Republican donors trying to unseat Pittsburgh’s progressive Black mayor
Democratic primary battle promising to be biggest test for progressive movement since Trump’s presidential victory
Joan E Greve
Mon 3 Mar 2025 06.00 EST
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Several major Republican donors are throwing their financial support behind the primary opponent of Ed Gainey, who became Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor in 2022 and now faces a difficult re-election fight this year, in a seemingly concerted effort to oust the progressive leader.
The Democratic primary battle between Gainey and Corey O’Connor, the Allegheny county controller, is shaping up to be one of the biggest tests of the progressive movement since Donald Trump’s victory last November. The victor of the 20 May primary is widely expected to win the general election, and with few major races on the ballot this year, Gainey’s re-election could provide a morale boost for progressives still reeling from Democrats’ losses in the 2024 races.
The mayoral race may also offer insight into the broader political environment in Pennsylvania, a pivotal battleground state that Trump won by roughly 2 points last year. While Trump made marginal gains in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, his performance in Allegheny county, which covers Pittsburgh, remained
virtually unchanged from four years earlier. Trump won just 22% of the Pittsburgh vote, while 77% went to Kamala Harris.
With so much attention on the mayoral race, prominent Republicans are now getting involved in the contest. According to campaign finance
reports, several prominent Republican donors have already contributed the maximum allowable amount of $3,300 to O’Connor’s war chest before the primary.
Those Republican donors
include J Clifford Forrest, the founder of Rosebud Mining Company, who
gave $1m to the Trump 2017 inaugural committee, and Kent McElhattan, who
contributed more than $200,000 to Senate Republicans’ campaign arm during the 2024 election cycle. Herb Shear, who
donated more than $675,000 to the Pac and Super Pac affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition during the 2024 cycle, also contributed the maximum allowable amount to O’Connor’s campaign.
Those donations appear to be part of a larger effort by certain Republican operatives to boost O’Connor’s prospects in the primary. According to an email seen by the Guardian, Jeff Kendall, a trustee of the conservative non-profit
Commonwealth Partners, invited interested parties to a meeting with O’Connor at a private social club in Pittsburgh last month. Jeffrey Yass, the billionaire financier and Republican mega-donor from a mainline suburb of Philadelphia, has previously been
linked to Commonwealth Partners.
In his email, Kendall noted O’Connor would “open the meeting with his pitch and answer questions”. Kendall added: “Kent Gates of Brabender will discuss recent polling and the plan to win this race.” According to his
LinkedIn profile, Gates serves as senior director of strategic planning for data and insights at BrabenderCox, a Republican consulting firm that
received more than $1.4m from Trump’s leadership Pac, Never Surrender Inc, during the 2024 cycle.
Reached for comment, the O’Connor campaign highlighted financial contributions to Gainey in past years that came from donors with ties to the Republican party. Those contributions
included $5,000 in donations from Forrest and his wife, Tracy, during Gainey’s 2021 mayoral campaign. A spokesperson for Gainey said he returned the Forrests’ full donations once he became aware of them, in a transaction that will be reflected in his February fundraising report.
Asked about O’Connor’s February meeting, the candidate’s spokesperson said the campaign “had no involvement in the planning of this event”.
“Corey spoke about his record of progressive reform and his plans to make housing more affordable, expanding before and after school programming, and reopening [recreation] centers,” the O’Connor campaign said.
“This is the same stump speech that he has shared with hundreds of residents and dozens of community organizations across Pittsburgh. The campaign did not know who would be in attendance in advance.”
If O’Connor and his allies are successful, it would mark a significant defeat for the progressive organizers who helped carry Gainey to a primary victory four years ago. In 2021, Gainey, then a state representative, defeated the incumbent mayor, Bill Peduto, by 7 points in the Democratic primary before going on to easily win the general election.
Since taking office, Gainey has faced questions about his handling of public safety concerns, although he often notes that the city’s homicide rate has
dropped significantly since 2022. More recently, Gainey attracted criticism from Republicans and rightwing media outlets in January, when he
announced his administration would not work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents amid Trump’s calls for a mass-deportation program.
When O’Connor
launched his campaign in December, he decried a lack of vision from the Gainey administration, saying: “When I look around, I see a mayor and an administration managing decline instead of trying to grow Pittsburgh.”
O’Connor’s primary bid is not the first recent effort to unseat one of Pittsburgh’s progressive leaders. The representative Summer Lee, a progressive who represents Pittsburgh in the House of Representatives, faced
a well-funded primary challenge from local council member Bhavini Patel last year. The organization Moderate Pac, which was largely funded by Yass,
spent more than $600,000 in support of Patel’s campaign.
Lee turned Yass’s financial involvement in the primary into a campaign issue, attacking the mega-donor as an out-of-touch billionaire seeking to remove a promising, young progressive from office.
“Everybody in the country is waiting to see whether or not we can have a reflective democracy,”
Lee said days before her primary. “We’re going to send a message to every dark-money billionaire, whoever they are: that your influence is no longer welcome in our democracy.”
That message ultimately won out, as Lee went on to
defeat Patel in the primary by 21 points.
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