moreno threw his hat into the ring. It is not the first time he has entered the fray. He was the third Democrat in the primary in 2021 when Gainey unseated predecessor Bill Peduto in a move that paved the way to his win. Moreno scored enough write-in votes to win a place as the Republican nominee.
This time, Moreno is cutting directly to the chase, running for the GOP nod from the outset. It is the most recent assertion of the Republican Party into Pittsburgh or Allegheny County politics.
It comes after Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. likewise won a Republican write-in nomination in 2023 despite losing the Democratic primary. It comes as the GOP waves rise in counties around Allegheny, sweeping Donald Trump back into the White House on Pennsylvania electoral votes and carrying David McCormick to the U.S. Senate.
Pittsburgh has long been a bright blue stronghold in a red state. Where party has not mattered as much in many municipal elections, in Pittsburgh it has. The city hasn’t seen a Republican mayor since the Great Depression.
Will Moreno buck that trend? Unless another GOP challenger steps forward, we won’t know until November.
But what might be more important than who wins or loses the primary could be how much interest it spurs in the electorate — and whether it amplifies the trends of recent years.