Mar 25, 2019 By Barbara S. Miller staff Writer bmiller@observer-Reporter.Com 5 min read

After Guy Reschenthaler was elected to Congress last November, he had to resign from his seat in the Pennsylvania Senate, paving the way for a special election.

The April 2 special election for the 37th state Senate seat applies only to registered voters in Pittsburgh’s South Hills and the airport corridor of Allegheny County, plus Peters Township in Washington County.

The candidates are Democrat Pam Iovino, 62, and Republican D. Raja, 53, both of whom live in Mt. Lebanon. The position pays $88,610 annually.

Iovino was among seven candidates who made a bid for the contest in which Conor Lamb became the nominee and eventual winner of the closely watched March 13, 2018, special election in the former 18th Congressional District that had been represented by Tim Murphy until he resigned amidst an adultery scandal.

Raja ran for the same state Senate seat in 2012, but lost to Democratic state Rep. Matt Smith. A former Mt. Lebanon municipal commissioner, he points out that he cut taxes in the community by running it more efficiently. He also ran against Rich Fitzgerald for the Allegheny County executive’s position in 2011. Raja is chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Party.

Both candidates hold master’s degrees, she from the Naval War College in national security and he, a master’s of science degree from the University of Pittsburgh plus a master’s of business administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

Iovino said she sees jobs and the economy, health care and education as the issues about which voters are most concerned.

Noting that Pennsylvania college students graduate with the second-highest education debt in the nation, she said, “We have to look at all options and we have to look at community colleges,” which she called “tremendously underutilized and underappreciated.” Iovino suggested one way of lessening student debt load would be to attend community college for two years and transfer to a four-year institution.

A website focusing on student loan debt placed Pennsylvania second to Connecticut with 67 percent of Pennsylvanians graduating with debt averaging $36,854 per student.

“It’s been a long time since the state budget has included an increase for the (Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education),” Iovino said.

She credited the public school system as “the foundation of my success.” Iovino is a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Navy who rose to the rank of captain and was a congressional liaison.

President George W. Bush then appointed her assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, for which she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate. After leaving the federal government, she became director of veterans services for Allegheny County.

Iovino said she supports an extraction, or “severance,” tax on natural gas dedicated to infrastructure improvements, as included in Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget, while retaining the impact fee for counties and communities.

Iovino also supports an increase in Pennsylvania’s minimum wage, opposes privatization of state liquor stores and favors the legalization of recreational marijuana for smokers age 25 and older.

She called health care “absolutely a human right in a country of our wealth and resources” and said, in her door-knocking campaign, that she has found constituents to be concerned about retaining access to their health-care providers in light of the feud between UPMC and the Allegheny Health Network.

Raja, whose wife, Neeta, is an internal medicine physician, said he supports Wolf’s expansion of the Medicaid program to families who are at 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

“There are families who rely on it,” Raja said. “That’s what we need to do, unless the federal government wants to do something different, but that’s where we are today.”

Raja said he supports the legalization of medicinal marijuana, but as the parent of two school-aged daughters, he is not in favor of legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

Through his door-knocking campaign, he identified topics of concern among voters as more funding for education, property tax relief, for which he supports a freeze, and, and when he identifies himself as a Republican, proposed changes to abortion law in New York.

But the number-one issue, he said, is an extraction tax on natural gas.

“There are a lot of energy folks who live in my district. They say if this tax would come, we’re worried about that.”

He fears the imposition of an extraction tax would cause drilling companies and downstream industries to forsake Pennsylvania, which is situated atop the third-largest deposit of natural gas in the world, for Ohio or West Virginia. He pointed out that states with extraction taxes don’t have Pennsylvania’s self-styled impact fees.

People associate Southwestern Pennsylvania with steel and coal, but Raja’s vision is to capitalize on Marcellus Shale, giving us “unique opportunities here.”

He said more high school students should be steered toward jobs in the natural gas industry and manufacturing of safer pipelines he sees it creating.

He also supports privatization of the state liquor store system, foreseeing a steady stream of income from state taxes on wholesaling.

When he first ran for the state Senate seat in the 37th District, Raja said he didn’t stress his immigrant background in a bruising primary against two opponents or the contest with Smith, a popular legislator from Mt. Lebanon who, post-primary, replaced a write-in nominee.

Many might have forsaken future quests for public office, but not Raja, who likens his path to becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen to that of many residents whose grandparents or great-grandparents arrived here years ago.

He bristled at references by his opponent to the technology company he founded, Computer Enterprises Inc., outsourcing jobs, saying only 3 percent of his business is done outside the United States. Raja is chairman of company, which employs 500.

As in the primary and general elections, polling places will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on April 2.