PITTSBURGH — A key battle over the future of the Democratic Party is playing out in a mayoral race in one of the most populous cities of Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state.
In Pittsburgh, Mayor Ed Gainey, who was first elected in 2021 amid a wave of post-pandemic, post-George Floyd progressive energy, is facing a substantial Democratic primary challenge from Corey O’Connor, the county controller and son of a former mayor. At its core, the race is a test case for the future of Democratic leadership in big cities, on everything from crime and safety to combatting President Donald Trump’s administration to how the party prioritizes diversity and inclusion in the coming years.
The May 20 election is one of the first major off-year Democratic primaries in which the party’s progressive and center-left wings are facing off before voters — and the first in a key swing state. The race follows an election cycle in which Democratic governance of cities coming out of Covid was front and center to Republican campaigns, too.
In an interview, O’Connor said that while Gainey “is a nice guy,” his administration is “managing decline” of their city rather than focusing on “growth and opportunity.”
O’Connor has painted Gainey as an unproductive mayor who has failed to fulfill basic duties like timely snow removal and pothole repair, overseen a decline in the city’s downtown and has Pittsburgh unprepared for upcoming belt-tightening on its finances.
“For the Democratic Party, if we want to start winning national races again, it does start at the local level, and it starts with actually producing results so that people feel confident in Democrats running cities again,” O’Connor said.
In Pittsburgh and throughout Allegheny County, progressives have been on the march with the elections of Gainey, Rep. Summer Lee and county executive Sara Innamorato, all of whom rose quickly in local politics within the last few years. Allegheny County was one of the few large counties where then-Vice President Kamala Harris hit about the same level of support in 2024 as former President Joe Biden in 2020, a point local progressives have highlighted as evidence that their governance offers a roadmap forward for Democrats.
But their hold on local power is now under threat. Gainey, who in 2021 became the first challenger to unseat a Pittsburgh mayor since the Great Depression, has for months been fighting an uphill battle against a better-funded and well-known challenger in O’Connor.
Yet progressives see plenty of reason for hope and believe their fortunes are improving substantially in the closing weeks of the contest — particularly as voter intensity ramps up as Trump moves quickly to enact his sweeping agenda. Gainey has sought to position himself as the strongest person to counter Trump’s funding cuts to local research institutions and immigration overhaul.
In an interview, Gainey said Trump’s policy agenda has changed the race “quite a bit” because “people are feeling the pain.”
Both campaigns are touting internal polling showing them with an advantage in the tough-to-model local race: Gainey’s campaign on Monday promoted its own poll showing him up 7 points, while O’Connor’s showed him up by 4. Ultimately, both results were within the surveys’ margins of error — and O’Connor’s suggested considerable tightening of the race within the last month, after his campaign previously touted polls showing him up double digits.
“The momentum is on our side,” Gainey said in a campaign speech on Monday. “Our coalition is growing stronger every single day.”
Pittsburgh localizes a national fight on housing, policing and race
Gainey’s allies have pointed to drops in violent crime, local job growth and the city’s improved credit ratings to counter O’Connor, who they believe is trying to blame the incumbent for issues that long predated his mayorship or affected cities across the country coming out of the pandemic. They’ve also worked to tie O’Connor to Trump by touting campaign donations O’Connor has received from prominent Republican donors, and they’ve cast O’Connor as a defender of monied real estate interests, highlighting support from developers.
“It’s a significant race,” Gainey said in an interview. “At the end of the day, it comes down to — do you want someone who’s going to serve the rich and powerful? Or do you want someone that’s going to serve the people?”
As Election Day nears, Gainey’s supporters have accused the challenger’s backers of using racist messaging against the mayor, the first Black mayor in city history. Those tensions were inflamed this month after an outside group backing O’Connor sent a mailer showing a dilapidated home reading: “The Ed Gainey Legacy. Wasting millions. Rewarding cronies. Hurting neighborhoods.” (Soon afterward, O’Connor released a statement denouncing “hateful rhetoric.” He and his backers have said efforts to tie him to Trump or describe his campaign as racist are to distract voters from the mayor’s record.)
The mailer also highlighted an increasingly tense component of the race: housing policy. Gainey has sought to enact, throughout the city, inclusionary zoning policies that require new developments to set aside at least 10% of units for affordable housing and currently apply to only a few neighborhoods.
O’Connor has come out against citywide inclusionary zoning policies, which detractors say will stifle development and not lead to increased affordable housing. He has criticized Gainey as having inflated his housing record, pointing to only a few hundred new units being completed during Gainey’s tenure. During a debate on WPXI, the local NBC affiliate, O’Connor challenged Gainey to take a walking tour of affordable units built on his watch — and then declined to join Gainey in the tour after the mayor announced it would take place on Wednesday.
“He knows he cannot walk around the city and produce 1,600 new units of affordable housing,” O’Connor said in a subsequent debate on WTAE, the local ABC affiliate, adding the city needs 6,000 new units and the mayor can only produce a few hundred.
Gainey, whose administration recently launched a new tracker to show progress on affordable housing development since his term began in 2022, fired back that the episode showed the difference “between rhetoric and action.”
In his 2021 run, Gainey beat then-Mayor Bill Peduto in a three-way primary in which Gainey won with a plurality of the vote — 46.2%. The third candidate, Tony Moreno, won 13% of the vote and ran to the right of both Peduto and Gainey.
