had said he would rep­resent a change in di­rec­tion, and ap­pre­ci­ated his plan to re­tire from his con­struc­tion busi­ness if he won, to fo­cus his ef­forts en­tirely on the county Re­pub­li­can com­mit­tee.

In in­ter­views with the Post-Ga­zette, Mr. DeMarco pledged to im­prove can­di­date re­cruit­ment, and Mr. Br­nar­dic said he’d in­volve lo­cal com­mit­tees more in party busi­ness.

The Re­pub­li­can Com­mit­tee of Al­le­gheny County chair­man­ship has been va­cant since the res­ig­na­tion of D. Raja af­ter his April 2 de­feat in a spe­cial elec­tion for state Senate.

After his loss in the 37th Sena­to­rial Dis­trict race to Dem­o­crat Pam Iovino, Mr. Raja faced crit­i­cism from mem­bers of his own party over his han­dling of can­di­date re­cruit­ment ef­forts, among other things. He an­nounced May 29 he would re­sign ef­fec­tive June 29.

The vote Satur­day was pre­cip­i­tated by a dead­lock at a June 29 meet­ing, when Mr. DeMarco re­ceived 133 votes and Mr. Br­nar­dic 115. Another 63 votes went to a third can­di­date who then

bal­ance the to­tal dom­i­na­tion of one party,” said Kurt Nemitz, 81, of Point Breeze, a sup­porter of Mr. DeMarco’s.

But they said it also had na­tional im­pli­ca­tions.

“This is a bat­tle­ground state and a bat­tle­ground county. We could push the state over to [Pres­i­dent Don­ald] Trump, the peo­ple in this room,” said Roger Valente of Aleppo, the chair of the Quaker Val­ley Re­pub­li­can Com­mit­tee.

“We gotta pick some­one who can make that hap­pen, who can or­ga­nize us so we can get the peo­ple who are reg­is­tered to vote,” said Mr. Valente, who said he was un­de­cided be­fore he voted.

In his pitch to the com­mit­tee, Mr. DeMarco prom­ised to fix the re­cent def­i­cit of can­di­date re­cruit­ment. “Right now, we don’t have a full slate of can­di­dates for county and mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions. ... You can’t have a two-party sys­tem if one of those par­ties is bro­ken.”

Mr. Br­nar­dic said that Mr. DeMarco, who works in sales in ad­di­tion to his po­si­tion on county coun­cil, would be too busy to fo­cus all his at­ten­tions on the county com-

mit­tee. He also said Mr. DeMarco works too closely with County Ex­ec­u­tive Rich Fitz­ger­ald, a Dem­o­crat. “He can’t be Mr. Fitz­ger­ald one day and Mr. RCAC the next day.”

Mr. Br­nar­dic pledged to re­tire from his con­struc­tion busi­ness and to re­or­ga­nize the com­mit­tee, add­ing staff and in­volv­ing lo­cal com­mit­tees more in reg­u­lar busi­ness.

To sup­port­ers, Mr. DeMarco’s mul­ti­ple hats read as ex­pe­ri­ence and en­ergy. “I think Sam can be a game changer. He has been in his elected role, and I think he could be in this role,” said County Coun­cil­man Tom Baker, of Ross. Mr. Baker said an im­por­tant part of be­ing the chair­man is be­ing a voice to the me­dia, which Mr. DeMarco al­ready is.

“I just hope the best for RCAC. Both of us have good in­ten­tions,” said Mr. Br­nar­dic af­ter the vote. He said he was asked to stay on as trea­surer but hadn’t de­cided if he would.

Chris­to­pher Huf­faker: 412-263-1724, chuf­faker@post-ga­zette.com, or @huf­fak­ingit on Twit­ter.

Caleb Rod­nicki, of Apollo, basks in cool wa­ter splash­ing from the Bat­tle of the Bar­rel game Satur­day at Owens Field in Apollo dur­ing a cel­e­bra­tion mark­ing 50 years since the Apollo 11 moon land­ing.

con­tract with Mem­phis, Tenn.-based Caissa Pub­lic Strat­egy to launch a cam­paign to re­cruit stu­dents back to the city schools.

