DA-elect Nicole Ziccarelli burst onto scene, but her rise should not come as a surprise

In the anxious days after the November 2020 election, Nicole Ziccarelli knew she had the votes to head to the state Senate to represent her adopted home in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the Mon Valley community where she grew up.

But after a few tumultuous weeks of vote counting and legal wrangling, what looked like victory turned to defeat. Ziccarelli’s first campaign for public office ended in disappointment and with questions about her future.

“This couldn’t be the period at the end of the sentence. There had to be a better end to all of this. That was my thought process for why I ran for district attorney,” Ziccarelli told the Tribune-Review.

A year later, the 40-year-old Lower Burrell resident posted a resounding victory to beat John Peck, the six-term incumbent Westmoreland County district attorney.

When she first surfaced as a candidate for the 45th state Senate seat in late 2019, few had heard of the engaging, high-energy Republican.

But she already had a doctorate in shoe-leather politics.

The lawyer, who grew up in McKeesport, began honing her political skills as a child at the knee of her grandfather, the late Nick Skezas — a popular Greek American who built a successful coal hauling company and who was a respected figure in the Mon Valley. The McKeesport native, who died in 2003, was an integral part of the Democratic machine that made the community run, serving on McKeesport Council and the McKeesport Area School Board during the town’s heyday as a teeming steel town.

“He was a wonderful, wonderful influence in my life,” Ziccarelli said. “I was named for him, Nicole. If I’d been a boy, it was going to be Nicholas.”

Ziccarelli spent a lot of time with the man she calls “Pappa.”

She adored the gregarious man who introduced himself with a handshake and a smile, saying, “I’m Nick Skezas, rhymes with Jesus.”

“When I went downtown with him, everyone stopped to talk with him,” Ziccarelli said. “Everyone knew him. He lived his life in public service. He loved people. He used to say, ‘You treat everyone the same, Nicole. Everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time. If you lose sight of this, you lose everything.’ ”

She took that lesson to her campaign for district attorney, when she said she knocked on thousands of doors.

“I said the same thing at every door. ‘Hi. I’m Nicole Ziccarelli, and I’m running for DA, and I wanted to have the respect to come to your door and introduce myself,’ ” she said.

Campaign consultant Ben Wren said she was relentless. Every morning, he would meet her after she got her four children on the school bus. For the next five hours or so, they would go door to door before hurrying home to meet her kindergartner’s school bus at 4:07 p.m.

Ziccarelli said walking up and down streets eventually left her with a hip injury. She wore a patch to relieve pain as she trekked from house to house.

Born into it

The little girl who absorbed her grandfather’s stories about campaigning and public service got her first shot at it when then-Gov. Mark Schweiker appointed her to the board of trustees at Penn State when she was a student. Upon learning she was from the Mon Valley, Eat’n Park CEO Jim Broadhurst — a longtime member of the board of trustees — offered her a summer job and promised to teach her how to read and understand every line in the university’s budget.

Broadhurst was among a long line of Ziccarelli’s mentors.

As a law student in 2004, she snagged a coveted summer job with the Pittsburgh law firm Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote. She was assigned to work with Bob Del Greco, one of the region’s most respected criminal defense attorneys. He also has directed the law firm’s political action committee for decades and knows the ins and outs of politics at the regional and state level.

Del Greco was impressed with Ziccarelli’s attitude, intellect and work ethic.

“The next summer, I said she could work for me again. But, lo and behold, she got an offer from the district attorney for 20 hours. I said, ‘Why not work for them 20 hours and work with me 20 hours?’ That was 2005. And after that, we hired her, and she did great work,” Del Greco said. “To this day, when I want to run something by someone whose opinion I respect, I’ll call her. She weighs in, and her insight is remarkable.”

In her spare time, Ziccarelli tagged along with Del Greco as he made the rounds at political fundraisers for candidates the firm’s PAC was supporting.

“I learned a lot about fundraising and campaigning from him,” she said.

There was no denying politics was part of her DNA. A prior generation’s network ensured that would be the case.

The late state Supreme Court Justice Nicholas Papadakos, one of her grandfather’s friends, was her godfather. And ever the good Mon Valley Democrat, Nick Skezas always made a point of working on campaigns for Stephen Zappala Sr., who would later become chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

“He used to tell me stories about working on those campaigns,” Ziccarelli said.

Along the way, Ziccarelli snagged a job clerking for the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph Cappy, another well-known Democratic jurist from Pittsburgh.

In 2008, after leaving Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote, she landed a job as a law clerk in family court for Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Chris Scherer. The Scherer name was well known in the New Kensington-Arnold-Lower Burrell area. Scherer’s late uncle Bernie Scherer, who was a judge before him, at one time led the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

Going her own way

After her year in Scherer’s office, Ziccarelli opened a law office in New Kensington, focusing on family law. And she and her husband, Frank-John Ziccarelli, a second-generation New Kensington-area contractor, started a family.

