Jim Brewster looks forward after tight, tense Pa. Senate race: 'At the end of the day, you’re supposed to shake hands'

State Sen. Jim Brewster knew the initial Jan. 5 swearing-­in for members of his chamber could get dicey.

He had been declared the winner of the 45th District race by the Pennsylvania secretary of State, and a legal ruling from the state Supreme Court concurred. But his Republican opponent, Nicole Ziccarelli, wasn’t done fighting. After losing in Pennsylvania’s highest appellate court, she filed a challenge in federal court in Pittsburgh.

Ziccarelli argued 311 undated mail-in ballots — which gave Brewster a 69-vote lead in the district that includes portions of Westmoreland and Allegheny counties — should not have been counted by Allegheny County. Without them, she would be the winner.

As the candidates awaited a ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan, Ziccarelli filed a petition in the Republican-controlled state Senate, asking that Brewster not be seated until the decision was handed down.

There had been closed-door discussions among leadership leading up to what Brewster jokingly calls “Swearing-In One.” As the 25 senators were set to be sworn in by Superior Court Judge Jack Panella, tempers started to flare.

One Republican senator made a motion that Brewster not be sworn in. When Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who was presiding over the body, objected, he was removed from his position by Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre.

The episode was marked by shouting and anger.

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, paced back and forth, trying to figure out what his caucus should do. Brewster approached him.

“ ‘Let’s temper this. Slow it down,’ ” Costa said Brewster told him. “ ‘I don’t want to hold my colleagues up. I’m just going to leave.

‘I’m not going to exacerbate this anymore.’ ”

Brewster and his wife of 50 years, Linda, who was there to hold his Bible, walked off the Senate floor, and 24 newly elected senators took the oath of office.

“I have tremendous respect for how he handled things,” Costa said. “I think he’s dealt with it extremely well, with class and integrity.”

Brewster, who was sworn in officially Wednesday, begins his third term representing 38 communities in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the Mon Valley, in eastern Allegheny and northern Westmoreland counties.

Despite the frustration and disappointment of the past two months — and, really, the whole of 2020 — the 72-year-old is eager to continue working in the seat he’s held for 10 years.

“You want to last in a stressful job like this?” Brewster said in an interview Friday. “You have to be mentally tough, physically tough and intellectually tough.

“It’s not about anger. It’s about doing the right thing.”

‘He is who he is’

Brewster’s friends and colleagues describe him as honest and straightforward, with a dry sense of humor. He will happily tell you like it is.

He is “exceptionally compassionate and ferociously protective of his district,” said Hugh Baird, the retired former communications director for the state Senate Democrats. “He is who he is.”

Brewster grew up in McKeesport and proudly notes that he built a home in the middle of his childhood playground more than 30 years ago.

He brags about the three gold-medal Olympians from his town and talks about efforts to revitalize the city that once was home to 50,000 people.

Brewster, who has a degree in education from California University of Pennsylvania, worked for nearly 30 years for Mellon Bank. He started out in its credit card section, working in collections and fraud investigations.

Later, he became an area manager, reconciling accounts, ensuring the vaults were balanced to the penny.

During his career there, which peaked as a vice president, Brewster said he had the chance to move to Delaware or Boston, and he traveled regularly to places such as San Francisco, New York and Miami.

Still, he said, “I always looked forward to getting home.”

As his three daughters started growing up and playing sports in the town he loved, Brewster said, he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“That McKeesport Tiger has always been in my system,” he said. “There’s a lot of history here.”

Brewster has served as chair of the McKeesport Housing Authority for 31 years — he was sworn in again Friday in a reorganization meeting — and is on the board of the Port Authority of Allegheny County.

While he was working for the bank, he was elected to McKeesport City Council, a part-time position he held for 10 years.

Then, in 2003, Brewster was elected to the full-time position of mayor.

He remained there until 2010, when he joined the state Senate.

One of the things that struck Brewster when he got to Harrisburg was how different it was from being mayor.

“As the mayor, you had complete control of managing the city,” he said. “When I got to the Senate, I found out I didn’t have complete control of it.

“Nonetheless, I conformed.”

As a member of the minority party, Brewster said it is hard to get legislation passed, but he prides himself on working in a bipartisan manner.

“He is very much attuned to finding common ground regardless of party affiliation,” Baird said. “He looks for places of agreement.

“He’s very much, politically, a centrist.”

Working for his individual constituents is important to him, Brewster said.

“Have we helped a family get their son or daughter into the Naval Academy?” he asked.

What about helping a resident navigate the unemployment system or getting a rent rebate?

“Those are the things that are more gratifying to me,” he said. “It’s the day-to-day operations.”

Costa said Brewster understands the issues in the communities he serves and how to address them.

