In the first mayoral debate between Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and County Controller Corey O’Connor, his challenger in the upcoming Democratic mayoral primary, the two candidates circled each other, trying out a few punches and testing each other’s defenses over budget concerns, housing policy, and other matters.
Sponsored by the 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club and held at Chatham University, the forum was divided into a pair of half-hour “fireside chat”-type discussions with moderator Ann Belser, as well as a 30-minute forum with the two candidates onstage together.
O’Connor launched his bid in December making pointed criticisms of the incumbent. But during the head-to-head portion, it was Gainey who struck the first blow. While boasting of a small surplus in the city’s most recent budget, Gainey accused O’Connor of not doing enough to warn of mounting fiscal problems in the county.
“My opponent has been the chief financial officer, the watchdog for county dollars,” he said. “For two years [the county] budget has had structural deficits and we haven’t heard one word.”
In general, the county’s finances have drawn less scrutiny than those of the city, but O’Connor has in fact warned of mounting financial concerns at the county, which passed a sizable property tax hike last year, over the past two years.
“I did blow the whistle on the county,” said O’Connor, who then dismissed Gainey’s surplus as being based on simply not funding vacant positions and faulted Gainey for more than doubling the budget for the Office of the Mayor. (Gainey has done so, though the office’s $5 million budget is a minuscule portion of the city's $665 million operating budget.)
O’Connor touched on a familiar list of complaints over Gainey’s first three years in office, like concerns about the city’s snowplowing capacity and the fact that the city had only one plumber on the payroll last summer — a staffing shortage that left water fountains in city parks dry during some of the hottest days of the year.
“I was on City Council for 11 years,” O’Connor said. “We never had an issue turning on a water fountain. … You are not investing in the future, you are plugging holes to get by an election season.”
More broadly, O’Connor argued that Gainey had missed an opportunity by not coming up with a more lasting use of the more than $335 million in federal COVID aid provided to the city under President Joe Biden.
O’Connor noted that the last time Trump was in office “we did not get federal funding and we know that we’re not going to get it. ... That’s why that [COVID aid] that was wasted really is going to hurt this city in the future.”
Many of the plans for spending that aid were crafted during the Peduto administration, with support from a council that included O’Connor at the time. Still, Gainey did reallocate funds after the fact, for purposes that included a food justice fund. He noted that his administration had opened more swimming pools and expanded hours of some recreation centers.
“Our first move was to invest in core city services,” he said.
A key distinction between the candidates centered around inclusionary zoning, an affordable housing policy in which developers would be required to set aside a percentage of units at costs affordable to lower-income households. Currently used in the neighborhoods of Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Polish Hill and parts of Oakland, Gainey has proposed expanding IZ to all of Pittsburgh's neighborhood. The mayor has also proposed a number of builder-friendly reforms, like allowing building on smaller lot sizes and waiving parking requirements.
Developers oppose the zoning rule, arguing that it makes projects more expensive and limits housing supply. But Gainey said it was fair to ask for something in return for the concessions he was making — especially when earlier housing programs hadn’t stopped the city from losing residents.
“If I’m doing something for you, you can’t do something for me? But you want my tax subsidy,” he scoffed. “Don’t tell me what you can do if I give you money for market-rate [developments] and at the end of the year, we bled population.”
O’Connor noted that on council he voted to establish inclusionary zoning in some parts of town but said “each neighborhood is different. ... You just don’t want a flat bill.” He said
“We should be actually building and building and building so that we can have affordable units all over Pittsburgh” he added. “We’re stuck in a stalemate of not building and growing, and that affects a lot of people”
O’Connor only briefly touched on the controversial departure of former police Chief Larry Scirotto, who he said Gainey had “allowed to go out and referee basketball and put our lives in danger.” Earlier Gainey said that the media had offered up “misinformation” about Scirotto’s departure, and touted his success at bringing down homicide rates — especially among teenagers. (When Belser noted that crime rates nationwide had declined, Gainey countered that when he took over “the city was on fire. And if the homicides would have gone up — let me ask a question: would they have blamed me?”)
And completely unmentioned was Saturday’s surprise announcement that Gainey’s chief of staff, Jake Wheatley, had resigned last week. (Prior to the debate, Gainey declined to discuss Wheatley’s departure with WESA, describing it as a “personnel matter.”)
There were even areas where the two candidates agreed: Both said they would not help federal immigration authorities round up city residents, and sounded defiant notes about the possibility that the federal government might arrest them. Both said they wanted to work with the school district to press the case for more funding in Harrisburg, without agreeing to return wage tax money that has been diverted from the school system to the city as a financial crutch.
Still, the debate seemed to prefigure a rough campaign, with both sides having the willingness to level attacks, and the apparatus to make those attacks be heard.
According to campaign-finance reports released Friday, O’Connor’s mayoral campaign began 2025 with $249,578.92 in the bank. That’s slightly less than the $268,256.13 Gainey starts the year with, but O’Connor didn’t start raising money for his mayoral bid until the last few weeks of the year. (Both men drew heavily on larger-dollar donations from individuals, with comparatively small amounts from small-dollar givers and unions, many of which have not declared themselves yet.) Outside-spending groups on both sides of the fight are also expected to play key roles in the race.
Still, Belser said that in the years she’d known O’Connor and Gainey, their relationship “was very much the ‘Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’ thing. … I hope that when this is over, that you can come back together and work together and not let any hard feelings linger.”
