Joseph Sabino Mistick: Pittsburgh needs a fresh start with next mayor

There used to be a saying that Pittsburgh always gets the mayor it needs when it needs it — a lesson that the voters and candidates should remember this Election Day and after.

At Mary Campbell Corbett’s recent Downtown Pittsburgh presentation of “Pivoting to the People: The Untold Story of Planning in Pittsburgh Under Pete Flaherty,” she showed us how that once looked.

Corbett is the daughter of Bruce Campbell, Pete’s chief of staff throughout most of his seven years as mayor. Her lecture included a reunion of Flaherty administration officials — living reminders that we sometimes need a hard break with the past if we hope to move forward.

Pete, who died in 2005, was born on the North Side, served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, went to Notre Dame law school, served as an assistant Allegheny County prosecutor and was elected to Pittsburgh City Council in 1965, leading the ticket. At that time, with the dominance of the Democratic machine, a young, handsome, Irish Catholic lawyer like Pete just had to follow the party rules and wait his turn.

But after Pete attended the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, where he witnessed chaos on the convention floor and the police battling protesters on the streets, he returned home with a different view of politics and his party — and he helped change both forever.

“I think it made me realize that the party’s divided. There’s room in the party for dissent, which there never was before, or which there was very little of. So, in that sense, it had an effect on me,” he said.

In 1969, Pete broke ranks and ran for mayor as “Nobody’s Boy” — an independent Democrat — against the party’s candidate, normally the odds-on favorite. Pete was outspent by 4-1, but he won in a landslide.

It was a shock in the city that had been run by David L. Lawrence, the former mayor and former Pennsylvania governor who saved Pittsburgh starting in the 1940s with his Pittsburgh Renaissance plan. Lawrence’s political machine had served the region well, but Pete saw the abuses that can accumulate when too much power is held by the same party operatives for too long.

Pete brought in a team of young managers with new ideas to redesign city government from scratch. He cut the payroll from 7,000 to 5,000 employees. He eliminated drivers for city plumbers, but only after he eliminated his own driver. He took a public relations hit when he cut the number of cleaning ladies at City Hall, but he simply explained they had been working four hours per day and getting paid for eight.

When city garbage truck drivers went on strike, Pete and his top administrators picked up the garbage, ending the strike. He broke with other political leaders and the Allegheny Conference to kill the Skybus transit plan. And he ended the old patronage system that rewarded party loyalty.

It was a 180-degree turn for Pittsburgh, and it was painful for those who liked the old way of doing things. But the voters loved it all. Pete saved city government from the plight of other old industrial towns that were collapsing from bloated budgets and payrolls. And he saved the Democratic Party, which had grown too fat with no-show payroll jobs and complacency.

Pittsburgh voters have defeated two incumbent mayors in the past two elections, and their demand for real change could not be clearer. It will be up to the next mayor to resist the urge to rehash old ideas and former officials. Pittsburgh needs another fresh start.