Today is Pennsylvania’s primary, and one of the Working Families Party’s priority campaigns this cycle is the Democratic primary for Pittsburgh mayor, in a region of Pennsylvania where WFP has been building progressive power for nearly a decade.

We’re working to help incumbent Mayor Ed Gainey hold his seat in the face of an onslaught of spending for his opponent, County Controller Corey O’Connor, from the centrist wing of the Democratic party, MAGA-aligned conservative donors, corporations and developers, and untraceable dark money. These powerful and well-funded forces invested heavily in this race to dispatch Gainey and his commitment to working people to elect a Mayor that will less forcefully push back on the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants, federal funding, vulnerable communities, and other critical issues.

The Working Families Party has gone all-in to have Mayor Gainey’s back and propel him to a second term in the face of this opposition. In conjunction with local partners like Pennsylvania United and OnePA, the Party’s coordinated operation managed Gainey’s reelection campaign, providing a deep level of management, communications, fundraising, and political support and staff time.

On the other side of the firewall, WFP convened an independent expenditure table including WFP, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania United, OnePa, Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance, SURJ (Standing Up for Racial Justice), 1Hood Power, and Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. This IE spent $665,000 on television ads and field operations supporting Gainey and taking on O’Connor. This included voter contact via 50,000 door knocks, 300,000 calls, 590,000 texts and an election day poll site operation. 

We knew that this race would be a challenge. Even though Mayor Gainey is the incumbent, the conservative forces spending against him have more money, more connections, and more power. But we also knew it was critical to do everything we could to protect Mayor Gainey and the progress he’s made in Pittsburgh on behalf of working families, as well as the advances WFP and the progressive movement have made in western Pennsylvania over the past years.

This is the highest profile Democratic primary in the nation since the second Trump administration began, and it’s no secret why Mayor Gainey is being targeted. He has opposed Trumpism at every turn, from refusing to collaborate with ICE while other officials have balked, to fighting the administration on cuts to vital services like Medicaid and Social Security. He has stood up for working people, enacting a transformative housing agenda in the face of corporate developer opposition to keep Pittsburgh affordable for its most vulnerable. He has delivered more units of affordable housing than any mayor in decades.

A large part of the reason Mayor Gainey is facing such fierce opposition from developers is because of this housing agenda. Gainey grew up in public housing and his experience informed his policy. His agenda includes revamping the city’s housing stock and requiring that developers who build new housing include a percentage of affordable units.

And while many big cities across the country are facing declining voter participation and Democratic vote share, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County bucked that trend in 2024, thanks in large part to the work of Mayor Gainey and a coalition of like-minded elected officials and movement organizations.

Republicans, corporate developers, and dark money are getting involved in this primary to try and shape the Democratic Party for the next four years and push one of Trump’s most vocal critics out of the party’s tent. By supporting and working to elect O’Connor, the MAGA machine would have a Democratic mayor who will be more compliant with Trump’s policies and will be beholden to the influence of big money.

O’Connor is funded by a menagerie of right-wing and corporate-backed special interests who have a financial stake in stopping Gainey and the progress he’s made. They’re trying to bring back the Pittsburgh of old, when the city and region were gamed for the power and profit of the wealthiest centrist and conservative special interests. O’Connor has received at least $160,000 from Republican donors, over $285,000 from real estate interests and corporate developers, and tens of thousands from board members of UPMC, the city’s largest nonprofit that is fighting against Mayor Gainey’s effort to make the organization pay its fair share in taxes. O’Connor even sat down with two top MAGA consultants to review strategy and lay out a plan to join together to defeat Gainey.

And that’s not all — an independent expenditure group called Common Sense Change is heavily supporting O’Connor, spending over $745,000 on anti-Gainey television ads and at least $125,000 on paid canvassing operations. Common Sense is funded by a web of dark money sources, including shady PACs and nonprofits that can shield their donors’ identities from the public.

Their goal couldn’t be clearer: the MAGA right, the centrist Democrats, and the pro-corporate forces are doing everything they can to make sure Mayor Gainey, Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, is defeated.

Between O’Connor’s campaign fundraising and Common Sense’s dark money, Mayor Gainey and the WFP IE have been outspent by nearly $500,000 on television. Over the course of 2025, O’Connor outraised Gainey by a rate of three-to-one, thanks in large part to the influx of MAGA-aligned, corporate donations. 

O’Connor is a former city councilman, current countywide elected official, and the son of a former Pittsburgh mayor who maintains built-in advantages like name identification and deep connections with the city’s political class. Polls from the summer of 2024 indicated that this would be a tight race, and an O’Connor internal poll from March showed him with a lead over Mayor Gainey.

WFP is no stranger to being outspent and taking on entrenched establishment figures. We’ve been in that position before, and we’ve won. We’re confident that we can do it again here.

There’s no way around it — this will be a close race and could go either way. When you’re taking on MAGA money, corporate forces, big developers, and untraceable dark money, it’s always going to be a challenge. But we’re proud of the campaign we’ve run and the effort we’ve put in, and we’re going to fight for every last vote.

Mayor Gainey was first elected in 2021, defeating an incumbent as part of a working class uprising in the region that began in 2018 with Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato winning state House primaries against entrenched incumbents. Gainey’s term has been focused on building more affordable housing, increasing jobs and wages, investing in functional city services, and repairing neglected infrastructure.

The progressive movement has only built on its success in the region since Gainey’s 2021 win, with Lee winning a U.S. House seat in 2022 and defending it in a tough 2024 race, and Innamorato securing a 2023 victory for Allegheny County Executive. Pittsburgh is one of the only cities in the country with three high-level progressive officials supported by and in deep governance relationships with movement organizations — which is both contributing to the city’s successes and inviting challenges from the MAGA right who seek to diminish their power.

Regardless of the result of this race, the demand in western Pennsylvania for elected leaders who center working people in their policies is strong. WFP is committed to keep working in the region to defend our champions and build a movement of working people.