I'd still vote Mayer for Mayor, though
Patrick Dowd is running for mayor. If this is news to you, that is because it is, in fact, news. He officially announced his candidacy today on Polish Hill.
I've never gotten fired up about local politics in the same way I've gone crazy for national and even state. I mean, I love Ed Rendell with a debatably unreasonable fervor, but I think that was something in the water growing up. And weirdly, unlike so many things about Pittsburgh that I have embraced as my own, Pittsburgh politics have felt very much….not mine.
But with the prodding of someone whose political opinions nearly mirror my own, I googled this guy. In the incomplete portrait offered by the internet, I found a thoughtful, passionate, progressive guy that piqued my political interest. And I thought about our current mayor, the genial-but-idiotic overgrown frat boy Lukey Raven(Steeler)stahl, whose behavior would not be so disconcerting in the football players he hangs out with, but is embarrassing in a public official.
I can't back a candidate based solely on someone else's opinion and a barebones google search, though. So on my lunch break, I wandered up to Polish Hill to hear his campaign announcement, which confirmed that he is a smart, passionate, progressive guy. There's something about hearing a person speak and take questions that is so telling. I'm a sucker for an orator, but I don't actually think that makes me a sucker. Sure, it can be scripted, practiced, and polished, but you have to be a certain kind of thinker and a certain kind of leader to move people with words. It's not the soaring oratory we heard in the presidential campaign, but I'm impressed when someone can make transit and population decline sound inspiring.
I still need to do some research, but in all likelihood, he has my vote, and probably some of my time. I doubt I'll work up the same kind of lather I did in the November election. That felt epic, like a battle between good and evil, and I'm not sure I have another one of those in me for a while. But I think this guy will be great for a city I've come to love and I can certainly bang on a few doors for him.
So, I think you should check him out. But you don't have to take my word for it.
I've never gotten fired up about local politics in the same way I've gone crazy for national and even state. I mean, I love Ed Rendell with a debatably unreasonable fervor, but I think that was something in the water growing up. And weirdly, unlike so many things about Pittsburgh that I have embraced as my own, Pittsburgh politics have felt very much….not mine.
But with the prodding of someone whose political opinions nearly mirror my own, I googled this guy. In the incomplete portrait offered by the internet, I found a thoughtful, passionate, progressive guy that piqued my political interest. And I thought about our current mayor, the genial-but-idiotic overgrown frat boy Lukey Raven(Steeler)stahl, whose behavior would not be so disconcerting in the football players he hangs out with, but is embarrassing in a public official.
I can't back a candidate based solely on someone else's opinion and a barebones google search, though. So on my lunch break, I wandered up to Polish Hill to hear his campaign announcement, which confirmed that he is a smart, passionate, progressive guy. There's something about hearing a person speak and take questions that is so telling. I'm a sucker for an orator, but I don't actually think that makes me a sucker. Sure, it can be scripted, practiced, and polished, but you have to be a certain kind of thinker and a certain kind of leader to move people with words. It's not the soaring oratory we heard in the presidential campaign, but I'm impressed when someone can make transit and population decline sound inspiring.
I still need to do some research, but in all likelihood, he has my vote, and probably some of my time. I doubt I'll work up the same kind of lather I did in the November election. That felt epic, like a battle between good and evil, and I'm not sure I have another one of those in me for a while. But I think this guy will be great for a city I've come to love and I can certainly bang on a few doors for him.
So, I think you should check him out. But you don't have to take my word for it.
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