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Kortz: ‘Just an ordinary steel worker’

In his surprise campaign for U.S. Senate, state Representative Bill Kortz (D-Allegheny) has wasted no time in declaring himself the outsider candidate and seems determined to use his lack of experience in elected office as his biggest qualification.

“I’m just an ordinary steel worker, but I’m running for all the right reasons,” Kortz told pa2010.com a day after he declared his candidacy for the Senate. “And I want to give the people of Pennsylvania a choice between a working-class guy and these career politicians and appointees.

“But i know i’m the underdog, there’s no doubt about it,” he added.

It’s a tack that has worked well for Kortz during his brief political career. He vaulted into office thanks to the uproar over the 2005 legislative pay-raises that cost many incumbents their jobs. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s editorial page called him the “unpolitician” in first endorsing him for the 38th Legislative District in 2006. Whether it works as well on a statewide level is the question his candidacy will answer.

Kortz was a steelworker for decades before entering public service, at one points serving as operations manager for the U.S. Steel Irvin Plant. In the interview, he said his identity as part of the working-class would resonate with voters.

Referring to the steel plant closings in the 1980s, he said: “I lived through all that. I saw my friends lose their jobs. I saw many people thrown out of work. It was a bad time.”

Former National Constitution Center CEO Joe Torsella is the only other Democrat to enter the race. State Representative Josh Shapiro (D-Montgomery) is heavily considering the race, and Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) is said to be giving it another look after leaning away from it in recent months.

But it seems very likely that Kortz will be the only Democrat running from western Pennsylvania, a dynamic he’s clearly hoping will work in his favor.

“From a strategic standpoint,” he said, “if I’m the only person from the west and there are three or four people from the east, I think it would give me a little bit of an advantage.

“I take nothing for granted,” he added. “I’m goign to work hard and run a good grassroots campaign based on the issues.”

State Rep. Bill Kortz (D-Allegheny)

April 22, 2009 at 11:00 am

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Bill Kortz, Joe Sestak, Joe Torsella, Josh Shapiro

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