Catching up with Mark DeSantis

I recently caught up with former Republican Mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis and asked him a few questions.

Mark is best remembered as the Republican challenger to Democrat Mayor Luke Ravenstahl in the 2007 general election.


Are you interested in running for the Republican nomination in the upcoming Mayoral race?

Probably not, but I expect we will see some very qualified Democrat, Republican, and/or Independent candidates step up.

Do you have any early personal favorites?

I need to see some announced candidates but I like Kevin Acklin a lot! (if he is game).

Can a Republican candidate win a general election race against the Democratic candidate?

It is difficult but hell yes. Political affiliation really does not matter when you're talking about rebuilding our economy, sound management, and safe streets. Can you deliver these things or not?

What is the single most pressing issue facing the city of Pittsburgh at the moment?

Without a doubt we're simply not addressing our huge financial problems, which is pulling everything else down with it. This is getting scary. All of our other problems are trivial and harder to fix compared to and because of this fixable problem. For example, we need over $600M just to plug the hole in the city's pension fund. That means we could take the entire city budget for 2009 (~$450M) and put it in to the pension fund and, even then, we would still be ~150M short. That is just the pension debt. There are countless other accumulated local debts. We must fix this ourselves because we have no other option as there is no chance of money coming in from anywhere else to help.

How can Pittsburgh attract new jobs to the region?

A dramatic improvement in the performance and quality of local government. We need to abandon our local time honored notion of celebrating mediocrity in local government. It costs too much, is too big, and provides mediocre to poor to down right lousy services (with some exceptions, such at public safety). All too often tiny initiatives, bland "ideas," and empty promises pass for accomplishment. We need real, large and measurable performance improvements to create a soil fertile enough for people to want to keep and build companies here. Everything else is happy chat.

How can Pittsburgh keep the recent college graduates here in the city if Pittsburgh?

Jobs. No jobs = no college graduates.

What sort of campaign finance reform do you support on a local level if any at all?

A simple version is to limit the largest individual (person or institution) contribution to $1,000 per election cycle.

What was the single biggest challenge in running for Mayor?

Time. I should have started earlier.

If you would have gotten into the race a lot earlier to do feel that the results would have been different? Do you feel that you would have won?

I think I would have had a better shot to be sure.

Any thoughts on combining services/merging with Allegheny County?

I remain astonished that anyone in government would think getting rid of duplicate services to save money and improve services is considered a novel, challenging or difficult idea. There is simply no reason we can't start consolidating public services across multiple agencies, multiple levels of government and multiple jurisdictions within 6 months. Enough already with the silly studies and commissions, most of which wouldn't get a passing grade in the class I teach at CMU. For the love of God, please take real action. The folks that live here have suffered enough and deserve large actions now.

Looking back at your run for Mayor what would you have done differently?

Again, I could and should have started my personal efforts earlier, including having done much more homework.

What are you doing these days to keep busy?

Running my company, helping other companies of which I'm a part of and staying involved in our great community.