Voters choose Pauline Calabrese as mayor of Penn Hills

An attorney and former Penn Hills school board member cruised to victory to be the municipality’s new mayor, according to unofficial tallies.

Pauline Calabrese earned 67.2% of the votes counted compared with opponent John Petrucci’s 32.6% with all precincts reporting results.

Calabrese, a 57-year-old Democrat, will serve a four-year term for a yearly $4,800 salary. She will replace Mayor Sara Kuhn, who served two back-to-back terms after serving on council since 2004. She did not seek re-election.

“I’m so excited to move forward,” Calabrese said as she celebrated the victory at the Moose Lodge in Verona. “It’s not about me, it’s about we. What we’re going to do do, and we’re going to do great things — starting today.”

Calabrese will serve with two new faces on council – Frank Pecora and Jim Getsy – once they are all sworn in in January.

The councilmen will replace Gary Underwood, who did not seek re-election and Mark Brodnicki, who finished second-to-last in the seven-way race for the two seats with 9% of the vote in the May primary.

Petrucci, who announced his bid for mayor in December 2018, was not immediately available to comment.

The councilman failed to earn enough democratic votes in the May primary but earned enough Republican write-in votes to be that party’s nomination. That made him “a Democrat running on the Republican ticket,” Petrucci had said.

The county’s unofficial election results do not account for absentee ballots. There were 19 write-in votes. The unofficial results reported a 30% turnout.