He probably won't do it because I've heard he despises me, but I really want Luke Ravenstahl to start buying my Powerball tickets.
You see, good fortune shines on Pittsburgh's mayor more intensely than the blistering August sun (if you can remember what that feels like). If he begins picking my numbers, in no time at all I'll be sipping mimosas from the white sands of Providenciales.
I know what you're thinking: What⢠Ravenstahl is lucky⢠Has the column guy become punchy after shoveling out from the 30 inches of snow that fell here over the past 10 days?
Believe me, I understand. I take no offense.
Insisting Ravenstahl is fortunate seems sheer folly after he was roundly excoriated for leaving the city on the eve of a major snowstorm to celebrate his 30th birthday at Seven Springs ski resort in Somerset County.
The mayor was pilloried for the molasses-slow snow removal response in many city neighborhoods. If he stepped foot today in Greenfield or Beechview, he probably wouldn't be tarred and feathered -- but in keeping with local tradition, he might well end up French-fried and coleslawed.
The guy's a pariah right now. So how can I claim that Ravenstahl should kiss the nearest snowplow in gratitude for his supposedly superior kismet?
Simply by calling officials in Denver, which is known to suffer through the occasional blizzard, and asking whether badly mishandling a large snowfall ever proved to be politically fatal to a mayor there.
"The short answer to your question is yes," said Eric Brown, spokesman for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. "A former mayor in Denver was voted out of office because of (poor) snow response."
That occurred in 1982, when two feet of snow fell on Denver on Christmas Eve while most city workers were home with their families. Roads were impassible, the airport was forced to close, and the next spring voters shut down the 14-year run of Mayor William McNichols.
Three years earlier, Chicago voters ousted Mayor Michael Bilandic one month after he dropped the (snow)ball in handling two back-to-back winter storms that dumped more than 30 inches of snow and paralyzed the city.
Sound familiar?
The circumstances are similar, but there is one significant difference that makes the chances of Ravenstahl suffering great political harm from the snow removal fiasco about as great as your sidewalk being completely cleared this week:
Ravenstahl barely is six weeks into a four-year term he won in November.
He doesn't have a month to live down his meteorological-related mistakes like Bilandic, or five months like McNichols. As justifiably irate as people are at the moment, the odds are good that tempers will cool before Ravenstahl runs for re-election in 2013.
If you don't think three years isn't an eternity in politics, ask yourself this question: Did you even know who Barack Obama was in 2007?
Mayors have been turned out of office for similarly sloppy storm responses, but Pittsburgh's mayor, the city's current Duke of Derision, won't succumb to a similar fate.
See⢠Luke's a lucky guy after all.
Now if he would just start picking up my Powerball tickets ...
