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Obviously the big election story yesterday was the pathetic turnout: Countywide, fewer than one voter out of every four showed up at the polls (according to as-yet unofficial tallies). That’s down from about 29 percent in 2007.
No surprise, right? In Pittsburgh, at least, the three-way race for mayor never generated much interest … as media accounts never lost interest in reminding us.
But here’s something I didn‘t expect: Turnout was lower even in the one place you would expect the race to attract attention — the East End.
The conventional wisdom was that Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s two independent challengers, Kevin Acklin and Dok Harris, would split the “anyone but Luke” vote. That would be the same group of voters who supported Republican Mark DeSantis back in the 2007 November election. As I wrote awhile back, “inevitably the two independents are competing for some of the same neighborhoods.”
So you’d expect those neighborhoods, at least, to take an interest in the election, right? They had not one but two options to send the mayor a message — not one but two candidates seeking their support. Maybe no one else in town would give a shit. But these folks, at least, would have a stake in the race.
Or not.
DeSantis, you may recall, won two wards in 2007: Ward 7 (Shadyside) and 14 (Squirrel Hill and environs). And according to the county’s election data, more than 25 percent of Ward 7 voters turned out to vote that year. Nearly 38 percent of voters in Ward 14 did.
Flash forward to 2009. This time around, only 18.6 percent of Shadyside-area voters bothered to show up at the polls. In Squirrel Hill, only 27 percent of voters came out. That’s more than a 10-percentage-point drop from Ward 14’s turnout two years ago. Countywide, turnout between 2007 and 2009 only dropped by about 6 percentage points.
How many votes are we talking here? Taken together, turnout in those two wards was down by a total of 2,950 votes from the last mayoral election.
Obviously, those voters wouldn’t have swung the election. Ravenstahl beat the second-place Harris by 15,000 votes.
But a higher turnout could have allowed Harris or Acklin to at least win the 7th and 14th wards. Ravenstahl won them only by a combined 300 votes. As it stands now, though, he can boast about having won every freaking ward in the city. Voters in Squirrel Hill could at least have spared his challengers that indignity.
I guess I’m just sort of stunned by this. I mean, the East End prides itself on its high level of political engagement. And it’s the part of town where resistance to Ravenstahl has been the strongest. Plus which, Acklin lives in Squirrel Hill, and Harris has a place just down the road in Oakland. If these folks couldn’t take an interest, you sure can’t fault voters anywhere else for ignoring the election.
One explanation is that back in 2007, DeSantis was running as a Republican, and there are a lot of Republicans out in the East End. This time around, by contrast, the “Republican” on the ballot was Ravenstahl, thanks to a write-in campaign during the May primary. Acklin is a former Republican, but as for fears that he was some GOP “Trojan horse”? He should have been so lucky — Acklin finished third in both the 7th and 14th wards.
Yes, the enthusiasm for Ravenstahl may well be waning: He got only 55 percent of the vote this time around, as compared to 63 percent against DeSantis. But this campaign didn’t just diminish enthusiasm among his supporters — it wearied the people most opposed to him as well.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2009.
I really think Ira Glass should shop out his on-air brow beating to local, state and federal election bureaus. A 23% voter turn out is absolutely disgraceful.
Perhaps a free “support the elections” ribbon for every purchase of a “support the troops” ribbon?
I live in the 14th ward and I voted for Ravenstahl. I’ve used the city’s 3-1-1 with success (a poor patching job was nicely redone), I’m happy with his selection of police and public safety directors(Harper and Huss), I thought the Mayor played well with others during the G-20 preparations. It wouldn’t surprise me that my neighbors feel the same way and voted more for Ravenstahl than his competitors.
Maybe the problem was that people in the East End liked both of the challengers too much. I mean, you can almost always get a sense of how an election is going and my sense was no one was too excited by this election. Maybe if Harris had had money to burn, maybe if Acklin had dropped aht, maybe if Franco senior had been on frequently shown TV commercials for his son … But Ward 7 and 14 people might have envisioned going into the voting … er, not so booth as screen, and flipping a coin, and realizing neither Acklin nor Harris had a chance.
