Mayor may no longer come to Pitt for SGB-sponsored mayoral election event

It’s now unclear whether or not Luke Ravenstahl will debate at Pitt Sunday.

The mayor’s campaign led people to believe that Mayor Luke Ravenstahl would attend its event for the mayoral candidates on Sunday.

Nick Trainer, the SGB governmental relations committee chair, announced at Tuesday night’s SGB meeting that Ravenstahl and the independent candidates Franco Dok Harris and Kevin Acklin agreed to attend the event and give speeches catering to student concerns.

“Ravenstahl’s camp had confirmed, however [he] has since unconfirmed due to a busy schedule. It is a possibility that he will still attend the event; however, they are in the process of moving things around,” Trainer said.

Committee member Whitney McNamara said she has been in contact with the Ravenstahl campaign. All she could say was that Ravenstahl did not cancel.

Ravenstahl’s campaign manager, Paul McKrell, said that he’s the only person who would have confirmed that the mayor would attend, and he did not.

Trainer said candidates will have 20 to 30 minutes to deliver a stump speech directed to students in David Lawrence Hall rooms 120 and 121. The event begins at 7 p.m.

Each candidate will speak on stage by himself. There will be no opportunity for rebuttal or question-and-answer periods.

“We don’t want it to be an extremely long event because we wanted people to stay for the whole time,” Trainer said.

He said the candidates’ schedules also impose time restraints. However, the board reserved the room until 9 p.m.

Before each candidate speaks, Trainer will read a brief, “nonpolitical,” resume-style biography of each candidate which their campaigns prepared.

Trainer said that he’s done some advertising through Facebook and e-mailed politically active student groups.

Ravenstahl, the former city council president, became mayor after Mayor Bob O’Connor passed away unexpectedly in 2006.

He attended North Catholic High School in the North Side and graduated from Washington & Jefferson College for business administration.

Harris is a Pittsburgh native and son of former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris. He majored in politics at Princeton University and earned a degree from a JD/MBA program offered by Pitt and the Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business.

Acklin grew up on Oakland’s Parkview Avenue and graduated from Central Catholic High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University and graduated from Georgetown University with a law degree in 2001.