9/2: Remembering Mayor Bob O'Connor
Late last night I learned that Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor had passed away after a brief bout with a rare form of cancer that attacks the brain and spinal cord. He was 61 years old. I knew he was going to succumb to this sudden diagnosis, especially when the hospital he was at stopped providing updates to the media a few days ago. When it was announced Friday night that the mayor had died, it left a pit in my stomach that’s still there this morning. I don’t know the man, nor have I ever met him, but I’ve followed his public service career for years and always thought of him as a person of integrity. I may not have agreed with him on a number of issues, but many times in local politics you throw away party affiliation and support the better man (or woman, depending on the situation).
I think the saddest part of this story is that for years this guy had tried to be mayor, only losing in the Democrat primary each time to the incumbent Tom Murphy. In fact, during the 2001 mayoral election there were allegations that Murphy had some illegal backroom deal with the city’s firefighter’s union where he would give them a sweetheart contract if they would support his candidacy over O’Connor. Murphy ended up winning that election by just 699 votes. (Like I said before, it was a primary, but in this town the “general election” takes place in the Democrat primary.)
Whenever Murphy announced he would not seek another term in 2005, it was all but a formality that O’Connor would become the city’s next mayor. There were “elections” and “campaigns,” but everyone with half a brain knew Bob would end up winning. Even when he was on the campaign trail, it seemed that O’Connor was talking more about what he was going to do once elected rather than asking if he could have your vote so he could be elected. When O’Connor finally took the helm in January of 2006 he tried as much as he could to show he wasn’t going to squander the opportunity to head the city he loved. There were two early examples of his leadership in action. The first was successfully planning a post-Super Bowl downtown parade for the Steelers. Even though more than a 250,000 people came downtown to congratulate the Super Bowl champs, O’Connor and his administration made sure the event ran without a hitch, and from the reviews people gave afterwards, it appeared that O’Connor and his staff was for real. The second incident came in wake of a sniper scare. (I commented on this incident back in January.) At first there was concern of a person atop a building with a rifle looking for people to shoot, but in the end it turned out that it was just a maintenance worker hunting pigeons. However, the way the city police/fire/medical services handled this event during those hours when they didn’t know what they were up against showed to many in the area that this town was being managed differently than it had been in previous years. And O’Connor was out in the middle of the action overseeing this operation. One could say he was just being pomp, seeing that his first term was just under way, but if you heard him you could tell he wasn’t trying to be out in the limelight. He wanted to show the city, and the surrounding counties, that the buck was stopping with him. And it showed.
It’s a shame O’Connor didn’t win the Democrat primary back in ’01. If he had, Pittsburgh might be in better financial shape today. Sadly, we here in the southwestern Pennsylvania area will never get to know what O’Connor would have been fully capable of as mayor. RIP.
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