Since Shadyside and Sq. Hill were probably very heavily canvassed by both challengers, I wonder if those voters were discouraged by negative campaigning by each at one another? It had to be a little discouraging for an ABL voter from the outset to be presented with two options — and to have them knock on your door and snipe at each other would have been icky.
Or there’s the possibility that in their eyes, neither of them measured up to Mark DeSantis. That’s actually possible. And if he yielded a disappointing result in a one-on-one, it’s like screw it.
@ Bram — I obviously can’t speak for any doorknocking interactions that might have taken place in the East End. I will say, though, that I tailed both Acklin and Harris on extended doorknocking efforts, and neither candidate mentioned the other. (Of course, there WAS a reporter around, so they’d be sure to be on their best behavior.)
@ Eastendmom: Thanks for contributing your thoughts. In some ways, it’s actually easier for me to understand a vote for Ravenstahl than it is to understand not turning out at all.
@ Everyone: It’s been suggested to me — by Lynn Cullen, no less — that I’m being too hard on Wards 7 and 4. Yes, voter turnout dropped in those wards … but it dropped across the REST of the city too, and generally by much larger margins. I mean, we’re talking a drop from 69,000 votes citywide in 2007 to just 50,000 this year.
All very true. And this might be the time for a “some of my best friends are East End progressives!” justification. But I guess my point is this: As long as the odds are for ANY challenger in this town, they are all but impossible unless the East End contingent stays in the game.
I’ll post here an e-mailed response to this post from Barbara Daly Danko, who chairs the 14th Ward Democratic committee. I added some hard returns here just to make it easier to read onscreen, but other than that, I’m running it unedited:
First let me note that yes, Acklin and Harris both currently live in the 14th Ward – Acklin in 14-21, and Harris in 14-2. To say because of that, the ward should have supported them is a huge leap – I think their combined legal residence in 14 is probably less than 5 years. Dok for that matter seemed to claim residency in Shadyside, Oakland, the Mexican War Streets, etc, so he really wasn’t by any stretch a hometown guy in 14. For the record both even lost their own districts as I don’t think most voters knew them.
In addition, prior to our September ward meeting, neither one had ever met most of the committee people, so to expect the ward to suddenly be out championing the cause through either of these two less than formidable candidates is unrealistic. 14th Warders have lives, too, and many other commitments . . . and generally people don’t want to put a lot of time and credibility into races that are perceived to be over . . . and most of us know from experience which battles are worth the fight.
Sure, a lot of us could have put a lot more into this race and upped the numbers for either or both of these candidates, but what would that get us? A phyrric victory in the 14th Ward isn’t really of benefit to any of us – maybe that’s the difference between me and our former ward chair. Give me and the ward a good viable experienced candidate and we’ll be there. For better or worse, we have to operate within the party apparatus and there is always another race down the road – as for myself, I’m gearing up for the Sestak race – I think that’s a fight worth my time.
Re our turnout, we still did way better than the countywide average, and that’s with all of the non-voting students who stay on our rolls long after they’ve left town. And if I were Luke I would take little comfort in the fact that in a ward that is so heavily Democratic (roughly 80%), he ended up with 38% of the vote. That means that well over half of the Democratic voters opted for someone other than the Democrat.
FYI, Dok did win or tie in 17 of our 41 districts – almost all North of Forbes in Squirrel Hill. Luke cleaned up (win or tie in 22 districts) in Lower Squirrel Hill (near Minadeo) Swisshelm Park and North Point Breeze. BTW weren’t Luke’s people talking about a victory with 70% of the vote just a few days ago?
I guess what I really want to say harkens back to a piece of parenting advice I got a long time ago: “pick your battles.” This one wasn’t worth it.