“You’re not going to find someone more in tune with the district they represent than Jim Brewster,” Costa said.

That was close

Although 2020’s was the closest, Brewster is no stranger to a tight race. He has had three of them.

The first was in 1999, when he lost the Democratic primary for McKeesport mayor by seven votes. A year later, he lost the Democratic primary for the 45th Senatorial District by 318 votes.

“It was close. He came up a little bit short, and he moved on,” Baird said.

Neither of those bouts prepared Brewster for what he would face this past year.

2020: A race like no other

2020, Brewster said, was the first time he was involved in a negative campaign.

Ziccarelli’s camp and the Republican caucus sent out more than a dozen mailers targeting the district, and many of them, Brewster said, were filled with lies and half-truths.

“The kindest word I can use is ‘disappointed,’ ” he said.

Brewster was frustrated by claims from his opponent that he was a career politician. What about his 28 years in banking, he wondered. There were allegations that he was the most ineffective senator in the state.

“The minority party has little or no influence in getting a bill passed,” he said.

Some of it, Brewster said, was driven by the Republican caucus angling to get enough seats — 33 — to be veto-proof.

But the negative messaging as he grieved the death of his 46-year-old daughter to cancer in May sometimes made it hard to bear, he said.

Brewster’s campaign staff suggested he go negative.

“I said no. Apparently, my opponent said yes.”

Costa said the Republicans went too far.

“They just beat the crap out of him,” Costa said. “They were ruthless and misleading.”

Ben Wren, Ziccarelli’s campaign manager, said they stand by the campaign they ran.

“Everything we said was based on his voting record and official expenses,” Wren said. “It’s clear the campaign worked, because in an almost 3-1 Democratically registered district, he and his allies in Allegheny County had to change the election rules in order to stay in power.”

Through a spokeswoman, Corman declined to comment.

Race’s biggest factor: Pandemic

Still, Brewster believes the biggest factor in his district in the 2020 race was the pandemic.

Every government body, from the smallest communities to their school districts, counties, states and federal legislators, were making decisions, Brewster said.

“That’s what we had to manage, and every decision we made was challenged,” he said. “It was no longer about the playground that I helped build or the street that I helped get paved. You were no longer campaigning on your record. You were campaigning on a pandemic that really nobody knew what it was.”

He believed that in most races, the newcomer had the advantage.

“They got to tell everybody everything they wanted to hear,” he said. “They knocked on a door. (If) those people are angry, my opponent was angry. If they wanted a firetruck, she wanted a firetruck. If they wanted a mask, she wanted a mask. If they didn’t want a mask, she didn’t want a mask. This is what you’re up against.

“The challenges were different than any other I had ever seen.”

Another frustration, Brewster said, was how much money was spent on the race.

He estimates nearly $4 million was spent on the 45th District seat, much of it, Costa said, from the Republican caucus.

“That’s disgraceful and unacceptable,” Brewster said. “It needs to stop.”

As for the legal challenges that took two months to conclude, Brewster said he respects Ziccarelli’s right to pursue them. Still, he thought once the state Supreme Court decided the issue, it would end.

“This was an extraordinary situation and an extraordinarily close race,” Baird said. “Jim’s sense of it was he was ready to get back to work. He trusted the process, but it took longer than I think he anticipated — and the number of hoops he had to jump through to get to the end.”

Moving forward

Despite the partisan fighting that marked his race, Brewster said he won’t let what happened over the past two months change him.

“I felt and still do feel that I was just part of that normal, political effort to get complete control. The Republicans control the House and the Senate,” he said. “At the end of the day, you’re supposed to shake hands and move on to the next game and make the game better for those that are going to come after us.”

Wren, though, said what happened in the race is just politics.

“Politics is a hard business,” he said. “My advice to the senator would be to stop reliving the election and try to do something for the 45th District. Hopefully, he’ll get focused on what really matters.”

Brewster has a list of priorities: addressing the pandemic while ensuring the economy gets moving again and the vaccine is properly administered; dealing with the opioid crisis and treating addiction like it’s a disease and not a crime; ensuring schools are properly funded; working to build trust between law enforcement and their communities; and bringing more transparency to state government.

He hopes to see legislation pass that would allow every bill proposed in the Senate to be voted on so the public can see what their elected officials are working on and judge performance themselves.

Brewster believes there must be campaign finance reform so races such as his, which cost a great deal of money, don’t happen again.

Corman has said previously he would like reform, as well.

As for how the election turned out, Brewster said it should be up to the public to judge.

“I’m going to let the people of Pennsylvania decide what they think about this race and about how I handled it and how the Republicans handled it,” he said. “I’ll live with what they think. That’s the final judge. We’re proud of what we’ve done.”