PITTSBURGH MAYOR ED GAINEY SPEAKS ON THE NORTH SIDE, MONDAY, MARCH 3. (PHOTO BY ROB TAYLOR JR.)
His opponent for mayor getting financial help from Trump supporters
In under three months, Pittsburgh—and the nation—pretty much will know who will lead the Steel City into 2026 and beyond. Barring a mayoral miracle if Republican candidates Tony Moreno or Thomas West are elected, it will either be incumbent Democrat Ed Gainey, who is the first Black mayor in Pittsburgh’s history, or Democrat Corey O’Connor, current Allegheny County Controller.
It took Pittsburgh roughly 205 years to elect its first Black mayor. And from the day he officially took office in January 2022, Mayor Gainey has faced a litany of issues and challenges, not unlike other mayors. But in a city that’s had Blacks always in the minority, the mayor and his supporters always felt that his “issues and challenges” might be sprinkled with a bit of racial discrimination, something no other mayor in Pittsburgh ever had to deal with.
“This ain’t nothin’ new to us,” Mayor Gainey told the New Pittsburgh Courier exclusively, Monday, March 3, moments after he held a press conference on the North Side to tell the city that about roughly 20 percent of his main opponent’s campaign contributions had come from what Gainey called Donald Trump supporters, or “MAGA donors.”
“We always know that at the end of the day,” Mayor Gainey told the Courier, “African American leadership in the city has always been under attack. The attacks don’t really bother me, but what I (want people) to understand is, at the end of the day, everybody is going to distort the record.”
Currently, there is a poll out by news outlet Axios that found O’Connor leading Gainey by 12 points. Axios conducted an internal poll that found O’Connor leading 47 to 35 percent among likely Democratic voters in Pittsburgh.
Reports have also surfaced that O’Connor has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars more for his campaign than the incumbent, Gainey.
And on Tuesday, March 5, KDKA-TV’s Andy Sheehan broke the news that Gainey’s pick for Chief of Police, Christopher Ragland, withdrew his name from the running and decided to retire from the police force.
In other words, Mayor Gainey told the Courier that no matter all the good he feels he’s done for the city in the three-plus years as mayor, he feels he’s never going to get a fair shot from most local media and from some residents in Pittsburgh. He feels as though most of the stories in the local media are tilted against him, and not for him.
He was bashed by his detractors on Monday, March 3, for holding a press conference denouncing O’Connor’s ties to MAGA donors and Trump supporters via the more than $130,000 that has been contributed by them to O’Connor’s campaign for this election bid. Bashed because Gainey accepted Republican monies as well. But Gainey countered, saying the funds were from four years ago, when Trump wasn’t even in presidential office, and that he returned the money that was given to him by Republican moneyman Cliff Forest, a staunch Trump supporter.
Gainey said his point was, with President Trump now in office erasing DEI policies and trying to throw immigrants out the country faster than a Paul Skenes fastball, this isn’t the time for anyone—particularly a Democratic mayoral candidate in Pittsburgh—to be accepting money from the MAGAs.
CHAUNTEY WILSON
“There’s one place I didn’t expect to have to defend the MAGA assault, and that was the mayor’s primary race,” Gainey said during his press conference inside the QMNTY Center on East Ohio Street. “But unfortunately, this is where we’re at. Trump’s MAGA donors, his consultants and corporate interests, are trying to buy the mayor’s office by attacking me just like they, including Mr. (Elon) Musk, bought the White House by attacking Kamala Harris.”
Gainey added: “As mayor of a blue city…it is my job to tell the people of this city the truth.”
News outlets “The Guardian” and “The Intercept” were the first to report the news about so-called MAGA (Make America Great Again) donors, people like Forrest, Herb Shear and Jeffrey Yass, contributing to O’Connor’s campaign this year.
“As Trump tries to tear away food from children, health care from veterans and cancer patients, to give his billionaire henchmen another handout, these same billionaires are meddling in our Democratic Primary, to force their right-wing, anti-worker, anti-family, anti-union agenda down our throat,” Gainey said. “It’s undemocratic. But just as I’m prepared to stand against the assaults on our values as mayor, I’m prepared to stand against them as a candidate as well, because just as I know that Pittsburgh can’t afford to stand by and let Donald Trump and Elon Musk destroy our country, I also know that we can’t stand by as the same donors and advisors who put him in the White House try to steal the mayor’s office.”
“If you take MAGA money, you carry MAGA values,” voiced Eddie Carpio, who works with the local immigrant advocacy group Casa San Jose, prior to Gainey’s comments.
A Black trans woman, Chauntey Wilson, also denounced O’Connor’s accepting of what was dubbed “MAGA money.”
“I’m part of a community that is being attacked by Trump and Trump supporters such as Corey O’Connor, who says that our children have no right to say, ‘this is how they’re going to grow up,’” Wilson said. “…When do we stand up and say enough? When do we let people know that Pittsburgh is not their city, but our city?”
O’Connor, in interviews with media outlets such as WPXI-TV (Channel 11), effectively called Gainey’s attacks “a joke.”
What’s not a joke, though, is the May 20 Primary Election. On March 9, the U.S. will be “springing forward” with their clocks, the sun will shine longer, and then, in the blink of an eye, it will be time for Pirates baseball. In another blink of the eye, May 20 will be here. It will be time for Pittsburghers to make their choice for mayor.
But if you’re Ed Gainey, you’re not shy about talking about your accomplishments, even if he says others won’t.
“$600 million to reinvest in Downtown, a reduction in homicides, ages 13-17 none of our children have died; the NFL Draft coming here, $30 million (to build) affordable housing, $37 million in federal money to keep affordable housing going,” Gainey told the Courier. “We’ve done more in three years than most administrations have done in eight, and the reality is, that’s why we’re under attack, because we’re not dealing with the same people that used to run this city. When you’re fighting ‘interests,’ nobody wants to give up their ‘interests’ in order to have a fair playing field, particularly for us.”
Mayor Gainey also touted that multiple prime contractors on major construction projects in the city were African American contractors, and “54 percent of our subcontractors look like us. This is what I mean about making a city for all. If we’re not opening up employment opportunities…then we’re not moving, and no one has seen this movement until you had an African American as mayor.”
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