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As Pittsburgh mayor, @billpeduto was prolific on Twitter, so he fittingly signaled his concession in a tweet | TribLIVE.com
Pittsburgh

As Pittsburgh mayor, @billpeduto was prolific on Twitter, so he fittingly signaled his concession in a tweet

Tom Davidson
Tom Davidson
3870666_web1_ptr-Pedutotweets-052121
Screenshot via Twitter
A screenshot of Pittsburgh Mayor BIll Peduto’s Twitter profile.

Shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s supporters were in the banquet room of a South Side union hall watching their candidate’s lead wither.

The mood was strikingly different from two hours prior.

Early returns had Peduto with a comfortable lead of more than 3,000 votes. It was a respectable challenge from state Rep. Ed Gainey, but it appeared as if the mayor was cruising to a third term.

Peduto was not in the room.

But much of Pittsburgh’s leadership team, including most city council members, mayoral staffers and the city’s media affiliates, awaited what appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

Then, at 10:15 p.m., the results showed Gainey had overtaken Peduto with a slight lead of 50 votes.

A couple minutes later, as another batch of results were posted on the county election website, the lead grew larger and the room hushed as people looked at their phones.

Some mayoral staffers cried as it all unfolded.

It was 10:26 p.m. and Peduto tweeted that he’d conceded to Gainey.

Chaos ensued as television reporters prepared standups and others tweeted out the news.

Pittsburgh’s 2021 mayoral primary made history as the city presumably elected its first Black mayor. That Twitter spread the news was fitting in the post-Trump era.

Peduto and Trump may be polar opposites politically, but both politicians capitalized on — and were criticized for — what they tweeted.

Peduto has more than 106,000 followers on the site and has sent more than 49,000 tweets since 2009.

For comparison, his predecessor, Luke Ravenstahl, has posted 378 tweets — and that’s counting ones from the last seven years when he wasn’t in office.

Gainey’s personal Twitter account has posted more than 3,100 tweets. His account as a state representative has posted 951 tweets.

Peduto tweets throughout the day and night. In between events. In the morning. And most nights between 10 p.m. and midnight, there’s a flurry of tweets from the mayor.

He’s informal on Twitter. When he makes a gaffe, he doesn’t delete the tweet because doing so would harm the public record, he’s said. He’s engaged with critics and trolls, made light of himself and relentlessly supports the Penguins.

Early Wednesday morning, he took time to retweet a post about sustainability, one of the bedrocks of his administration.

He also thanked supporters and shared his thoughts throughout the wee hours.

It appears as if he didn’t sleep much after the election results. At 4:49 a.m. he tweeted he “didn’t run with a Plan B” and didn’t know what the future holds.

He thanked people in a tweet and in a post on his campaign page.

“It was an honor to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with partners like you as we tackled the big issues that our City faced,” Peduto wrote. “We went through multiple crises, but after each one, we managed to come out the other side stronger and more resilient. I inherited a broken City, and I am leaving behind one that is far better.”

Peduto congratulated Gainey and pledged to work to help him become Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor.

By Wednesday, he was poking fun at himself, retweeting a popular meme that another Twitter user had Peduto-ized, and another that mused the fire that caused smoke to pour from the Gulf Tower was a signal to the world there was a new mayor of Pittsburgh.

He also shared that he spoke with President Joe Biden on the phone.

“I asked him if he knew anyone who was hiring ;),” Peduto tweeted.

Tom Davidson is a TribLive news editor. He has been a journalist in Western Pennsylvania for more than 25 years. He can be reached at tdavidson@triblive.com.

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