Twitter storm hovers over Allegheny County Council race between Hallam, Doven

That escalated quickly.

A race for an at-large seat on Allegheny County Council had barely gotten underway this month when attacks started flying. Many of them came from observers of the race on social media, particularly Twitter, and almost immediately put the race’s two candidates on the defensive.

Joanna Doven announced her candidacy for Allegheny County’s Democratic at-large seat on Jan. 4, challenging incumbent Councilwoman Bethany Hallam.

Doven, 38, of Squirrel Hill, runs a public relations firm and previously worked as a spokeswoman for former Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Hallam, 33, of the North Side, is completing her first term on county council.

A few days after Doven’s announcement, screenshots of old tweets from her personal account started to circulate online. They included a 2015 post that praised Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, another post that called an interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump “refreshing” and one that compared transgender people to a white woman who pretended to be Black.

“So if a man can feel like he is a woman and vice versa — why can’t a white person feel like they are black?” Doven tweeted in 2015 in response to the national story about Rachel Dolezal, a white woman from Washington state who deceived the public and ran an NAACP chapter.

.@votedoven ain’t no Democrat. Never was. Still isn’t. pic.twitter.com/c6XksQkd5B

— Jim Sheppard ????️‍???? (@jimsheppard) January 7, 2023

Doven’s since-deleted tweets quickly drew backlash from Pittsburgh liberals and progressives on Twitter. Democratic organizer and fundraiser Nat Yap of Pittsburgh tweeted on Jan. 7 that he was retracting his initial support of Doven because of what he called her “disturbing tweets.”

Doven deleted her personal Twitter page, and then went on the offensive from her campaign account, attacking Hallam and calling the ordeal a “coordinated Twitter attack” against her. She has since apologized for her transgender tweet and said her past support for Rubio was tied to her Cuban-American heritage.

Local campaign expert Ben Forstate said the episode shows how Twitter, in particular, can impact campaigns. Sometimes influential voices on the platform can drive attention to campaigns that don’t receive a lot of traditional media attention, but they also can bring attention to posts that candidates might rather leave in the past. How a candidate responds to criticism can also help or hurt their campaigns.

“It is a difficult platform, you need to learn the ropes,” he said. “Twitter is a very complicated platform and it is really easy to get too deep and misuse it.”

Wavering support

Shortly after Doven entered the race, there was a period where her campaign appeared to gain some momentum online.

Yap, who is part of the grassroots political group Order of the Phoenix, took to social media to post his support for Doven shortly after she announced her campaign.

Yap said he and some like-minded Democratic voters have developed reservations about Hallam, one of the county’s most vocal progressives who has become known for contentious and public battles with fellow county council members — most of whom are Democrats — as well as Democratic Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald.

Hallam’s progressive supporters have said they welcome what they see as her standing by her principles.

But Yap pointed to a recent vote she took against certifying the election results from 12 of the county’s more than 1,300 precincts.

In November, Assistant County Solicitor Allan Opsitnick said conservative activists challenged results in the 12 precincts but their arguments weren’t legally sound. He recommended that the county Board of Elections, of which Hallam is a member, should vote to certify the results.

Results in the vast majority of the county’s precincts were certified with Hallam’s support, but they weren’t in the 12 precincts where results were challenged because of opposition from Hallam and fellow Councilman Sam DeMarco, the county’s GOP chair. Results in the 12 precincts did not contain enough votes to change the outcome of any of the races.

Democratic campaign specialist Mike Mikus criticized Hallam’s vote and told the online publication Vox that it could act as “a dry run for 2024 to create mayhem and steal an election.”

Yap said Hallam’s vote was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and that he was ready to support another candidate for her seat.

Hallam defended her certification vote. She said that more than 99% of the results were certified, but results in the 12 precincts in question still hadn’t received a ruling from Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Joseph James.

Hallam said she voted against certifying results in those 12 precincts because she worried that doing so would supersede James’ authority.

“We had a deadline to certify the day of the Board meeting, and could not delay certification just because the judge hadn’t ruled yet, so I saw this as the best course forward,” she said.

Doven in her announcement in early January attacked Hallam over her vote. In an interview with the Tribune-Review, Doven said she noticed that people were questioning Hallam’s leadership after the vote and said it’s likely Hallam is the only Democrat in the state to vote against certifying votes this year.

