“Nobody’s Boy” is gone. Former Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty never made it to the governor’s mansion or the U.S. Senate, but he took on the city’s powerful Democratic machine 35 years ago and changed the political landscape. Flaherty, a two-term mayor who also served three terms as Allegheny County commissioner, died Monday at his home in Mt. Lebanon. He was 80. His five children, their spouses and his wife, Charlene, were at his bedside when Flaherty lost a three-year battle with cancer at about 4 p.m., said son Shawn Flaherty, of Fox Chapel. “He fought a long fight. He was fighting to the end,” he said. Shawn Flaherty said his father told him yesterday morning that he wanted to make sure all his children were with him at the end. “When everybody was here, we gathered and said some prayers. We told him to go in peace, that he was loved, that he was going to a better place, and he was going to be with his parents,” he said. As news of his death reverberated across the city and county where he had established the name Flaherty as political gold, he was remembered by past and current public officials, friends and colleagues as a nonpareil public servant. Former Mayor Sophie Masloff, who was a member of City Council when Flaherty was mayor, said he “rubbed a lot of people the wrong way” because of his independence. “I always admired him because he was a man of great principle and absolute integrity. He was also very frugal, and I think that was good for the city at that time,” she said. “I lost a good friend. He will be sorely missed by the people of Pittsburgh,” said Richard M. Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Scaife remembered Flaherty as “a very capable” administrator. Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato said it “seems like Pete Flaherty was in office for my entire life growing up.” “I think he is going to be remembered for putting some strong fiscal policy in place for both the city and the county, which resulted in leaving the city and county in a much stronger financial position than he found them,” Onorato said. County Coroner Cyril H. Wecht, whose friendship with Flaherty dated to the 1960s, remembered him as “a fine person and always a gentleman.” “I always found his word to be good,” Wecht said. “He had a keen political intellect and a genuine passion in his desire to be in government service.” Flaherty was a World War II aviator who attended law school on the GI Bill, became an assistant district attorney and married a University of Pittsburgh homecoming queen. He was considered a rising star in the local Democratic Party when he was elected to Pittsburgh City Council in 1965. “He was a very impressive public servant,” said Duquesne University law professor Joseph Sabino Mistick. “He could have become the darling of the political machine, and he chose not to.” Oxford Development CEO David Matter, who worked on Flaherty’s successful 1969 mayoral campaign, recalled the candidate’s unorthodox approach to politics in a city dominated by a monolithic Democratic machine. “He ran in ’69 as ‘Nobody’s Boy.’ That was his campaign slogan,” Matter said. Some in the political establishment dismissed him as an upstart with little chance to beat the machine’s hand-picked candidate, former Common Pleas Judge Harry A. Kramer. But they overlooked his charisma and drive, said former campaign worker Audrey Kearney. “Everybody liked him, and everybody but the Democratic Party wanted him. He didn’t belong to anybody but himself,” said Kearney, who met Flaherty during World War II when she married his cousin. Flaherty boosted his reputation as a maverick when he went on the warpath against the bloated payroll at City Hall. Kearny recalled how his cuts angered city unions. When he eliminated the Teamsters drivers who chauffeured city workers to homes to check water meters, the Teamsters went on strike. Kearney said Flaherty rounded up his administrative staff, put on work clothes and went out to pick up trash. “Later, he created the Mayor’s Service Center to take complaints about potholes, garbage that wasn’t collected or streetlights that were out — the kind of things people used to have to talk to their committeeman about. All of that, I think, weakened the grip of the Democratic Party. … He really did open up politics to independents,” Matter said. He also hired and promoted women. Louise Brown, executive director of the Shadyside Hospital Foundation, went to graduate school with Flaherty at Pitt. She went to work in the mayor’s office following his election and was stunned when Flaherty asked her to serve as director of parks and recreation a year later. “I was probably the first woman to serve as a director and the youngest. I was only 26,” Brown said. Pittsburgh attorney Bruce Campbell, who became Flaherty’s executive secretary in the mayor’s office and later followed him to a U.S. Justice Department post in Washington, D.C., said subtle aspects of Flaherty’s political skill emerged under stress. He said Flaherty faced a serious test early in his first term when racial tensions threatened to boil over in the North Side’s Manchester area. Community outrage there was palpable after an elderly white woman shot a black youth. Campbell said city police wanted to march in and disperse crowds. Flaherty said no. “Pete walked through Manchester with local leaders to show we were ready to restore order without any kind of force,” Campbell said. Later, when the city moved from appointed to elected school board members, Flaherty spent days poring over maps and demographics. He wanted to ensure there were districts that could elect minorities to the board. Although he later butted heads with black leaders over his opposition to busing, Flaherty’s standing with minority voters was established. At the same time, his frugal approach to government kept the city in solid financial condition when many cities in the Northeast were struggling. “The tight rein he put on government spending … was a little bit ahead of the curve,” Mistick said. “The city would have gone belly-up a lot