Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, a former Pittsburgh council member and son of the tardy Mayor Bob O’Connor, announced his mayoral campaign on Tuesday, posing a sedate challenge to incumbent Ed Gainey, who has already announced plans to run for a second term.
“Pittsburgh, we cannot afford another four years of this administration,” O’Connor said during a speech highlighting public safety and the city’s finances at a campaign event in Hazelwood. “I run because we deserve better.”
The general election for mayor will be held on November 4. But given Pittsburgh’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate, the May 20 Democratic primary is almost always the decisive stage of the mayoral race.
What used to be a foregone conclusion in Pittsburgh politics – an incumbent mayor’s re-election win – is anything but certain since Gainey unseated Mayor Bill Peduto in 2021. Now O’Connor wants to make Gainey the next sitting president to be ousted.
Who is O’Connor?
O’Connor, 40, lives in Point Breeze and has been involved in public life for most of his career. In 2011, he was elected to the Pittsburgh City Council and served there for 11 years, rarely taking a controversial or pompous path.
He was the city’s main sponsor paid ill leave regulations in 2015, as well as a package gun control measures passed in 2019, which were ultimately blocked by the courts.
In 2022, he was named comptroller, the office tasked with keeping a close eye on the county government’s annual spending of more than $3 billion. He was elected to a full term in 2023, earning more votes that year than any other countywide candidate.
O’Connor began auditing the county Clean Air Fundprisons and homeless services. He was the first official to be elected raise the alarm about the state of the county’s finances this year, months before Director Sara Innamorato went to the County Council to request a tax raise to stabilize the structural deficit.
Who is supporting the challenger?
Among the dozens of people supporting O’Connor’s launch event were state Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline; former city councilors Ricky Burgess and Bruce Kraus; and state Rep. Abigail Salisbury of Switzerland, whose opponent Gainey supported last year.
“I have some concerns about the city’s difficult situation and I believe we need to take a different course,” Fontana said. “I think Corey has the vision to actually stop the decline in the population and businesses running the city because I think he will have a plan of action. It’s just not a conversation.
The current members of the City Council did not participate in the meeting. The Gainey administration has seen growing friction with some of the city’s nine legislators, although at the start of the campaign, none of them had yet formally endorsed any mayoral candidate.
What are the most critical problems?
O’Connor criticized Gainey’s administration during an eight-minute opening speech on Tuesday, hitting the mayor on issues of police management, a lack of transparency, what O’Connor called wasteful spending, and a lack of economic growth.
“There is no longer any vision from Grant Street,” O’Connor said. “Instead, when I look around, I see a mayor and administration dealing with decline rather than working to grow Pittsburgh.”
In a written statement following O’Connor’s remarks, Gainey pointed to the decline in homicides, sedate investment in the adaptation of skyscrapers in the city center for residential purposes and the work of his administration aimed at building cheaper apartments.
“I welcome everyone running in the mayoral race because I am confident that healthy competition will identify the best ideas and continue to drive progress in our city,” Gainey said.
As he launched his campaign, O’Connor focused on public safety, pledging to improve the dilapidated ambulance fleet and hire a police chief who would “commit” to the city full-time, an attack on Gainey’s hiring of former Chief Larry Scirotto . Who resigned after trying to work part-time as a college basketball referee on the side.
O’Connor also accused Gainey of mismanaging the city’s homelessness problem, saying the mayor merely took action in response to negative media reports.
Referring to Gainey’s successful 2021 campaign, O’Connor promised that enormous nonprofits will “pay the city their fair share,” claiming Gainey has failed to keep his promise. Gainey made the desire for UPMC to pay more taxes to the city a centerpiece of his first mayoral campaign, but it was unable to make much progress in goal so far.
O’Connor also addressed the city’s much-discussed financial crisis caused by the expiration of COVID-19 relief funds and confusion over the city’s property tax base. O’Connor said the city is “heading toward another financial disaster” under the current administration.
What is the Gainey administration emphasizing?
Gainey and his top aides maintain that while the city faces some lean years, they will get through it lead the city no layoffs or service cuts.
Gainey announced his re-election campaign in September. His inaugural event was held under the novel Fern Hollow Bridge, a nod to his efforts to stabilize the city’s bridge maintenance program after the vintage bridge collapsed just weeks into his term.
The reconstruction of Fern Hollow was largely financed and carried out by state and federal officials, although Gainey undertook a multimillion-dollar effort to build a bridge maintenance team and plan the renovation of many of the city’s other spans — many of which turned out to be in dire condition. need for improvements after the shocking collapse of Fern Hollow.
In addition to infrastructure, Gainey has touted his efforts to raise the availability of affordable housing through a enormous bond issue, higher police wages and recruitment, and a decline in violent crime since taking office.
Who else runs?
It is not yet clear whether a third candidate will enter the Democratic primary. Gainey could be helped by another candidate, potentially dividing the portion of the electorate that disapproves of him and allowing him to win by less than half the vote, as he did in 2021.
No Republicans have announced a campaign yet either. A steep climb would be expected, as the city’s Democratic voters would far outnumber GOP voters. In 2021, Tony Moreno ran for the Republican nomination after failing to make the cut in the Democratic primary, but receiving enough write-in votes from Republicans to win the GOP nomination. He lost to Gainey by a enormous margin in the general election.
How to vote
Pennsylvania’s primary elections are closed, meaning only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote in their parties’ primary elections. To vote in the May 20 primary election, voters must register by May 5 and have until May 13 to request an absentee ballot.
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Charlie Wolfson is a local government reporter for PublicSource. He can be contacted at [email protected].
This article appeared for the first time Public source and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
