The Republican Committee of Allegheny County has elected a retired Pittsburgh homicide detective as its new chairman.<\/p>\n
Brian Weismantle, 60, of Pittsburgh\u2019s North Side, replaces former Chairman Jason Richey of Sewickley, who chose not to seek reelection because he is running for lieutenant governor.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur focus will be on rebuilding, strengthening and expanding our organization so that we can better serve Republicans across Allegheny County and effectively advance our shared principles,\u201d Weismantle said in a statement on the GOP committee\u2019s Facebook page.<\/p>\n
Weismantle narrowly defeated Moon\u2019s Crystal Barr, 233 votes to 220, to secure the committee\u2019s top post, according to the county GOP. Absentee and in-person votes were tallied Saturday.<\/p>\n
Weismantle ran for Allegheny County sheriff last year, but came up short against Democratic incumbent Sheriff Kevin Kraus, who collected about 72% of the votes cast compared to Weismantle\u2019s nearly 28%.<\/p>\n
Richey became chairman in February 2025, running unopposed in a committee election to replace former Chairman Sam DeMarco. DeMarco, also a former Allegheny County councilman, stepped down to become the Southwest regional director for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Squirrel Hill.<\/p>\n
This spring, Richey earned the Republican nomination to run for lieutenant governor. He is running with GOP gubernatorial candidate Stacy Garrity of Bradford County, the state treasurer.<\/p>\n
Democrats have longed maintained a voter registration edge over Republicans in Allegheny County, but the gap has narrowed. Today 54.9% of the county\u2019s registered voters are Democrats, down from 59.4% a decade ago, while the share of Republicans has inched up slightly, from 28.1% a decade ago to 28.7% today, according to state voter records.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking to help grow our party and move it forward. We want to unite all our voters and get our voters more involved,\u201d Weismantle said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Republican Committee of Allegheny County has elected a retired Pittsburgh homicide detective as its new chairman. Brian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-251082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}