With Another South Hills Win, Democrats Continue To Redraw Map

Chris Potter
wesa.fm
April 3, 2019

State Senator-elect Pam Iovino’s Tuesday-night special election win over Republican D. Raja won’t attract the same attention Conor Lamb’s did when he was elected to Congress last year.

But both Democrats triumphed in the southern and western suburbs of Pittsburgh, prevailing over Republican attacks based heavily on national issues.

And both were working from a similar script — one that cast a military veteran as a pragmatic standard-bearer — while campaigning with support from a coalition of unions and grassroots groups opposed to President Donald Trump.

“This is a well-oiled machine,” said Darrin Kelly, who heads the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council, hours before Iovino posted a 52-to-48 percent win in a race decided by over 2,500 votes…

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State Senate race: Democrat Pam Pam Iovino: 37th Senate District Race: Taking care of the troops

Pam Iovino
Post-Gazette
March 28, 2019

Growing up with four generations in one small house, I believed that when my parents said, “Everything is going to be fine,” it would be fine. Raised in Whitehall, I graduated from Baldwin High School and was able to go to Gettysburg College without taking on a crushing load of student debt. Then I joined the U.S. Navy, eventually rising to the rank of captain.

With a career in public service — 23 years in the Navy, then at the Department of Veterans Affairs as an assistant secretary and most recently as director of veterans services for Allegheny County — I know what’s possible when our venerable institutions are well managed. I know that a strong public education and the opportunities given to me were the keys to my success. I have been blessed with a life and a career that have been much more than just fine. But I worry that it isn’t realistic for the next generation of my family and my neighbors to think “everything is going to be fine.” …

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State Senate race: Democrat Pam Iovino says Navy career prepared her to serve

Julan Routh
Post-Gazette
March 10, 2019

On a chilly April afternoon 15 years ago in Washington, D.C., Pam Iovino sat behind a table in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building and told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee the same thing she tells voters today: that her two-plus decades in the Navy would make her the right fit to continue serving.

Only that time, the people she would serve would be veterans, the same people who protected her freedom and helped her rise to the rank of captain and achieve command, she said in her opening statement to the committee.

“Finally, they are the veterans of two Gulf wars, and my former peers and shipmates,” Ms. Iovino concluded. “I am honored to serve them, and I believe I am qualified to serve them.” …

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‘My Experience In Government Has Always Been Bipartisan’: Pam Iovino On Her State Senate Bid

Chris Potter
WESA.fm
March 7, 2019

Pam Iovino and D. Raja, who are running in a special election for the 37th state Senate district, are both Mt. Lebanon residents. And both have run for office in the area before. Iovino sought to be the Democratic nominee for a Congressional race in the area last year, but was supplanted by eventual winner Conor Lamb. Raja himself, meanwhile, had an unsuccessful bid for the 37th state Senate seat several years ago.

But that may be where the similarities end. While Raja touts his own story as a successful first-generation immigrant, Iovino points to her status as a South Hills native.

“One of the reasons that I decided to run for elected office is that I am living in a place that I grew up in that does not look the same in terms of providing the same opportunities that I felt that I had,” she said. “And I see that being eroded.” …

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