How being an Irish woman from Allegheny County may have helped Erin McClelland secure Pa.’s biggest primary upset

In an otherwise quiet election, there was one surprise Tuesday: the outcome of the Democratic primary for state treasurer.

Erin McClelland, an Allegheny County native, beat the state party’s endorsed candidate who outraised her 5-1. McClelland won by 8 percentage points and will take on Republican incumbent Stacy Garrity in November.

The treasurer holds a low-profile state row office position, but has a lot of power over the state’s investments and makes sure the state’s bills are paid.

And in this year’s treasurer’s race, several Democratic insiders and experts said McClelland’s native county, name, and gender likely played a decisive role for voters who knew little about the office or the candidates.

“A female with Allegheny County next to her name on the ballot in these lower-profile statewide races, geography matters a lot. That right there put her in the ball game,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic consultant in Pittsburgh who is working this year for State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta’s campaign for auditor general. “And I’ve watched her, she’s tireless. She’s willing to do the hard work.”

McClelland beat State Rep. Ryan Bizzarro (D., Erie), who received the party’s nod and dozens of other endorsements. He is a member of House Democratic leadership, where as the policy chair he’s in charge of determining which issues House Democrats should advance.

In addition to few endorsements, McClelland raised and spent very little money — spending only $14,000 of the $100,000 she raised, according to her latest campaign finance filing. Bizzarro, on the other hand, raised more than $500,000, and spent about half of it.

McClelland said she won by putting “miles on the tires,” driving around the state to talk about her vision for the office. And her gender played an advantage for her, which McClelland herself pointed out on election night.

“This is a really important statement from the voters about the voice of women,” McClelland said Tuesday. “We talk about how we want their votes, but it’s really important to have their voice.”

By winning on Tuesday, McClelland became the only woman on the Democratic statewide ballot in November.

The party’s endorsement isn’t always a determining factor on whether a candidate will win, experts and insiders said.

“Voters in primaries tend to be more independent and less reliant on endorsements to vote,” Mikus said. “Thirty, 40 years ago, it was a much more powerful endorsement. Voters don’t look to a party or an elected official or an organization who they’re going to vote for.”

J.J. Balaban, a Philadelphia-based Democratic consultant who worked on former Treasurer Joe Torsella’s two statewide campaigns as well as treasurers races in other states, said Bizzarro likely thought the party’s endorsement would help him win, leading him not to spend more of his campaign contributions.

“I imagine, in hindsight, the strategy of relying on [the Democratic party’s endorsement] to carry him to victory does not seem to be the right one,” Balaban said. “Some candidates make it their peril in confusing elites with voters.”

Balaban said the candidate’s names themselves may have played a part in voters’ choices: McClelland has an obviously Irish female name that might be attractive to many voters.

”It’s unfair to an accomplished state representative, but the value of being an accomplished state representative is only if people know you are an accomplished state representative,” Balaban added.

”When you put it as ‘A woman of Irish descent from Allegheny County versus a man with an odd-sounding last name from Erie County,’ it doesn’t sound so strange,” he said.

There is little research on how voters treat female candidates for state treasurer, but, overall, women need to prove their competence much more than men, said Dana Brown, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University. While Bizzarro campaigned on attacking Garrity, the Republican incumbent, McClelland put out an eight-page “prospectus” with her ideas for how she’d run the treasurer’s office.

McClelland will likely have a hard time against Garrity in November, Brown said, because voters often think female candidates are more liberal than they actually are. For example, a far-right female candidate would be seen by a voter as more moderate, while a moderate Democratic candidate would be seen further left. Garrity is a staunch conservative, and McClelland is a moderate Democrat.

McClelland has run twice unsuccessfully for Congress, and has also launched campaigns in two other races but dropped out before the election. This was her first time running statewide.

In a statement on election night, Garrity’s campaign called McClelland a “perennial candidate in search of a spot on the public payroll” and said her ideas for the treasurer’s office are “weird, at best.”

While McClelland’s gender, name, and county may have helped her pick up low-information voters, Chuck Pascal, McClelland’s campaign manager, said her commitment to traveling the state to campaign helped her win.

“We didn’t have the money or the endorsements that Ryan did, but Erin went out and talked to real people and went everywhere in the state,” said Pascal, who also chairs the Armstrong County Democrats. “She just works hard. And she will continue to work hard, and we’ll work hard for the entire ticket now.”