Chris Briem does this stuff better, of course, but as I get some free time in the next day or so, I’ll try to post some breakdowns of the ward-by-ward totals here and try to make sense of yesterday’s primary.

First, a look at City Council District 4, and specifically two important wards within it.

The first ward we’ll look at is the sprawling 19th. This is where Pete Wagner holds sway … and much of this race has really been a battle for Wagner’s heart. Wagner threw off his previous support of Anthony Coghill — part of a broader political feud — and supported Patrick Reilly, who works in the office of Wagner’s daughter, state Rep. Chelsa Wagner.  (To add a further element of intrigue, primary winner Natalia Rudiak is a friend of the younger Wagner’s, though Rep. Wagner stayed neutral in this race.)

So who won the 19th? By my admittedly sleep-deprived count, it was Coghill, who took 1,363 votes in the ward. Reilly came in a close second with just over 1,200. Rudiak came in a more distant third with just under 950. (A fourth candidate, Richard Weaver, isn’t included here because he garnered too few votes to make an impact.)

None of this is surprising, Coghill is a Beechview kid from way back, which apparently carries weight roughly equal to the mass that Wagner can throw around. But between them, Coghill and Reilly split the 19th ward, which both of them needed to carry the district as a whole.

That brings us to Ward 29, which is centered on the often-overlooked neighborhood of Carrick. This is Rudiak’s homebase, and it is to district 4 what district 4 is to the rest of Pittsburgh: a place where people resent being overlooked in favor of more connected neighborhoods elsewhere. 

And in Carrick, Rudiak trounced her rivals. She took 821 votes by my fatigued reckoning. Neither Reilly (who won 335 votes) nor Coghill (249) were ever competitive here. 

Bear in mind that Rudiak won this race by just under 200 votes: She beat Reilly 2282 to 2088, and Coghill was a close third with 1940. You have to assume that if Coghill had Pete Wagner’s support, he’d have gotten the vast majority of Reilly’s votes in Ward 19. That would have made him unbeatable. And vice versa: If Reilly hadn’t needed to compete with a Beechview kid for Ward 19s affections, it’s hard to see how he could have lost.

This was, in fact, exactly how some of Rudiak’s advisors predicted the race would play out. Rudiak needed Reilly and Coghill in the race to win … and they have each other to thank for the fact that she did so. 

But I’m guessing that instead of thanks, there’s REALLY going to be some bad feelings in the 19th ward this morning. 

This article appears in May 14-20, 2009.

E-mail Chris Potter about this post.

8 replies on “May primary by the numbers: A tale of two wards”

  1. I’d love to see someone do an analysis of what percentage of % came from within the district for the three campaigns.

  2. Do you mean what percentage of money? I haven’t done a thorough analysis, and those things are a little hard to break down. For example, how do you record money from PACs, say? Some of the PACs have members in the district, after all, so it would seem unfair to consider them outside the district just because the PAC’s mailing address is Downtown or something.

    But I can tell you Rudiak got a lot of help from outside the district, and even outside the city.

  3. Whoops, yes, I meant percentage of money!

    I agree that there’d be some ambiguity. I suppose there could be 3 categories: clearly in-district, clearly out, and ambiguous. Is that information available online?

    “But I can tell you Rudiak got a lot of help from outside the district, and even outside the city.”

    Yeah, that’s pretty well known, and is part of the reason that people here who would otherwise support her feel a little bit squicky. It feels as if our councilperson was paternalistically selected by folks from “continental Pittsburgh”. Astroturfing sucks, even if the candidate’s politics align with yours.

  4. You know what? I’ll look into the in-district/out-of-district question. I don’t know that Rudiak was “selected” or that she’s Astroturf … Carrick is her native soil, to extend the turf metaphor. But yeah — I’ve certainly covered races where a lot of out-of-state money became an issue of concern. (Koff koff Pacific-coast billboard companies koff koff Luke Ravenstahl koff.)

    Check back in a day or so.

  5. There is a distinction to be made between Astroturfing and supplementing all-natural turf with the right fertilizers and perhaps chemicals.

Comments are closed.