Mayoral Campaigns' Integrity Graded

The Clean Campaign Committee, organized by the League of Women Voters of Greater Pittsburgh (LWVGP), has graded the integrity of each of the mayoral campaigns based on four main categories. This is how the candidates fared:

Honesty: Dowd (C+), Ravenstahl (C), Robinson (A-)
Fairness: Dowd (C), Ravenstahl (C), Robinson (A)
Transparency: Dowd (B), Ravenstahl (B), Robinson (B)
Responsibility: Dowd (A-), Ravenstahl (B-), Robinson (A)

The committee, composed of 12 citizens, was co-chaired by Director of Baierl Automotive William Baierl and LWVGP President Suzanne Broughton.

Baierl says Carmen Robinson received the highest marks overall, despite her relatively small amount of material to examine. "Carmen actually has a lot on her webpage. We were able to see what she is about in the debates. Really the lack of volume of information was why she didn't receive exceptional scores, but we saw a high level of transparency and honesty in what she was doing," says Baierl.

Broughton says incumbent Mayor Luke Ravenstahl received the worst marks in the "Honesty" category because he claimed credit for things he should not have. "On one piece of literature, he said, 'I'm helping to upgrade the Pittsburgh school system,' and then he cites the Pittsburgh Promise. Well, yeah, he was instrumental in the Pittsburgh Promise, but as mayor, he has no control over the school system itself. I guess we thought some of the ways he stated things were a little misleading," says Broughton.

Baierl says despite the Ravenstahl campaign's shortcomings, Councilman Patrick Dowd's attacks on the mayor may have been a bit heavy-handed. "While Ravenstahl maybe is being characterized as taking credit for stuff he didn't do, he still was able to marshal some things forward that maybe he didn't initiate. We felt that Dowd really wasn't giving him enough credit for that end," says Baierl. Broughton added that both Ravenstahl and Dowd received Cs in "Fairness" partly because of their spat over the rescheduling of the debates, which she said "could have been a little less accusatory."

Overall, though, the Committee decided that the campaign was relatively clean. Says Broughton, "In our grading, A is exceptional, and we only gave a few exceptionals. B is good, so when you take the goods and the exceptionals, there's not a whole lot of fair, and nobody was rated poor, so I think it's fair to say that this has been a campaign of integrity for the most part, with a few slips."