But before she left Greensburg, the woman who was steeped in the Democratic politics of Western Pennsylvania became a Republican.

She had caught the attention of local politicos in Greensburg who met her while she was working for Scherer.

Greensburg lawyer Scott Avolio, a member of the Republican State Committee, said it was apparent Ziccarelli had the makings of a star politico. But in Westmoreland County, which has tilted bright red in recent years, her Democratic registration could be a deal breaker.

He was among those who encouraged her to switch parties.

“A lot of people have charisma and a lot of people have an education, but you could see she had a desire to be in public service, and that’s something you can’t teach,” Avolio said.

Ziccarelli knew she would be breaking with years of tradition when she became a Republican. But she insists it had little to do with running for office.

“I didn’t feel like I left the party. The party left me. My belief system fell more in line with the Republican Party,” she said.

A decade later, the Republican Party was taking note of her.

A.J. Johnston, political director for Cold Spark, a consulting firm that handles strategy for GOP candidates, had met Ziccarelli at several events. They became friends at the Oakmont Greek Food Festival and learned that their families emigrated from the same area of Greece.

Johnston said the team at Cold Spark determined that both the 45th and 37th state Senate districts were vulnerable and could be flipped to the GOP in 2020, if only they could find the right candidates. He thought Ziccarelli was a natural. So he called and asked her to meet him for coffee at Oakmont Bakery.

“I didn’t know what he wanted to talk about,” Ziccarelli said.

When he pitched his thoughts, she said it seemed like the right time to take a dive into electoral politics. After all, she had always thought she would aim for elected office when the time was right.

She said Johnston and Mike DeVanney of Cold Spark persuaded Joe Scarnati, then president pro tempore of the state Senate, to meet with her in late 2019.

Scarnati told Ziccarelli he had his doubts that a Republican could flip the 45th district. After all, it had two heavyweight Democratic areas — the Mon Valley in the south and the New Kensington-Arnold-Lower Burrell area in the north.

But Ziccarelli had a foot in each area. She had grown up in McKeesport and was raising a family in Lower Burrell. She had a wide circle of family and friends in both communities.

“After we talked, Joe Scarnati said, ‘I think you could win it,’ ” she said.

On Dec. 2, 2019, Scarnati gave $50,000 to her fledgling campaign. That would open the spigot for tens of thousands of dollars from lawmakers’ PACs that were the foundation for a $1.8 million campaign that went down to the wire.

The race was decided on a razor-thin margin and court decision. It was the last in the nation to be called.

Incumbent Democrat Sen. Jim Brewster was returned to office, winning by fewer than 100 votes.

Brewster did not return calls for comment for this story.

‘Life’s most important work’

Ziccarelli said she respects Brewster and wishes him well.

Their race positioned her for the next chapter in her life.

None of the events of the last two years would have been possible but for the support of a dedicated network of friends and family, Ziccarelli said.

Five female friends she calls her Pentagon, who have been close since middle school, are a sounding board for her.

Her four children — Franco, 11, twins Melina and Valentina, 9, and Donatella, 6, along with her husband, Frank-John — are an part integral of the NicZic team that campaigned at festivals and community events across the area.

Once, that sort of thing seemed a reach.

After Donatella was born, the Ziccarelli household consisted of two parents and four children all 4 years and younger. Things were hectic. The young lawyer was worried.

She took her concerns to her mother, Catherine Lobaugh, a recently retired educator whom Ziccarelli calls her rock and her idol.

“I remember I told her, ‘I don’t think I’m doing enough in my career.’ And she said, ‘Nicole, you are doing your life’s most important work.’ ”

Just to keep things interesting as she juggled her law practice and her growing family’s needs, Ziccarelli launched a blog, Mediterranean Baby, focused on her drive to create healthy versions of the Greek and Italian foods her family loved.

That emphasis on family life is apparent in her approach to an office that has long been characterized solely by an emphasis on law and order — and bringing criminals to justice.

Ziccarelli said she has been meeting with police chiefs across Westmoreland, seeking to learn how her office can do more in communities that have been ravaged by drug addiction and trauma.

Part of the answer, she said, may be the “Handle With Care” program.

The initiative, which supports safe homes, schools and communities, trains first responders to take note of children who experience trauma ranging from witnessing an overdose to an accident to a shooting on a street corner. Ziccarelli said those trained in the program follow up with outreach to schools and child care agencies to alert them that a child has experienced a trauma and might need to be handled with care in its aftermath.

“We’ve learned that one positive intervention by a caring adult can change a child’s life,” she said.

In her mind, it seems preventing problems that could lead to interactions with law enforcement is another aspect of delivering justice.

And what about the period at the end of that sentence, that she was so concerned about last year? What about that disappointing loss could have spelled the end to her attempts to craft a career in politics?

“This is not a political role,” she said. “ So the question is now how do we come together?”

Deb Erdley and Rich Cholodofsky are Tribune-Review staff writers. You can contact Deb at derdley@triblive.com and Rich at rcholodofsky@triblive.com.