GOP's candidate missing in action? - PittsburghLIVE.com Sometimes they vanish immediately after their failed campaigns, sometimes during them. The common denominator among recent Republican mayoral aspirants is that, politically speaking, the utter futility of their bids causes them to evaporate like steam.
'I'm not going to disappear,' James Carmine vowed shortly before being trounced by Mayor Tom Murphy in 2001. Has anyone outside the Carlow University classrooms where he teaches philosophy heard from him since?
Yes.
I pick up the phone. I do outreach. I know about Carmine now -- and I even put a bit on a recent blog entry about Professor Carmine. Since you asked, I provided an answer.
Carmine is going to put his energy into helping Mark Brentley, Sr. beat Sala Udin in the Dems primary in the City Council District 6 race. That race might be a three way race and there are sure to be others in the hunt too. A Republican is on the ballot and a friend is going to run as an Independent. So, there are many putting in efforts to unseat Sala.
By the way, I'm a former GOP candidate for mayor. But Eric, no sense in letting truth get in the way of a good story.
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GOP's candidate missing in action?
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By Eric Heyl
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, March 13, 2005
No, Joe Weinroth assured me, there was no need to file a missing person report on him.
Yes, he was absent from the Pittsburgh mayoral candidate forums at the Downtown Rivers Club and a North Side church. But the race's lone Republican claimed extenuating circumstances.
"The Rivers Club -- I didn't find out about that until just before it happened, and I had a scheduling conflict," he said. "The one (Thursday) night, I wasn't invited. I didn't know about it at all."
I called Weinroth because I was concerned. I feared he already had been sucked into the swirling black vortex that usually consumes GOP mayoral candidates in a city in which Democrats outnumber Republicans by about a 5-to-1 margin.
Sometimes they vanish immediately after their failed campaigns, sometimes during them. The common denominator among recent Republican mayoral aspirants is that, politically speaking, the utter futility of their bids causes them to evaporate like steam.
"I'm not going to disappear," James Carmine vowed shortly before being trounced by Mayor Tom Murphy in 2001. Has anyone outside the Carlow University classrooms where he teaches philosophy heard from him since?
A week before being pummeled by Murphy in 1997, businessman Harry Frost conducted a news conference to denounce the media for ruining his campaign. It was his first public appearance in four months.
Newspaper revelations that Frost owed more than $10,000 in back wages, taxes and mortgage payments "turned the whole campaign around as far as money," Frost griped at his last official sighting. "Everyone ran as soon as you guys reported the fact I was going bankrupt."
The night Murphy handily defeated her in 1993, interior decorator Kathy Matta vowed her 1997 mayoral bid would begin the next day. The remark is believed to be her final public political utterance. Four years later, she gave way to Frost.
No one expects a win for Weinroth, 46, an attorney from Squirrel Hill whose resume as a candidate includes an unsuccessful City Council bid in 2001. His opponent was William Peduto, who is now simultaneously running for mayor and re-election to his council seat.
Weinroth exceeding the wretched performances of the previous three GOP candidates seems attainable, though, particularly with Murphy retiring in December after nearly driving the city into bankruptcy. Until you take into account that hardly anyone knows who Weinroth is.
"We have meetings scheduled. We will be coming out with a number of proposals to improve the city," he said. "We're going to make our very best effort to send a message to Pittsburgh that we need to make fundamental changes to the culture of Grant Street."
Weinroth better start soon. At the moment, his name resonates only among a city GOP committee small enough to hold its meetings in a shoe box, with enough room remaining to comfortably hold a pair of size 14 Bostonians.
Let's not discard the missing person paperwork just yet.
Eric Heyl is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer. He can be reached at eheyl@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7857.
Eric was wondering about a candidate in November.
Being a Spring Primary candidate is rather easy, as no one gets press or publicity in the dog days of summer.
Political observers say that the Spring Primary is the only race that matters for the Mayor's Race.
However, if a good Republican or Independent candidate can raise a huge amount of money for media buys, etc., things can get interesting in the fall.
There were rumors that Harry Frost had died during his GOP race in the summer or fall of 1997. When I was at KQV, we tracked him down and interviewed him on air the day before. He was absolutely invisible.
City Paper had a nice feature story on Jim Carmine during the summer of 2001 when he was the candidate. He was only a little less invisible than Frost.
Joe Reinroth has run in other races, and as a city Republican, has a name some people have heard before. And he's a fairly conservative Republican to boot.
Reinroth HAS NOT gotten off to a good start--missing public events--etc., but he hasn't even made it past the primary yet.
We'll see if he's running a real candidacy or falling into the same trap as ALL GOP candidates who make it past the primary.
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