Dems, GOP choose nominees for state House District 21 special election

Another special election is coming for some Allegheny County residents.

Democrats and Republicans have chosen their nominees for an upcoming special election for the 21st state House District. The seat was recently vacated by former state. Rep. Sara Innamorato, D-Lawrenceville, as she prepares her run for Allegheny County Executive.

District 21 includes Shaler, Etna, Reserve, Millvale and sections of the city of Pittsburgh like the Strip District, Lawrenceville, Troy Hill, Polish Hill, Spring Hill, as well as parts of East Allegheny, Bloomfield and Stanton Heights. A special election is set for Sept. 19.

Democrats chose Linsdey Powell, 32, of Lawrenceville. Powell is a director of workforce strategies at InnovatePGH and has experience working for Democratic lawmakers in Congress and the state legislature. She was selected during a special nominating session held among Allegheny County Democratic Committee members and received a majority of votes after three rounds.

Powell said her short campaign will focus on advocating for affordable housing, increasing investment in childcare, and addressing student debt. She said she wants to follow Innamorato’s lead.

“I have big shoes to fill, and I am taking it in,” she said. “We need to be centering those most vulnerable in our community.”

If elected, Powell will become just the third Black woman from the Pittsburgh-area to hold a seat in Harrisburg. Now-U.S. Rep. Summer Lee was the first, and state Rep. La’Tasha Mayes, D-Morningside, was the second.

She said her lived experience will be a valuable asset in the state government.

The seat is reliably blue and Democrats hold over a 2-1 voter registration margin in District 21.

Powell said she isn’t taking that for granted and is taking the race seriously. The state House is currently split 101-101 and so Democrats need this seat to maintain their slim majority. She cited that and the views of her Republican opponent as why she intends to run a full campaign operation.

Erin Connolly Autenreith, 65, a realtor and chair of the Shaler Republican committee, secured the Republican nomination last weekend.

She said she doesn’t see herself as “ultra-conservative” and wants to focus her campaign on education and jobs. She said she wants to increase job training and apprenticeships in schools.

“There are issues with crime and housing in the district, but it is hard to fix those problems without jobs,” said Autenreith.

But this week, former posts of hers on social media surfaced that might counter Autenreith’s claims of moderation.

In 2021, she posted that she was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, the same day that a riot stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election for former President Donald Trump. She also shared a meme in 2022 from the anti-vax group Informed Choice CT that implied peanut allergies were tied to an increase in vaccine use among children.

Autenreith addressed those posts and said she is not anti-vaccine but believes vaccines should not be mandated.

She acknowledged that she was in Washington on Jan. 6, but said she never left the area around the White House, which is more than a mile from the U.S. Capitol.

“I was there supporting President Trump,” she said. “That was the reason that we went. I am not an insurrectionist.”

Autenreith said she can appeal to Democrats in the district because in her home borough of Shaler, they passed the first tax increase in 10 years, which some voters have been attributing to Democrats on the school board.

“A lot of these democrats are not deep deep blue, they are more purple,” she said.

Either way, she likely has a tough road ahead. In 2022, Innamorato defeated her Republican challenger by 27 points.

Autenreith said she is hoping to channel the same energy, and same lower-than-usual Democratic turnout, that helped Jim Roddey win the county executive race in 1999.

“When Jim Roddey won, it poured rain that day,” she said. “So we will be hoping for rain.”