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The Honorable Erin C. Molchany (D)

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The Honorable Erin C. Molchany (D) PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BIPARTISAN MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT INTERVIEW WITH: The Honorable Erin C. Molchany (D) 22nd District Allegheny County 2013 – 2014 INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY: Raymond J. Whittaker, III October 14, 2014 Transcribed by: Jessica Zook © Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Office of the Chief Clerk Raymond J. Whittaker, III (RW): Good morning. The Honorable Erin Molchany (EM): Good Morning. RW: Today we have the opportunity and the pleasure to speak with the Honorable Representative Erin Molchany who is representing the 22nd District which includes parts of Allegheny County for the term 2013 through 2014. Representative, thank you for joining us today. EM: Thank you. Thank you for having me. RW: I want to start off and ask you to talk about your early life growing up and your move from the eastern part of the state to the western part of the state. EM: Sure. Well, I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania right near kind of Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom area in the Lehigh Valley and I went to school out that way. You know, a typical childhood; [I] was active in high school with pretty much everything I can be active with. [I] played tennis in high school and, you know, just really loved growing up there. My parents and my sister and I, we were a very close family – we are a very close family – and when I graduated from Parkland High School in 1995, I went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and I never left Pittsburgh. So, I’ve been a Pittsburgher for about nineteen years. 2 RW: What was the draw to stay there? Was it just for job opportunities, economic opportunities? EM: I think part of it was that I grew up in a more suburban area and I was living in a city and I really was enjoying kind of having an urban life and I had a lot of friends who I call my urban family; they’re very supportive of my political endeavors and everything I’ve ever done. You know, I love my family dearly back in Allentown, I really just – irreplaceable – but, I found Pittsburgh a place where I could connect to my neighbors, kind of build a life and really figure out kind of who I wanted to be, and the citizen I wanted to be, and get really involved. Pittsburgh is a great city if you want to get active in public service because everybody is very accessible: the mayor, the council members, the county executive. All levels of government in the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are very accessible, so, if you ever want to get involved, it’s a very active place to be with a lot of opportunities. So, that’s why I stayed. RW: What experiences did you have prior to running for office? EM: Well, my first job out of college was at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania. I get a lot of questions about how I ended up at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania. It’s really kind of interesting because when I graduated college – my degree is in journalism and I have a minor in business administration – I graduated in [19]99 and at the time, I wanted to work in advertising and I was doing an internship with a large advertising firm and they didn’t have a place for me professionally, in terms of a job after college and so, I sent out seventy-seven resumes, I got six interviews, and Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania hired me to 3 work in marketing and development for the organization. That was really where I got my start professionally. I think that that’s really where I started to better understand how government has a very personal and profound impact on people’s everyday life. You know, I’d always voted but I never got involved on campaigns before, I never volunteered for candidates that held my values, I never really kind of got out there. So, working in women’s healthcare definitely kind of opened my eyes and kind of inspired me to get more active and involved. RW: And you worked for other nonprofit organizations, correct, at one time? EM: I did, I did. Twelve years I spent in the sector. I was at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania for, I believe, four and a half years. Then, I moved on to the Coro Center for Civic Leadership, where I ran the part-time leadership development training programs; there was a women in leadership program, there was an emerging leaders in public affairs program – which essentially was how to run for public office – there was a leaders in IT program, a leaders in the life sciences program. So, it was really about kind of cultivating the next generation of public servants and creating ethical and effective leaders in government and that’s what I did for a few years. While I at the Coro Center for Civic Leadership, I actually took a leave of absence to run for Pittsburgh City Council when there was an opening. I didn’t win, but there were five candidates; I came in fourth out of the five candidates. I think that you either walk away from your first campaign thinking, “I’ll never do this again; this is the worst. Everybody got exactly what they deserve here,” or you walk away and say, “This is just too important; this is just too important to not do again. I’m all in,” and that’s kind of the tack I took, so I just kind of looked for another opportunity to run. Following Coro, I served as Executive Director of a non-profit 4 called PUMP, the Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project. Our mission was to attract and retain young professionals through civic engagement opportunities, social networking opportunities, and professional development opportunities. So, whatever it took to kind of attract and retain the elusive twenty and thirty-something’s that were leaving Pittsburgh in droves, we did that. Whatever it took to connect them to government, give them a voice in issues they cared about like transportation or help them find and build social networks, we did that, we facilitated that. I really enjoyed working there. I loved leading that organization and had so many opportunities to really work with government and say, “This is what young professionals in the Pittsburgh region want. This is what’s going to create a vibrant city that they want to live in.” So, that was also kind of another stepping stone, I guess, to how I kind of came around to running for State Rep[resentative]. RW: Well, that’s a problem, in general, where we have young people not being involved in the political process. What types of steps outside of introducing them to sort of the government process did you do to get them more involved? Because we see that all across the state: they’re not voting, they’re typically not on the high end of voting turnout. Like you said, they’re coming here to get educated but then leaving. What type of steps did you do that you found successful in getting them in the process? EM: So, through my work at PUMP, we did a lot of issues-based advocacy. Young people cared deeply about transit; they wanted to live in a city that had a reliable and affordable transit system for them to get around. So, I think that engaging people around issues that they really care about that impact their everyday lives is a good way to kind of drag them into understanding 5 government a little bit better. We did advocacy around the state-wide smoking ban legislation while I was executive director. We had several bar and restaurant sponsors of our largest social networking program, the Pittsburgh Sports League; we had about seventeen-thousand people playing co-ed organized sports annually to help build their social networks and create a sense of community. We went to our bar and restaurant sponsors and said, “We really feel strongly that there should be a state-wide smoking ban and we, the young people who visit your establishment, would greatly appreciate it if you would go smoke-free voluntarily before the ban.” And, actually, all of the bar restaurants we worked with went smoke-free. So, I think it’s just about making sure that young people have an opportunity to advocate on things they really care about, or things that impact their lives directly, and I think that was one way that we really kind of dragged them in to the fold. Outside of that, my personal life, I was also at that point getting more involved in my own political committee, my Democratic Committee structure in Allegheny County. I had run for Democratic Committeewoman, I think, in 2006 and I had won the seat and I won with thirty-two votes to my opponent’s twenty-nine. That was another way that it was easy to engage young people in the party because if you say to somebody, “Look, you can be more engaged and active in your own political party back home if you run for committee person. There are a lot of opportunities and all you have to do is ask your neighbors to vote for you.” So, that’s another thing that I did. I definitely worked hard to encourage young people to consider running for Democratic Committeewoman and Committeeman positions just to kind of get them more involved and active. RW: Then personally, how do you make that jump from running for Committeewoman, running for city council, to running for a statewide race? 6 EM: Well, part of running for office is about timing and it’s about opportunity.
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