Lew Irwin, a political science professor at Duquesne University, said the 2021 results offer a clear roadmap for an O’Connor victory: Grab hold of the Peduto and Moreno vote. Irwin added that Gainey has “talked almost continually about Trump … sanctuary cities and threats to democracy” in hopes of unifying Democrats behind him.
When Gainey was first elected, Irwin said Democrats were “very energized around some of these social justice issues, around issues of abuse of authority.”
“But the pendulum definitely has swung back to where you’ve got a significant number of Democrats who are more concerned about showing that the Democratic Party can actually govern effectively,” he said.
Yet O’Connor has also touted his progressive bona fides in the race, not distancing himself from the label as some Democrats have. He’s campaigned on his efforts on local paid sick leave legislation, auditing the county jail and housing affordability. “I’ll be the progressive mayor who gets the job done,” O’Connor said in a campaign ad.
‘The world should be watching this race’
Even Gainey’s supporters acknowledge they wish the mayor and his administration did a better job of communicating what they see as his wins over the last few years. But they’ve decried a local media environment they see as openly hostile toward him. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the most prominent publication in town, has faced a yearslong strike, and Gainey, along with other local Democrats, have refused to speak with the paper until the strike is resolved.
When asked about his first-term accomplishments, Gainey touted new state investments in the city’s downtown, working to bring the NFL draft to Pittsburgh next year, affordable housing efforts and multiple data points showing a strong local economy. Gainey and his backers also describe fostering a more inclusive environment locally for Black residents and others from communities that for many years were not in positions of power in the city.
“It’s more welcoming,” Gainey said of how Pittsburgh has changed during his mayoral tenure. “It’s more of a situation where people believe they can be here. It’s more about a situation where people feel like they can flourish here. We lost so many people because they didn’t believe they can make a living here. And I think that stereotype is now breaking down.”
Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San Jose, a local immigrant advocacy and services nonprofit, said Gainey “has done a million great things here in the city that no one recognizes.”
“We need champions, because we are in a mess, and we are looking for leaders,” Ruiz, a Gainey supporter, said. “We need strong leaders that aren’t afraid.”
Should Gainey fall short, Ruiz said it will seriously harm progressive advancement and electoral chances in the city.
“The world should be watching this race, because what’s happening here in Pittsburgh is going to happen — it’s already happening — in other cities,” she said. “And people need to take note.”
The issue that has dogged Gainey most in the election involves his former chief of police, Larry Scirotto — though it’s not exactly the type of policing issue that Democrats nationally and in other big cities have grappled with.
Gainey agreed to allow Scirotto, a college basketball referee, return to refereeing if the murder rate dropped to a certain point. WPXI reported last year of Scirotto’s return to refereeing as he maintained his job as the city’s police chief, and the agreement angered other local officials, who were unaware of it. Scirotto said the deal was made “man to man.” Within days, he announced his retirement.
On the trail, in interviews and in debates, O’Connor often raises the city’s current lack of a police chief as one of the first points he makes against Gainey.
On Monday, three city council members backing O’Connor elevated another controversy, demanding the mayor answer for an administration official coordinating in a group chat with campaign staff and supporters on messaging. (Marco Attisano, a Gainey campaign attorney, said it is acting “in full compliance” with campaign finance laws.)
State Sen. Wayne Fontana, who is backing O’Connor, said Gainey has not achieved any big accomplishments.
“I just don’t see the city moving forward in any way, shape or form,” he said. “It’s time to do something different. … Almost every week, there’s an article about some mess up or screw up.”
But with Trump in the White House, Gainey has taken up the mantle of the city’s protector against the president while arguing O’Connor is in the pocket of “MAGA operatives,” pointing to donations he has received from a handful of prominent Trump and Republican donors and a speech given at a meeting attended by Republican operatives.
O’Connor’s campaign has pushed back, pointing to donations the mayor has previously received from Republican donors and to Gainey’s efforts to bring the GOP convention to the city ahead of the 2024 election. In his interview with NBC News, O’Connor pointed to endorsements from local Democrats and said “it’s a lie” that he’s in the pocket of Republicans.
Amid that back-and-forth, Gainey even refunded $5,000 to a Trump donor who donated to his campaign in 2021 and contributed to O’Connor in this cycle.
Both candidates have racked up local endorsements, but the most prominent Democrats who hold statewide office — including Gov. Josh Shapiro and two who hail from the area, Sen. John Fetterman and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis — have remained neutral in the race.
The bitterly contested race has come at a cost, said Barb Warwick, a member of city council who sits in O’Connor’s former seat and is supporting Gainey.
“We have this wonderful stronghold in Allegheny County, progressive leadership making real change,” she said. “And now people are turned against each other. It’s tearing the city apart and it didn’t have to be that way. That’s what sort of bums me out.”
Lee, the congresswoman who represents Pittsburgh in the U.S. House, said she welcomes the fight and believes it “exemplifies the battle for what the Democratic Party can be or might be next.”
“It’s not a bad fight to have,” she said. “What is the identity of the party? Are we going to be a party that reflects the base, reflects the changing demographics of this country? Is it reflective of the democracy that we want? Or we can have a party that continues to kind of be nostalgic for a past where all of us weren’t included. That’s what the fight is.
“As painful as it is, and as disappointing as it can be,” she said, “we’ve got to go through it.”
