Eleanor Bush Holds Campaign Event in Regent Square

Eleanor Bush hopes to have a different view of the courtroom come this November.

Bush is running for Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County and held a Meet the Candidate event this past Saturday at a private residence in Regent Square.

“This phase of the campaign is all about getting out and meeting the voters,” Bush said.

As an attorney, Bush has worked for the past 22 years on child advocacy matters.  Originally from Morristown, New Jersey, she holds her undergraduate, management and law degrees from Yale University. Bush, her husband, and their two daughters reside in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

If elected to the bench, Bush hopes to be both initially and permanently placed in the family division of the court.  Newly-elected judges are typically placed in the family division to start, and then move on to the other divisions of the court, such as the civil or criminal divisions - but Bush would like to stay there.

“I’ve really dedicated my whole career to working on behalf of kids and families,” Bush explains.  “I want to be there.”

Bush has worked as an individual attorney on behalf of children in the foster care system and as an advisor to government agencies and private organizations.  During her career she worked for KidsVoice, an organization which appoints attorneys to act as advocates in court for abused and neglected children.

“The range and depth of my experience is something that really sets me apart,” Bush says of her legal background.

Bush currently works for the Pennsylvania Statewide Adoption & Permanency Network (SWAN), which uses state funds to find permanent families for children in the state foster care system.  At SWAN, Bush provides legal training for both lawyers and non-lawyers, including social workers, healthcare workers and school personnel.  In her job she has also consulted with the Office of Children, Youth and Families for Allegheny County.

At Saturday’s event, Bush laid out the areas which she would like to focus on as a judge; one of them being truancy.

“For a lot of kids that’s where the deeper problems start, is missing school,” she said.

Bush said she wants to give children an opportunity to be held responsible for what they’ve done and to learn from it.  She said she wants to treat them with respect and give them the opportunity to be heard.

“What matters most is being a good listener who takes the time to sort out and hear everyone’s story,” she said.

She also relayed to the group of neighbors gathered at the event, the story of an adoption she worked on earlier in her career. Bush was working on behalf of a five-year-old boy with severe medical issues which required constant hospitalization. His biological parents were unable and unequipped to care for him, and he had a foster family ready and willing to adopt him. It took a total of seven years for the adoption to go through, largely due to the cumbersome legal process.

“That is not right that things should take that long,” Bush said of the ordeal.

Since that adoption, Bush said she and others advocated in the system so that similar situations didn’t happen, and as a result changes were made and copied around the state.

Ann Kelton of Regent Square attended Saturday’s event and said of Bush afterwards, “Her commitment to children is admirable.”

Nancy Hart, host of the event, said she wanted to give her neighbors the opportunity to meet Bush and to hear what she had to say. Bush recently received an endorsement from the Steel City Stonewall Democrats.