Sophie Masloff, a Democrat who campaigned with a big black pocketbook, charmed voters with homespun verbal gaffes and from 1988 to ’94 was the first woman and the first Jew to serve as mayor of Pittsburgh, died on Sunday at a hospice in Mount Lebanon, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. She was 96.
Her death was confirmed by Joseph Sabino Mistick, her chief of staff when she was mayor.
Mrs. Masloff, who lived in Pittsburgh all her life, had only a high school education, had worked most of her life as a court clerk and was the 70-year-old president of the City Council when, under the City Charter, she was named interim mayor, succeeding the popular Mayor Richard S. Caliguiri, who died of a rare blood disorder 20 months from the end of his third term.
He was a hard act to follow. In the late 1970s and early ’80s he had led Pittsburgh through wrenching changes: from the death of Big Steel to the birth of a robust, diversified economy, with a new downtown skyline; sharp declines in population and jobs; and a renaissance in education, culture and quality of life.
Mrs. Masloff seemed hopelessly miscast. Her public speaking was unsophisticated; she sometimes wrote words on her hand to jog her memory. She delegated so much authority that aides often had to jump in and answer questions for her at public meetings and news briefings.
But she pledged to continue innovative ventures with the alliance of corporations, universities and civic groups that had reshaped Pittsburgh, and to create more jobs and curtail urban flight. And in a city of 390,000 that still had scores of ethnic working-class neighborhoods and an aging population, her homey Pittsburgh demeanor was a political advantage.
She called herself “an old Jewish grandmother,” and her streetwise Pittsburghese, delivered in a high, nasal rasp, was pitch-perfect: “What? Yunz don’t remember?”
Her malapropisms on visiting rock stars were endearments of a sort. The Who became “the How.” It was “Bruce Bedspring” and “the Dreadful Dead.”
When people called out on the street, they’d say, “Hi, Sophie.” Or, “How ya doin’, Sophie?”
In 1989, after beating five candidates in a primary — virtually assuring her election as mayor in heavily Democratic Pittsburgh — she ran unopposed and won a full four-year term. She soon shed the grandmotherly allusions, which had played into opponents’ criticisms of her managerial skills. But the rhetorical flourishes went on.
“As Henry the Eighth said to each of his wives,” she told audiences too many times, “Don’t worry. I won’t keep you long.”
Once, posing for photographs with a Yugoslav official, she said, “You know, I’ve never been to Czechoslovakia.”
“Madame Mayor,” the indignant statesman intoned, “I’m from Yugoslavia.”
“I know that,” she continued. “But the truth is, I’ve never been to Czechoslovakia.”
Mrs. Masloff vowed to avoid tax increases, threatened to close city accounts unless banks invested more in housing, laid off city workers and fought deficits with budget cuts. Despite protests, she signed a law barring discrimination against gay men and lesbians in housing, jobs and restaurant service.
But by 1993, several high-tech companies and thousands of jobs had moved to suburban industrial parks with more space and lower taxes. There had been long newspaper and transit strikes. Pittsburgh remained livable, with low crime, affordable housing, good schools and a rich cultural scene. But critics said the mayor lacked vision. And what had once been seen as colorful Sophie-speak had begun to rankle voters.
“In some situations, where you have to listen to a lot of boring speeches, I can’t resist the opportunity to say something silly,” she told The New York Times in 1992. “But some people are not too humorous, and lately I’ve come to the place where I limit joking around because it might look like I don’t know any better.”
She did not run again. In a statement on Sunday, the current mayor of Pittsburgh, William Peduto, called Mrs. Masloff “a trailblazer camouflaged in grace and humor” and said she “personified Pittsburgh — she was kind and approachable, but you dared not underestimate her.”
Sophie Friedman was born in Pittsburgh on Dec. 23, 1917, to Louis and Jennie Friedman, immigrants from Romania. Her father, an insurance salesman, died when she was an infant; her mother, who never spoke English, rolled cigars in a factory to support Sophie and two daughters and a son from a previous marriage.
She spoke only Yiddish until she attended public school. After graduating from high school in 1935, she worked as a bookkeeper and secretary.
In 1939 she married Jack Masloff, a security guard, who died in 1991. She is survived by her daughter, Linda Busia, two grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
In 1938 she became a clerk in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas. She worked there for 38 years, eventually becoming assistant chief clerk. She also became a Democratic Party worker, and after 40 years of service was elected to the City Council in 1976. She said her major accomplishment on the Council was bringing cable television to Pittsburgh.
After stepping down as mayor, she attended several Democratic National Conventions, as she had since the ’50s. In an interview with The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on her 90th birthday in 2007, she recalled the span of her life.
“We were very, very poor, and it was horrible as a child,” she said. “But I came through it — and just think of the great honor I had. What an incredible honor it was for me to be elected mayor of Pittsburgh. My mother, if she were alive, would never have believed what happened to me.”
