There were about 30 minutes of uncertainty during Sara Innamorato’s election night gathering.
The Associated Press called the Allegheny County executive race for the progressive Democrat just before 10 p.m. Tuesday, but an announcement was not immediately made to the crowd of more than 200 supporters at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale.
So, her supporters danced on, seemingly unaware of the moment Innamorato had won and the margin of the race.
At that moment, Innamorato had a lead of about seven points over Republican candidate Joe Rockey, but it had been dwindling all night as in-person votes were being tabulated.
Innamorato’s team wasn’t quite ready yet to hit the stage and inform the crowd of the apparent victory.
Then, just before 10:30 p.m., Innamorato’s close team of allies took the stage and declared victory. She told the crowd that her administration would be ambitious and thanked Rockey for keeping her on her toes.
This was the theme for most of the night.
The scene felt like a club or popular bar with supporters dancing to hit songs spun by a DJ and liberals and progressives sipping craft beers while laughing over stories.
Campaign staff and the closest allies of Innamorato were hard to find. They weren’t celebrating yet.
As the first batch of mail-in ballots came in at 8 p.m., the party raged on the dance floor, many supporters seemingly unaware of impressive percentages that Innamorato’s opponent had garnered from the mail-ins.
Rockey won 33% of the mail-in ballots compared to Innamorato’s 67%. While she still won those overwhelmingly, that rate was lower than other Democrats. State Supreme Court candidate Dan McCaffery, a Democrat from Philadelphia, won 81% of Allegheny County’s mail-in vote.
As the night wore on, Rockey continued to cut into Innamorato’s lead. At times, it appeared possible the Republican would overtake the Democrat, an impressive task in a county with twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
Ultimately though, Innamorato held on, winning by more than 8,300 votes out of over 364,000 cast, the closest county executive race since 1999.
At a news conference, Innamorato acknowledged the close race. She said Republicans were boosted thanks to outspending her by a margin of 4-1, and she brushed off criticism that many voters backed Rockey while also supporting other Democrats.
She said once she is in office and able to spread her message of coalition building, she is confident she can win over those voters.
“Whoever you voted for tonight, whatever letter is next to your voter ID, you are going to be a part of this administration and have a voice,” said Innamorato, a former state representative from Lawrenceville.
Innamorato’s victory showed many things about Allegheny County’s electorate, said Lee Irwin, a political science professor at Duquesne University.
He said it showed progressives have been successful in consolidating power across the county, not just among the Democrat electorate or in the city. But he also noted there is a significant group of suburban voters who are more comfortable with Rockey.
Irwin said these voters are pivotal to elections in Allegheny County, and binding them is their support for the status quo.
He said many of them saw some Democrats, like McCaffery, as the protectors of issues they want to maintain such as abortion access and election integrity. Still, some saw Rockey as the better manager of county services and could have been scared off by ads highlighting Innamorato’s former affiliation with the left-wing Democratic Socialists of America.
“People in the suburbs are generally pretty happy, and they will usually vote for sustaining the status quo,” said Irwin.
In the end, Innamorato was able to balance the local electorate just enough, Irwin said. He said she brought out her strong base in the city that supports her progressive reforms. She combined that with persuading enough swing district voters with counterattacks against Rockey that sowed doubt he would back broader Republican efforts to overturn elections and abortion rights.
“It is such a finely balanced electorate,” he said.
Close contest
With 97% of precincts reporting, Innamorato had collected 51.1% of the vote compared to 48.8% from Rockey. This was the closest race for county executive since Republican Jim Roddey narrowly won the seat in 1999.
Innamorato won more than 70% of the vote in the city of Pittsburgh. She performed even better in eastern suburbs including Wilkinsburg and Braddock, which have large Black populations and are the most reliably Democratic municipalities in the county.
And compared to Democratic District Attorney candidate Matt Dugan, who lost by three percentage points, Innamorato was able to pull some suburban voters.
She outperformed Dugan by about five percentage points or better in voter-heavy municipalities such as Shaler, Castle Shannon and Monroeville.
Still, local Republicans saw a lot to like in the county executive race.
Mark Harris is a partner at conservative political firm ColdSpark, which worked on Rockey’s campaign. He said Rockey was able to reassemble the Republican coalition in the North Hills and parts of the South Hills, where Democrats have been making large inroads since 2016, and Rockey performed well in more moderate city neighborhoods such as Banksville and Brookline.
He said Rockey’s message was able to persuade enough voters to come close in a heavily Democratic county, and that races aren’t just about turning out your party’s base. Rockey picked up endorsements from the region’s building trades, who usually endorse Democrats, and campaigned on being a centrist who would work to increase public safety efforts and bring federal investment to the region.
