Bloggers On Parade!

That would be Bram Reichbaum of The Pittsburgh Comet appearing before Pittsburgh City Council in his capacity working for Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith and her anti adult entertainment legislation.


That would be once upon a time blogger and current staffer for Councilman Bruce Kraus, Matt "H" Hogue; Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak; and Ken Wolfe, Legislative Aide to State Rep. Jake Wheatley, celebrating Matt's birthday.
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Pittsburgh Hoagie closes up shop

Another one bites the dust.

[sigh]

And, wipes the archive.

[sigh]

Chris Potter goes all meta here.

Please, people, I don't want to be the last one to turn off the lights...
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Pittsburgh Mayoral Debate at Noon on WPXI

A reminder that the third and final Pittsburgh Mayoral Debate will be broadcast at Noon today on WPXI.

And, Lil Mayor Luke has lost one of his biggest boosters.
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Big Election Wrap-up

I think that we can all agree that City Council victories by Natalia Rudiak and Robert Daniel Lavelle do not bode well for Lil Mayor Luke or his coattails.

Change Lukey would rather not believe in:

Bram's interview with Matt Merriman-Preston, political consultant to Natalia Rudiak (& Chelsa Wagner & Bill Peduto), is definitely worth a look. (And, as I'm sure Matt knows by now Lil Mayor Luke did not break 60%.)

That Dastardly Dowd refuses to apologize to Pittsburgh's Favorite Grandson.

For the junkies who like to obsess over numbers, graphs and maps there's Allegheny County's web site, Chris Briem's last few posts at Null Space, Pitt's map and the Post-Gazette's ward map.

There's a discussion on the "power of the blogosphere" as pertains to elections in the comments section of this Slag Heap post. IMHO, the blogosphere in general can be used to raise awareness, to raise funds, to move the conversation and occasionally to actually make news. All of this is more likely to occur on the national level where you can have a viral effect -- not so much here with Pittsburgh's older demographic. That said, as Pittsburgh's MSM (print anyway) tends to read the blogs, it's probably easiest here to make the news (as in the case of the Smith Liar Flier or MacYapper's Opie in handcuffs story).

In those same comments, Potter makes the point that, "In the case of district 2, my guess would be that your door-knocking for Blotzer did more to help her than anything anyone posted online."

Here, I'm in agreement. but I'll add that having someone work the polls can be a big asset as well. Case in point would be Hugh McGough's performance in the 16th Ward. While precincts 3 - 13 pretty much had the same results as his overall unfortunate performance (cause who'd want to vote for someone for judge who was highly recommended by the Bar and endorsed by both the P-G and the Trib...). However, in precincts 1 and 2 where there was a poll watcher (and inattentive Committee folk) he came in second and third respectively. Don't know if someone clued Don Walko that a majority of voters were walking in with McGough flyers or if he went to all the polls, but he and his wife came running over with more yard signs.

Speaking of 16-1, at least a couple of registered Democrats complained that when they went to vote, the screen gave them no choices for mayor and only offered them the option to write-in a name...hmmm, just like a Republican ballot would function. A technician was called and confirmed that nothing was wrong with the machines/software. Ya think maybe a poll worker was occasionally keying in D voters as R's? This would be the same polling place that had to temporarily shut down at 7:00 PM last November because of some poll worker freak out. Voters ended up in line until 9:30 (well, those who didn't give up and leave).

Finally, speaking of temporary shut downs, could the biggest victim of Tuesday's results be Matt H?


Time will tell...
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Quick Hits

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), in a strongly worded press release, denied attending any meetings with Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-IN) group of Blue Dog "ConservaDems." "Pennsylvania is Blue, Obama won, and the people want his agenda passed. Why on Earth would I align myself with that bunch of obstructionist douches?" Casey asked. (Post-Gazette)

In a surprise move, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) decided to throw his support behind the Employee Free Choice Act. "I have a reputation to maintain as a Centrist. I absolutely will not damage that reputation just because I will be challenged by a dangerous far right opponent in a Republican primary." (Early Returns)

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, in response to challenger Patrick Dowd, said that far from wasting over 20 million dollars those monies were actually part of the Ravenstahl Administration's stimulus spending package. (KDKA)

District 2 Pittsburgh City Councilor Theresa Kail-Smith is now fully behind real campaign finance reform. Local blogger and Kail-Smith supporter Matt H applauded the change at his Pittsburgh Hoagie blog. (She also said that she would update her campaign web site to include that "Kail-" thing.) (Pittsburgh Hoagie)

The Republican "alternative budget" calls for a massive tax cut for the wealthy. The top marginal tax rate would be slashed from 35 to 25 percent which would just be CRAZY. (Huffington Post)

Speaking of taxes, the ginormous tax increase on cigarettes scheduled to go into effect today has been postponed indefinitely when it was discovered that the nation already had a high percentage of obese people and that smoking does indeed look "cool." (Washington Post)

Starting tomorrow, I will be posting exclusively at Twitter -- no more blogging here at 2pj (You can find me at Twitter here). Words are the enemy! Also, I'm really, really happy that I wasn't laid off yesterday along with many of my co-workers.
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Blogging for The Man?

UPDATE: Matt is working for District 4 City Council candidate Anthony Coghill. He did not blog about this race yesterday.

Whilst trying to catch up on my local blog reading, I came across this exchange from last week in the comments section over at Agent Ska's place:

Matt H said...
I will be on the staff of a local campaign as of this Monday.

12:11 AM

Agent Ska said...
Aww, a candidate for president of the tools of the system wants your help.

how cute.

How about you take a step back from your mental power trip and realize that you're just someone other campaigns use for their own purposes and don't care about you?

11:42 AM

Matt H said...
Wow. Your really angry for some reason.

Mental power trip? Where is that from?

I think your just mad because your candidates just never win on a local level. A lot of you other bloggers hate it that I support people who win.

If I am someone that is just used then why did I get hired? How is that getting used?

You so far out of touch with what's reality in local politics.

I take it your supporting Dowd for Mayor?

4:21 PM

Matt H is of course Matt Hogue whose blog is Pittsburgh Hoagie.

I'm going to take a wild guess here that Matt was hired by Lil Mayor Luke Ravenstahl -- not just because Matt is Lukey's biggest fan ever and BFF wannabe -- but because most local campaigns don't have much in the way of paid staff and because we know that Lil Mayor Luke has been hiring and advertising for staffers from as far away as DC (in keeping with his practice of hiring non locals) and because Matt brought up the mayoral race in the above exchange.

So Matt, I got to ask:

Are you working for Ravenstahl's campaign?

If not his campaign, then which campaign hired you?

I ask this because yesterday -- the same day that you were supposed to start your new job -- you blogged about three local races: Mayor of Pittsburgh, City Council District 2 and City Council District 6.

Even by blogger standards it would have been unethical for you to blog about any of those races if you were a hired staffer of any of the candidates and you did not disclose any paid professional associations in your post.

Enquiring minds want to know.
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Pittsburgh Housing Authority Waste Exposed by Local Blogger

Local blogger Matt H's long awaited story on ridiculously wasteful spending at Pittsburgh's Housing Authority has finally made the news. Marty Griffin interviews Matt on KDKA News here.

Matt has hundreds of documented instances of abusive spending.

Urban Redevelopment Authority executive director -slash- Parking Authority chairman -slash- Housing Authority chairman* Patrick Ford is also interviewed by Griffith. Ford has been on the Housing Authority Board for a year -- much of that time overlapping with Matt's documentation of waste.

Great job, Matt!


* h/t to the Comet
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