sooner if not for Pete’s approach in those days. The city government needed to be tweaked to stay on track, and you needed to massage it constantly. … He did what had to be done, and he did it with style.” His cuts allowed him to reduce real estate, parking and business privilege taxes and eliminate the city’s wage tax for several years. They also cemented his popularity with voters. He swept to an easy re-election in 1973, winning the Democratic and Republican primaries. “He was elected in the primary in his second term,” Campbell said. “At his peak, he was probably the most popular mayor of Pittsburgh.” His friends sat on both sides of the political divide. “I always enjoyed him,” said former Republican national committeewoman Elsie Hillman. “I think his intentions were great. He wanted to do great things for the city.” Flaherty became a household name in Pittsburgh. Flaherty’s brother, Commonwealth Court Judge James Flaherty, paid tribute to the former mayor recently when Mark Patrick Flaherty, Jim’s son and Pete’s nephew, was sworn in as Allegheny County controller. The judge credited his brother with making the Flaherty name a brand in local politics. Pete Flaherty’s success in elective politics was limited to Western Pennsylvania. In 1974, he lost a U.S. Senate bid to incumbent Republican Richard Schweiker. Despite that loss, Flaherty grabbed the attention of Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter when he became the first big-city mayor to endorse the Democrat’s 1976 presidential campaign. Later, Carter invited Flaherty to Washington. Flaherty resigned as mayor in 1977 to accept a post as the No. 2 man in the Carter Justice Department. He stayed for only eight months, resigning at the end of 1977. Disillusioned with the federal bureaucracy, but still enamored of elective office, Flaherty returned to Pittsburgh and launched a vigorous, ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Republican Dick Thornburgh. Two years later, in 1980, Flaherty lost yet another U.S. Senate bid, this time to Republican Arlen Specter. Supporters speculated timing might have been Flaherty’s undoing in 1978 and ’80. In 1978, he was a Democrat campaigning for an office still tainted by the scandals of the administration of Gov. Milton Shapp. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s GOP wave washed over Democrats. Unknown to many, Flaherty also was battling stomach cancer in 1980. “I remember going to see him in December of that year or January. It was right after he had surgery. He looked like death warmed over,” Campbell recalled. Years later, asked to characterize his stabs at statewide office, Flaherty laughed and told a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter: “Probably as big mistakes. … I should have taken my father’s advice to stay local.” Local voters must have agreed. They elected Flaherty Allegheny County commissioner in 1983, a position he held until 1995, when he lost the Democratic primary. Flaherty insisted his political comeback was a matter of attitude. “The factors that influence an election are often determined by forces outside of the candidate’s reach,” he told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “When I lost, my attitude was still the same. Naturally, I would have liked to have won, but I came out of it with a good attitude. “I didn’t miss a beat,” he said. His stamina amazed members of his staff in the commissioner’s office. Janet Merk, his executive secretary, said he’d arrive for work in the morning wearing tennis shoes after walking Downtown from his Shadyside home. A committed runner, he organized his staff into a team for the city’s Great Race. “We were the PF Fliers,” Merk recalled. “I wasn’t a runner, so I was there at the end with orange slices.” Unlike his days as mayor, when he was constantly in the news, Flaherty took a low profile in county government. Even as longtime Democratic Commissioner Tom Foerster took the lead, Flaherty had an impact. Observers said he helped pick the site for the new county jail in the city and provided key support for the Pittsburgh International Airport project. Later, when relations between Foerster, who died in 2000, and then-Pittsburgh Mayor Masloff fractured, Flaherty became a liaison between the city and the county, Mistick said. “He always looked out for the city,” Mistick said. In addition to his wife, Charlene, son Shawn and brother James, Flaherty is survived by a daughter, Maggie Gurtner, of Mt. Lebanon, and three other sons, Peter, of Monroeville, Brian, of Mt. Lebanon, and Gregory, of Los Angeles. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Laughlin Memorial Chapel, 222 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon. The family will receive friends on Thursday at the funeral chapel. Times were undetermined last night. A funeral Mass is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Friday at St. Bernard Church in Mt. Lebanon. Additional Information:

The Flaherty file

Born: June 25, 1924. Enlisted: U.S. Army Air Force, 1942. Discharged: 1946, rank, captain. Education: University of Notre Dame Law School, 1951; University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, master’s degree, 1967. Family: Married Nancy Houlihan, 1958; divorced, 1985; five children. Married Charlene Musser, 1998. Political career: Allegheny County assistant district attorney, 1956-63. Pittsburgh city councilman, 1966-70. Elected Pittsburgh mayor, 1969; re-elected, 1973. Won Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, 1974; lost general election to incumbent Republican Sen. Richard Schweiker. Appointed deputy attorney general by President Jimmy Carter, April 1977; resigned eight months later. Won Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania governor, 1978; lost general election to Republican Richard Thornburgh. Won Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, 1980; lost general election to Republican Arlen Specter. Elected Allegheny County commissioner, 1983; re-elected 1987, 1991; lost Democratic primary, 1995.

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