“She voted with the insurrectionists,” Doven said of Hallam. “That was such a historic thing to do.”

Hallam said that Doven’s attacks against her vote were “an easy issue for a PR professional to spin, but in reality, it was the responsible course of action.”

Judge James threw out the lawsuits over results in the 12 precincts a week after Hallam’s vote.

Yap said the certification situation and other issues provided an opportunity for a good candidate without baggage to challenge Hallam. But he said he now thinks Doven’s past tweets are severely curtailing her ability to fill that role.

“There were some people who would have been on Team Joanna, but they are not touching her campaign now,” Yap said.

He said he doesn’t have a position on who he now supports in the race.

Continued fallout

After Doven’s past tweets were shared online, she took to Twitter to reply to the criticism. A contentious back-and-forth erupted between her and Jim Sheppard, who runs the online LGBTQ publication QBurgh and previously worked in the Ravenstahl administration at the same time as Doven.

That spat only amplified the situation online, and several left-leaning accounts started to weigh in and openly criticize Doven — labeling her as a Republican running as a Democrat in name only.

In an interview, Doven defended her tweets about Rubio and a photo of her posing with the Florida Republican. She said there were Democrats and Republicans at an event she attended with Rubio, and that as a Cuban-American like Rubio, she supports his advocacy for communist Cuba to become a more free and open democracy.

Doven said she thinks the “far left of our local party exhibits very similar principles to those with communist ideologies” who are trying to “cancel” her because of her photo with Rubio.

“Every time I have to answer an anarchist tweet … I say, ‘Bring it on,’” Doven said.

She did, however, apologize for her transgender tweet and called it “completely unacceptable.”

Doven said that she was doing promotion for talk radio at the time and part of that included weighing in on controversial topics.

“I was doing talk radio and I was looking to solicit feedback, but it was still unacceptable,” she said.

Doven said she doesn’t regret that her campaign got off to a rocky start.

She defended her record as a Democrat during the Ravenstahl administration and said that her professional career running her PR firm has shown that she supports Democratic values.

She pointed to a time when she ran community meetings in 2014 as Emsworth’s former Holy Family Institute was accepting children who entered the United States illegally without parents or guardians, many from Central America. She said she wanted to ensure that the migrant children were protected.

Doven said that her campaign is part of an effort to “create a new Democratic face” in the county and argued that Hallam has not been focusing on issues important to many voters, such as homelessness in Downtown. Instead, Doven said, Hallam is overly focused on issues at Allegheny County Jail.

Doven said she would increase funding for creating more transitional housing facilities and mental health services. She said her experience working with corporations, foundations and businesses in the area would be valuable on county council.

“We have amazing corporate partners and nonprofits in Pittsburgh,” she said. “I believe that we can raise the money. You do that by building bridges and consensus.”

Hallam rejected the notion that she is not focused on Democratic priorities, and said her advocacy for better conditions and oversight of the jail is just one of many issues the county needs to address.

She said she wants to require employers to provide schedules to workers in advance, ensure there is funding parity between the public defender’s and district attorney’s offices and provide renters a right to legal counsel during eviction proceedings.

Hallam also noted that during her tenure county council has won paid sick leave for all workers in the county, created a civilian police review board and increased community college funding.

She criticized Doven for attacking her recovery. Hallam has been vocal and open about her opioid addiction issues and former arrests for drug-related crimes. On Twitter, Doven questioned Hallam’s recovery efforts because Hallam often shares photographs of her drinking alcohol.

Hallam said she is not ashamed of her past and noted that not every person in recovery follows the same path or the same set of rules.

“Recovery looks different for everyone. I am disappointed my opponent has chosen to launch her campaign by attacking my character and my recovery journey,” Hallam said. “I’m going to focus on what I’ve done and what I’ll do for the people of Allegheny County, because voters deserve a productive conversation on the issues, not reckless mud-slinging.”

Should candidates tweet?

Several candidates and politicians have built their brands on Twitter, most notably U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Braddock, who used the platform deftly in his successful 2022 run.

But Forstate said the platform isn’t a must for every candidate. He said Twitter is best used by candidates who are sharing nuanced policy positions that might not make a news clip.

It’s not really a good platform to react directly to voters, he said.

Forstate said that Twitter’s ability to help boost, but also hurt, campaigns should give any candidate pause before logging on.

“Maybe candidates should tweet,” he said. “Definitely maybe.”