“It showed if you run as a reasonable Republican, there is a strong constituency in Allegheny County to support you,” said Harris. “A quarter of Dems voted for Joe Rockey, that is an incredible accomplishment.”
Harris said the close race showed there was no clear mandate for Innamorato’s agenda, and Republicans can and will field competitive candidates when Democrats nominate progressives.
Irwin agreed that a message from the race is that there might not be an insatiable appetite for progressive policies, even if the progressives were able to reach the highest rungs of power locally.
“The message I would take if I were Innamorato is there is not as much stomach for a full-fledged progressive message, or at least as much as Allegheny County Democrats might have thought there is,” he said.
Suburban ticket splitters
Over 40% of Allegheny County’s municipalities voted for McCaffrey, a Democrat, at the top of the ticket and then Rockey, a Republican. These 55 municipalities were suburbs that were spread across the county: like Harrison in the Allegheny Valley, Franklin Park in the North Hills, Upper St. Clair in the South Hills, and Moon in the western part of the county.
These purple suburbs saw massive turnout increases in 2023 compared with the last municipal election in 2021, according to University of Pittsburgh professor Lara Putnam.
What happened to the Left/reformist candidates who (barely) won & (barely) lost races for Allegheny County Exec & DA respectively? The purple suburbs turned out en masse, voting *for* Dem statewide judicial candidates & *against* countywide Dem reformers in a stark divide pic.twitter.com/xDxNWMUGTO
— Lara Putnam (@lara_putnam) November 10, 2023
Franklin Park, for example, saw 51% turnout, a marked increase compared with 2021 and more than double the turnout compared with 2017.
That helped propel McCaffrey to a commanding victory in Allegheny County, winning by 25 points, but also boosted Rockey to the best Republican performance in a county executive race in more than 20 years.
Those ticket splits weren’t just among the courts and the countywide races. A lot of those voters split their tickets again even further down the ballot, helping Democrats flip local governments and school districts in the suburbs.
Democrats won a majority in the North Allegheny School District and flipped a borough council seat in Bethel Park that had been controlled by Republicans for the past 26 years. Franklin Park Democrats also took over control of the local council. All these municipalities voted for Rockey.
John Hammond, a professor at Penn State New Kensington and Democratic community organizer in Franklin Park, said local Democrats have been successful by campaigning on fixing local issues and avoiding ideology. That message is building a liberal base and garnering Republican votes, he said.
“We have built a presence in the community. We are constantly knocking on doors,” said Hammond. “Our message is not overtly ideological or partisan, it is that we want good government.”
Status quo
In many ways, candidates’ overperformances this year in Allegheny County — Democratic or Republican — can be traced back to messaging about protecting the status quo, said Irwin.
“There are a lot of moderate, center-right Republicans in the suburbs and college-educated voters. And they may not agree about every Democratic policy, they agree about abortion access and the democracy protections,” he said.
Allegheny County provided large margins for all Democratic statewide judicial candidates, not just McCaffery, which Irwin said showed those swing voters cared about abortion access and ensuring Republicans weren’t in charge of running elections.
For the county executive race, however, a lot of those swing voters saw Rockey as holding the line, maintaining their county services and not raising their property taxes, Irwin said.
Rockey campaigned on opposing a countywide property reassessment, arguing it would raise taxes. Innamorato said regular assessments would make the tax structure more equitable.
Rockey, a retired PNC executive, also called himself a centrist and campaigned on bringing jobs back to the county and claimed Innamorato’s policies were too extreme and would discourage business.
While that appeared to give Rockey an edge in the purple suburbs, there were enough voters, even in those areas, who saw Innamorato as a status quo protector on some issues, said Ben Forstate, an election analyst who worked on Democratic County Controller candidate Corey O’Connor’s campaign.
The Allegheny County executive holds a seat on the county’s election board, which certifies the election each year. If Rockey were to win, then Republicans would hold the majority on the board.
Forstate said one of the most powerful issues for Innamorato to convince skeptical voters was her message to protect the election board from Republicans, and that Rockey was waffling on how exactly he would vote.
She also benefited from having “the ground game to get the message out to enough voters, with trusted messengers in each swingy suburb,” said Forstate.
Hammond also said a message of protection has been working for Democrats in Franklin Park, which has contrasted with some far-right Republicans who have been campaigning for school board seats in order to ban books they deem offensive.
“The Dem argument is about maintaining a good school district,” said Hammond.
Harris acknowledged Democrats with progressive messages like Innamorato were able to win the race, but said not by a large enough margin to quiet Republicans.
He said Republicans are motivated by this close victory.
“Maybe they can get to 51%, but in a county like this, that is not a ringing endorsement,” said Harris. “They should expect that every time the Dems nominate someone like [Innamorato], Republicans are going to fight tooth and nail to present an alternate vision.”
Ryan Deto is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Ryan by email at rdeto@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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