Sara Innamorato, a state representative running for Allegheny County executive, speaks at her election night party after winning the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at Trace Brewing in Bloomfield. Innamorato was up against five other Democrats for the party’s nomination for Allegheny County executive. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
The state representative and progressive champion bests five Democratic rivals and will face Republican Joe Rockey in a November contest for the county’s top post. Results across the county suggest the ascendance of new breed of Democratic vote-getter.
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State Rep. Sara Innamorato, a 37-year-old Lawrenceville Democrat who burst onto the political scene in 2018, won a crowded and contentious Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive, signaling a leftward turn for the county government with longtime Executive Rich Fitzgerald exiting in January after the maximum three terms.
Her win is a new high water mark for the progressive political movement in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
By 9 p.m., as in-person votes filtered in, Innamorato pulled ahead of John Weinstein, who led the write-in votes by a narrow margin. Her margin only grew as more precincts reported. Her supporters began to declare her the winner shortly before the county showed her handily ahead with more than 90% of precincts counted.
“Tonight I am honored to accept the Democratic nomination for Allegheny County executive,” Innamorato told supporters around 10:30 p.m. “We did this. We did this. This is our seat.”
She was introduced by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who endorsed Innamorato.
“Good people of Allegheny County: it’s because of you that we just changed county government for the better,” the mayor said. “It’s because of you that we can create a county for all. … We made history tonight.”
The local progressive movement picked up speed in the 2010s and matured in the 2020s, with the election of Gainey and Congresswoman Summer Lee, and now it is poised to take a firm grip on local power.
“The power of the people is always greater than the people in power,” Lee told the crowd at Trace Brewing in Bloomfield. “We’re here today because you loved your neighbor more than they hated our movement.”
“Let me say, it’s looking like a real progressive Allegheny County.”
Innamorato then said that she ran “because I wanted to build a county for us all. And the county executive will chart the direction for the next generation, and our refrain continues to be: Let’s create a region where we can all thrive, and we have shared and sustained prosperity for all.”
She said her campaign brought together organized labor, formerly incarcerated people, Black, Jewish and LGBTQ-led organizations and environmentalists, among others. These are people who have been excluded from the political process and “are ready to build a county government that works for them,” she said.
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