The Green Tree mayor's race was dominated by the issue of how borough officials handled the death of retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph Cappy.

In the end, a former Republican mayor upset the Democratic incumbent.

Chuck Hammer, who retired several years ago from Mellon Bank and previously served as mayor for three terms, will take office in January.

"The sitting mayor was a very tough opponent," Mr. Hammer said.

Vincent Abbato, a Green Tree businessman who runs a pizza place, said he planned to make a statement on the race today.

Justice Cappy was found dead in his Green Tree home on May 1 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan.

She called the police and then waited for officers to arrive. However, according to the incident report, Judge Lenihan was uncooperative and would not provide her name to Officer Charles Kern. She also called Mayor Abbato, a friend of Justice Cappy's, who went to the scene and called an attorney for her.

A few days later, police Chief Andrew Lisiecki sent an e-mail to his officers informing them that they should not share details from any incident with the public.

Officer Kern sent an e-mail in response and was ultimately cited for insubordination and a number of other department violations.

Officer Kern challenged his punishment at a public civil service hearing, and Green Tree has hired a law firm to do an internal investigation into how the incident report, which has been cited in several Post-Gazette stories, was leaked to the media.

Mr. Hammer and his supporters used the ongoing saga to try to drum up support and told voters that he would get the police department back on track.

Mr. Abbato, for his part, tried to gloss over the Cappy case and the subsequent internal investigation and instead focused on his accomplishments as mayor.

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