Pittsburgh’s transformation from Rust Belt phoenix to progressive tech stronghold was supposed to be the Democrats’ long-term ace in the hole for Pennsylvania. Instead, hubris might just hand the Keystone State to the GOP in 2024. As Allegheny County limps toward another election cycle, Republicans are eyeing an opportunity born not of their own strength, but of Democratic complacency and voter disillusionment.
The numbers paint a grim picture. Allegheny County hemorrhaged nearly 7,800 residents last year alone, placing it in the top 10 for population loss nationwide. Even more alarming, the county has shed 50,000 jobs in the past five years – five times more than any other Pennsylvania county. The county’s most impoverished suburbs, home to many recent immigrants and other non-white minorities, are facing another round of white flight. On top of that, the future looks even bleaker for those officials tasked with educating future generations of gainfully-employed citizens: Pittsburgh Public Schools are mulling the closure of 16 schools, a move that would disproportionately impact working-class neighborhoods.
Yet you’d never know any of this listening to the county’s Democratic leadership. Take newly-minted County Executive Sara Innamorato. In 2018, she rode a wave of Democratic Socialists of America-fueled primary upsets to unseat center-left incumbent Dom Costa in the state legislature, infamously referring to the working-class voters she grew up with as “racist” along the way. By 2019, she’d ditched the DSA affiliation and made some concessions to organized labor, like many other young Democrats, but kept some of the progressive bona fides. Her narrow victory over well-funded Republican Joe Rockey in the county executive race in 2023 should have been a wake-up call. Instead, it seems to have lulled local Democrats into a false sense of security.
To understand where Allegheny County might be headed, one need only look south to Washington County. Once a union-labor stronghold for the Democrats, Washington County has rapidly become a petri dish for MAGA politics. In 2020, Trump won 61% of the vote there. But it’s not just about presidential politics. MAGA true believers have capitalized on low turnouts to seize control of local government, turning once-staid county commission meetings into wild shouting matches.
The rapid transformation of Washington County offers a playbook for how the GOP might chip away at Democratic dominance in Allegheny County. It hinged on voter apathy – depressing moderate-voter turnout, particularly those who saw Washington County’s Democratic machine as irreparably gridlocked and hopelessly corrupt, while galvanizing the MAGA base in both the primary and general elections.