Joseph Sabino Mistick: Pittsburgh moves forward with Ed Gainey

Last Tuesday, when Bill Peduto became the first incumbent Pittsburgh mayor since 1933 to be booted from office, it was a story both as old as politics and also new again. He never warmed to the essentials of city government, and he missed by a mile the changes in the direction of the city.

There is an adage that mayors can be reelected forever if they plow the streets, fix the potholes and collect the garbage. It is more complicated than that — water and sewage, neighborhood issues, public safety, transportation and recreation are part of it — but these are the basics.

In nearly eight years in office, Peduto never figured out how to plow the streets, even though he always promised some high-tech solution to prioritize and chart the routes. Instead of an algorithm to manage the plowing, he just needed a guy named Al in Public Works to show him how to do it using common sense.

He became known on social media as “Bike Lane Billy.” Everybody wants biking in the city to be safer for their loved ones. But Peduto set drivers and cyclists against each other with imperious and intrusive plans.

Peduto was the first mayor to mess with the city’s Strip District, rejecting the solid advice that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Strip is a gem, a naturally evolved festival market that is beloved by Pittsburghers and tourists. It would be the envy of any city.

Even before the pandemic, Strip merchants were rattled as city bureaucrats — with no understanding of the neighborhood and its traditions — eliminated parking, talked of changing street patterns and promoted out-of-town merchants over local merchants for the city’s produce terminal project.

And he struggled to find the right response to the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s murder. By trying to have it both ways on a tough issue, he lost the support of both sides. The protesters wanted more support and protection, and the police were given mixed signals — a prescription for trouble.

None of these issues alone would be enough to bring down an incumbent mayor, but each of these issues has a constituency, and together they became a problem. Especially when Peduto’s traditional base pulled away from him.

Once the progressives’ favorite, Peduto lost that role to Ed Gainey, who beat him for the Democratic nomination with a message rooted in social justice that he repeated election night: “A city is changed when we all come together to improve the quality of life for everybody.”

Technically, a Republican write-in candidate could claim that party’s nomination or an independent candidate could emerge, but they would face impossible odds in November. It is going to be Mayor Gainey — Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor — come January.

In an otherwise gracious message to voters after the election, Peduto claimed that he had “inherited a broken city,” but Pittsburgh has never been broken. We are tough and tenacious, and we always move forward, even in hard times.

All of our mayors have stood on the shoulders of those who came before them, tossing what doesn’t work and adding their own hard work and dedication to what does. And now it is time for a new mayor to stand on those shoulders.