The Allegheny County Courthouse and the City-County Building on Monday, Nov. 6, 2023, in Downtown. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey could face a stiff challenge from County Controller Corey O’Connor in the Democratic primary May 20.
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The Democratic primary for Pittsburgh mayor is shaping up to be a close one, at least as far as finances go. Mayor Ed Gainey and his top challenger, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, entered 2025 with similar amounts of money in their campaign coffers, new filings show.
Gainey, running for a second four-year term, entered 2025 with about $268,000 in his campaign account, according to a filing released Friday. O’Connor, so far Gainey’s only challenger for the Democratic nomination, entered the year with $249,000 on hand, plus about $62,000 in an older campaign account.
Neither campaign responded to a request for comment.
Gainey announced his re-election campaign in early fall and his 2024 fundraising was spread over most of the year, while O’Connor’s fundraising was mostly confined to the last weeks of December after he launched his campaign.
Both campaigns derived the bulk of their money from donations of more than $250. Gainey took in just over $14,000 in denominations lower than $250, O’Connor just over $18,000.
The primary elections are May 20 and the General Election is Nov. 4.
Campaigns are not always won by the biggest fundraiser; the 2021 primary that Gainey won and later Democratic primaries for Congress and county executive provide ample evidence of that. But the ability to buy television ads and communicate with voters directly can be key to shaping the narrative around a local election.
Gainey’s donor list includes the North Side Good Government Committee, which is tied to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Art Rooney II, who owns the legendary football team. Three other Steelers executives also appear on the donor list. In all, entities related to the Steelers gave about $10,000 to Gainey’s re-election campaign in 2024.
Gainey took in four-figure contributions from a slew of construction companies and law firms, as well as a labor union that was a key backer of his 2021 rival Peduto: Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union. He also received money from political ally County Executive Sara Innamorato and Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn.
O’Connor announced his campaign just weeks before the end of 2024, but it didn’t take long for some prominent figures to move into his corner. Walnut Capital executives Gregg Perelman and Todd Reidbord, parking magnate Merrill Stabile and several development executives helped fund his campaign early.
Bob Charland was the only city council member to donate to either candidate; he gave $1,000 to O’Connor from his personal funds, not his campaign account.
O’Connor may be feeling some momentum from the speed of his fundraising so far: He raised in three weeks almost as much as Gainey raised in the last six-and-a-half months of 2024.
Unlike elections for state office, the race for Pittsburgh mayor is subject to strict limits on contributions that mirror federal campaign finance law. Individuals can give no more than $3,300 to a mayoral campaign and political committees are limited to $5,000.
Various industries and interest groups have sought to exert big influence despite those limits over the years by using independent expenditures. A donor can give unlimited amounts of money to a political action committee [PAC] that buys ads advocating for or against a certain candidate, as long as that PAC does not coordinate directly with the campaign it is trying to boost.
In 2021, both Gainey and his top rival, then-Mayor Bill Peduto, benefited from ads purchased by outside groups. In Gainey’s case, it helped him erase some of Peduto’s wide fundraising edge as he achieved an upset win in the primary that year. It’s not yet clear whether or how many outside groups will try to influence the Pittsburgh mayoral race this year.
With more than a month left before petition filing deadlines, Gainey and O’Connor are the only announced candidates for the Democratic nomination so far. Two candidates have announced runs for the Republican nomination, though neither has released any campaign finance information because they launched their campaigns in January. Democrats have held the Pittsburgh mayor’s office for almost a century.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
This article first appeared on PublicSource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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