Mayoral Debate Spat

Bill Peduto kept to the high road last during last night's late night mayoral debate broadcast at 11:35 PM on WTAE.

As has come to be expected by those watching these candidates debate, Lamb and O'Connor traded barbs once more. Michael Lamb criticized Bob O'Connor for spending too much when O'Connor was a member of city council, thus being responsible for Pittsburgh's current economic woes.

O'Connor came back by citing an audit report by Dan Onorato which mentioned "irregularities" in Lamb's prothonotary office -- most notably funds that were deposited from an unknown source. He used that to attack Lamb's remarks about cutting his staff at the prothonotary office as the report claimed that the sloppy accounting was partially due to "high turnover" at that office.

The moderator (WTAE news anchor Michelle Wright) than let the two spar back and forth. To their discredit, this was the only time that the three panelists (Sheldon Ingram and Bob Mayo, both also from WTAE, and Andrew Conte, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) seemed to get really interested in the proceedings. One of them even remarked that they were sorry that they had to go on to another question.

To Peduto's credit, when he finally had his turn at the mic again, his take on Lamb's and O'Connor's bickering was that, "Instead of debating about comptroller reports we should be debating about the budget."

I guess that subject just isn't exciting enough for our local media.

And, speaking of local media, the Post-Gazette is taking a focused look at each candidate. This week was Bill Peduto's turn. The article can be read here. An article on Bob O'Connor appeared last week and can be read here. Lamb will be featured next week.

As Comments from Left Field notes, the article on Peduto does "...a little too good a job of repeating the negative talking points bandied about by Peduto's opponents," but it's still worth a look.