About 13% of PPS’ roughly $650 mil­lion bud­get for 2019 is ear­marked for char­ter school tu­i­tion pay­ments.

“I just be­lieve that some­times you need to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, and this is a way to re­ally be in­no­va­tive and think out­side the box,” said Er­rika Fear­bry Jones, chief of staff to Pitts­burgh Su­per­in­ten­dent An­thony Ham­let.

Help from out­side

Caissa Pub­lic Strat­egy his­tor­i­cally has worked on po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns, but about five years ago started work­ing with school dis­tricts to re­cruit stu­dents back to their tra­di­tional pub­lic schools, said Adrian Bond, the com­pany’s di­rec­tor of com­mu­nity en­gage­ment. Caissa part­ners with school dis­trict mar­ket­ing teams, mem­bers of par­ent groups and other com­mu­nity stake­hold­ers to tar­get its grass­roots re­cruit­ment ef­forts at par­ents just as a can­di­date would tar­get vot­ers, Mr. Bond said.

The cam­paign Caissa crafts could in­clude go­ing door to door, mak­ing phone calls, send­ing in­for­ma­tion in the mail and more, de­pend­ing on who the dis­trict is try­ing to reach. Caissa teams work with the par­ents as they fill out forms or start the reg­is­tra­tion pro­cess on­line.

Mr. Bond said Caissa helped the Shelby County School Dis­trict in Mem­phis bring back about 2,400 stu­dents in two years by con­cen­trat­ing its ef­forts on three re­gions within the dis­trict where the most

stu­dents weren’t at­tend­ing their neigh­bor­hood pub­lic school.

Some Pitts­burgh school board mem­bers last month ques­tioned the con­tract with Caissa, ask­ing why the dis­trict should pay a com­pany out­side the city to do the re­cruit­ment work.

Ms. Fear­bry Jones said re­cruit­ing even four or five char­ter stu­dents back to PPS — which pays about $18,000 in tu­i­tion for each reg­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion char­ter stu­dent — would mean the con­tract paid for it­self.

“We ac­tu­ally have to go and touch peo­ple, so this idea of hav­ing ev­ery­thing from the door-knock­ing to event place­ment and ac­tu­ally show­ing up where par­ents are is some­thing that’s dif­fer­ent,” she said.

When the two teams in Duquesne re­turned to the dis­trict of­fices af­ter knock­ing on doors this week, the group de­ter­mined that it had pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tions with a half-dozen fam­i­lies or so, in­clud­ing with a mother of twins who need to be en­rolled in kin­der­gar­ten.

Another mother, Neica White, prom­ised she would be in the next day to en­roll her 8-year-old son who had been at­tend­ing Young Schol­ars of Western Penn­syl­va­nia Char­ter School. She said she liked that the char­ter school of­fered mul­ti­ple lan­guage courses, but her son wanted to go back to his neigh­bor­hood school.

“He misses you guys,” she told the group of re­cruit­ers. “There’s dif­fer­ent things here that they don’t do there.”

Eliz­a­beth Be­hr­man: Lbe­hr­man@post-ga­zette.com, 412-263-1590 or @Ebe­hr­man on Twit­ter.

re­ceived a term of time served and is on pro­ba­tion.

McBride faced the most se­ri­ous charges of the five and got the most time.

He had dis­trib­uted fen­ta­nyl on Oct. 3, 2016, that re­sulted in the death of a cus­tomer. He then dis­trib­uted her­oin and fen­ta­nyl on Jan. 30, 2017, that killed some­one and ar­ranged a day later to sell drugs to an­other cus­tomer who turned out to be an un­der­cover city po­lice of­fi­cer.

Four other cus­tom­ers of the gang who over­dosed were re­vived with Nar­can, an over­dose re­ver­sal drug.

As­sis­tant U.S. At­tor­ney Tim Lanni said the Reed broth­ers sold out of a house on Ly­tle Street in Ha­zel­wood and the McBride cou­ple sold out of an apart­ment on West Street in Mun­hall. McBride and Ruby also used Ruby’s house on Glen­wood Avenue in Ha­zel­wood to dis­trib­ute.

Tor­sten Ove: tove@post-ga­zette.com.