"Cojònes" No Longer

City Councilmember Bill Peduto has pulled out of the mayoral race, and democracy is effectively dead in Pittsburgh. In retrospect, we all would have been far better off if we had just let Yarone Zober have his way. If we had permitted him to bully the city into granting Luke Ravenstahl the entire remainder of Bob O'Connor's term, we simply could have skipped the disgusting fiasco that is the 2007 mayoral election coronation.

The funniest damn thing today is watching the Post-Gazette's editorial board rip Peduto a new asshole for dropping out of the race, on the same day that they also -- finally -- decide to take Master Ravenstahl to task for his latest ethical faux pas. After months and months where they never wrote a single editorial concerning these things. After they blew off the Heinz Field incident as something that was just "very Pittsburgh". After ignoring the endless foot dragging on the debates, and saying nothing at all about the overdue details of the interim mayor's tax abatement plan. After burying the few stories of Luke Ravenstahl's misteps on the Early Returns blog, where only a tiny fraction of the readership was ever likely to see them. Now, they suddenly blame Peduto for dropping out, when the fact that they had so spectacularly dropped to ball in covering these imporant issues was Mr. Peduto's primary stated reason for exiting the race at this time.

An even larger laugh-line from the Post-Gazette comes when they describe city Republicans in the following manner:

The Republicans, as hapless as ever in Pittsburgh, have no candidate for November.

While their statements are certainly fair, one has to ask just what in the hell the Post-Gazette has ever done to promote anything approaching a two-party system in Pittsburgh. In the lead-up to the last mayoral general election, they provided Bob O'Conner with at least four times -- maybe even more -- as much coverage as Joe Weinroth, who was running for the office on the Republican ticket. Part of the reason why the Republican party is so very hapless in this town is because the city's premiere newspaper simply doesn't provide any coverage of the party's candidates. Instead, the Post-Gazette falls into a circular argument, in which they don't bother to write about Republican candidates because they don't feel the candidates are viable, which simply ensures that local Republicans will remain both unknown to the public and unviable for city office..

All that would be fine. The paper is free to ignore the Republicans if they like, and to play such a big role in ensuring that no Republican ever finds his or her way into city government. But it takes some real balls, after years of doing things that way, to turn around and bitch about it now that the vaunted Democratic machine has provided us with a coronation instead of an election.

As far as Bill Peduto goes, I've had a few hours now to relax, calm down, and look at things with a more distant perspective. After deep thought and reflection, I've realized that I'm far more pissed off at him, his stupid decision, and the horse he rode in on than I was at 3:15 this afternoon. I don't forgive easily when politicians shit on me, and I will not be forgiving Bill Peduto.

In earlier posts, I had advocated an independent candidacy for Mr. Peduto. When he made his announcement pulling out of the primary, I prayed -- literally prayed -- that he would announce an independent run at the same time. We didn't get that. Nor did we get a firm denial of any effort to appear on the mayoral ballot in November. Instead, he's taking a kind of "wait and see" approach to see how things develop, and holding out the option of maybe, possibly, announcing an independent bid later on. In fact, he's keeping his campaign headquarters active. He's going forward with a previously-scheduled fund-raiser next week. Maybe he's doing all of this because he fully plans to run as an independent in November.

But if that's his plan, I'm not going along for the ride. I'm not getting screwed twice by Bill Peduto. It would be one thing if his independent candidacy had begun today. I would be down at Peduto headquarters right this second, checkbook in hand and ready to hit the bricks on his behalf. But, as noted over at The Burgh Report, a political second act might be legally impossible at this point. Even if it is permissible, Mr. Peduto can't possibly hope to regain all his supporters after he has gotten into the race, then dropped out, made it seem like everything is done, and then makes an attempt, a few months later, to resurrect things all over again.

Even if he later announces the independent candidacy that I have so longed for, I can no longer have any confidence that he will be able to stick it out to the end. I can no longer have any confidence -- despite his excellent ideas and his well-researched policy positions -- that he will have the political courage to take the steps needed win an election to any executive office. Good ideas are great. But if you can't do what it takes to transport those ideas into the mayor's office, then you really shouldn't waste everyone's time by even discussing them. You aren't going to change Pittsburgh by offering these ideas to Luke Ravenstahl. He lacks the capacity to even understand them, and will never implement anything that goes against the interests of his old-school machine.

It's one thing to stick by a pledge to hold a clean campaign. I respect that. It's fine to want to focus on issues instead of image. I really, really, really respect that. But Luke Ravenstahl is a complete and utter disaster as mayor of Pittsburgh. Our city desperately needs to see him removed from office. By getting into the race in January -- and by communicating that he would be in the race for months prior to his official announcement -- Mr. Peduto may have very well kept other worthy Democratic candidates out of the contest. To suddenly turn his back on the race on the very last day possible, ensuring that Master Ravenstahl has an all-but-clear field ahead of him, is a betrayal on many different levels.

I don't see this as a betrayal to me, personally. I never got around to endorsing his candidacy. And I had not yet decided whether I was ever going to do so. Instead, Bill Peduto betrayed what little bit of a democratic process we have left in this city. And he betrayed Pittsburgh by sticking us with a mayor that only one-ninth of us have ever voted for, and who has proven himself -- time and time again -- to be one of the worst governmental executives that I have ever seen. Some betrayals are simply unforgivable. And this is one of them.

The only good news in all of this is that the blogging will simply have to continue, stronger than ever. Despite the Post-Gazette's sudden concerns about the state of Pittsburgh's democracy, we can all rest assured that in less than a month they and the rest of the media will be back to business as usual. In fact, without a viable election to focus their attention, I would imagine that the coverage of Luke Ravenstahl's endless string of poor decisions will soon become virtually non-existent. Instead, lovely puff pieces about his hairstyle and clothing selections are likely to become the norm. But, as Maria over at 2 Political Junkies has already promised, the bloggers will always be watching.

We may be the only hope that democracy has in our city. And, collectively, we will just have to rise to the challenge.