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You may have seen the flyer in your mailbox. It’s the one with the black-and-white photo of a dilapidated building with broken windows, graffiti, and vines growing haphazardly across its face.
“THE ED GAINEY LEGACY,” proclaims the black lettering below.
The flyer argues that the first-term mayor has rewarded “political cronies,” wasted taxpayer money, and done too little to reverse homelessness and blight.
Those aren’t novel criticisms: Some have become familiar refrains in Gainey’s fiery Democratic primary match-up against County Controller Corey O’Connor. But the mailer lands differently — both for some frequent Gainey critics, such as City Controller Rachael Heisler, and for supporters who said it paints a false picture not just of Gainey, but the city itself.
In a thread posted on X last weekend, Heisler decried ugly rhetoric from both campaigns and argued the mailer went too far.
“Political races can be won without racist commentary, including images insinuating crime and blight in Black neighborhoods, which evokes painful memories for our neighbors who live with the intergenerational trauma of racism,” she said. “These campaigns have been fraught with harmful undertones.”
The mailer was put out by an independent-expenditure group, Common Sense Change Action, run by longtime Pittsburgh Democratic political consultant Mike Mikus. Such groups are exempt from Pittsburgh’s campaign-finance limits: Common Sense has received six-digit sums from a pair of union locals. But they can’t coordinate their messages with candidates or campaigns.
Mikus declined to comment on criticism of the mailer. But while O’Connor had no part in it, allies of Gainey wasted no time in using it to criticize him by association.
“The old-school Pittsburgh political establishment is using spurious lies to imply that Mayor Ganey's inability to solve all of our problems is his failure and not theirs,” said Brandi Fisher, executive director of the Alliance for Police Accountability, at a Downtown press event Monday.
“Calling the administration of a Black mayor filled with cronies, implying he has misappropriated funds, saying he is enriching his friends, and alleging financial mismanagement is highly inappropriate,” added Fisher, who said such attacks dealt in “racist tropes.”
Some of the mailer’s allegations — such as the claim that he gave a “sweetheart” contract to a friend of his wife — are at least questionable. That claim refers to a dispute about the management of Pittsburgh’s Juneteenth celebration last year. Bounce Marketing and Events, a firm led by Fantasy Zellars, was chosen over long-time event promoter William Marshall to run the city’s official event. Zellars was chosen by a four-member committee through a formal bidding process. City officials said at the time that her proposal’s focus on local artists caught their eye.
Accusing political foes of mishandling money, being inept, and hiring insiders is an equal-opportunity staple of political discourse, no matter what the demographic characteristics of the candidates. (And if you’re thinking it’s unfair of the Gainey camp to bring up racism in response, the sword cuts both ways. Gainey’s complaints about developers as greedy — another staple of municipal politics — drew accusations that such rhetoric was antisemitic. Heisler also denounced Gainey’s developer comments in her X thread.)
But Gainey and his defenders say the deeper offense is holding him responsible for a legacy of blight whose biggest victim has been the Black community itself.
“They are trying to blame me for the legacy of their unjust agenda in order to return to business as usual,” Gainey said in a public statement. “Families living in poor and left-behind neighborhoods are already stigmatized as it is — and they deserve so much better than political mailers that lie.”
And in fact, the dilapidated building depicted on the mailer has itself been renovated since the photo was taken. Located in Uptown, the structure’s windows have been repaired, the vines and spray-paint removed. The property’s listing agent — whose name and contact information are visible in the photo — said in a Facebook post that the snapshot dates to around 2018.
“This is not just an attack on the mayor. This is an attack on me … and all other Black elected officials and Black communities in the city,” said state Rep. La’Tasha Mayes, who also spoke on Gainey’s behalf at the press event Monday.
O'Connor put out a statement seemingly intended to distance himself from the controversy but without directly criticizing the mailer or Mikus' group.
“Hateful rhetoric in any form is unacceptable,” he said. “It has no place in this race and will have no place in Corey O'Connor's administration, if elected. The O'Connor campaign is committed to tackling the very real issues facing Pittsburgh — looming bankruptcy, overwhelmed public safety departments, and a lack of affordable housing. This is the discussion that Pittsburghers deserve.”
O’Connor echoed that message speaking to reporters at a campaign event later in the week.
“[I] know nothing about any of this stuff,” he said, repeating that he opposed hateful rhetoric. “My campaign has not coordinated or spoke to any of these agencies who are doing this. There's no coordination at all. Not my flyer.”
It’s not the first time the campaign has been driven by a controversy about how the candidates are campaigning. This week, O’Connor and Gainey clashed on a debate stage about Gainey’s affordable housing record after Gainey invited O’Connor to join him on a tour of developments and then criticized his rival for declining.
But as the mayoral race continues to eat its own tail, the fallout from this mailer has landed on O’Connor’s own doorstep. As O’Connor has attacked Gainey’s record, Gainey has countered by calling out O’Connor’s supporters — first a Duquesne Club gathering attended by Republicans and now the authors of a mailer O’Connor didn’t send.
And while Common Sense Change set out to blast Gainey for having “cronies,” some of O’Connor’s biggest campaign setbacks have come at the hands of his friends.
