Politics
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March 26, 2025
Mayor Ed Gainey has stood as much as Trump. Now, the president’s allies are crossing occasion traces in an try and unseat him.
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Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey speaks earlier than President Joe Biden on the United Steelworkers Headquarters in Pittsburgh, Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
(Gene J. Puskar / AP)
Progressive mayors of American cities are on the entrance traces of the pushback towards the Trump administration’s assault on financial, social, and racial justice. And Ed Gainey, the Democratic mayor of Pittsburgh, is proud to play his half in that combat. “I feel the position of a mayor within the Trump period is admittedly to (defend communities which can be underneath assault) and,” he says, “to face as much as the kind of authoritarian authorities that you just see occurring proper now.”
Gainey has performed simply that. Fairly than cave to Trump’s strain on cities to cooperate with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport immigrants, the mayor introduced within the first days of Trump’s second presidency, “My administration is not going to work with ICE.” Fairly than parrot GOP assaults on DEI applications, he has championed initiatives that promote variety in native management positions and employment, and says, “The Mayor’s workplace proper now could be probably the most numerous administration within the historical past of the mayor’s workplace, interval. The rationale why I wished this variety is as a result of I consider that individuals have totally different lived experiences. And once you put a individuals’s lived expertise on an issue, you give you a number of options.”
Gainey, who appointed the primary brazenly trans lady to function the town’s press secretary, has forcefully repudiated GOP assaults in members of the LGBTQI group. And as Trump races to undermine union protections on the identical time that billionaire “particular authorities worker” Elon Musk dismisses 1000’s of unionized federal employees, Gainey declares, “Pittsburgh is a union city, we’ll stay one, and we’ll stand with our union brothers and sisters.”
A well-known face on picket traces, Gainey pulls no punches in the case of the risk posed by the brand new administration to working individuals, and to historic working-class communities like those he represents. “We’ve received an actual combat proper now on our fingers—Donald Trump and Elon Musk within the White Home, preventing for firms, attempting to make our employees lose their jobs at each flip,” he says. “We’ve at all times recognized Donald Trump to be a scab.”
Gainey additionally favors bracing readability when requested why he’s stood up so forcefully to Trump and Musk at a time when many DC Democrats have gone weak within the knees.
“I consider there’s a variety of hazard within the White Home,” the mayor tells The Nation. “However as soon as you are taking this initiative to be a frontrunner, when you resolve that you just need to be sure that our progressive values are being pushed so that individuals know that they’ve somebody who’s going to face up for them, then you need to (take daring stands). If I’m going to be on this place as a mayor, I need individuals within the metropolis of Pittsburgh to know they’re welcome right here. I need individuals to really feel protected right here. And I need everybody to know we’re constructing a coalition based mostly on our individuals, and we wish you to be part of that motion. And the one method I can get you to do this is that if I, as a frontrunner, as a mayor, get up.”
Sadly, standing up could make you a goal. Musk has made no secret of the truth that he plans to spend substantial parts of his huge fortune to assist administration allies and assist main challenges to Republicans who fail to point out most loyalty to the president. And he’s not the one rich marketing campaign donor who is decided to punish those that object to the Trump agenda, be they members of Congress, governors, or mayors. That willpower has grow to be significantly evident for Gainey this 12 months, as he mounts his bid for a second time period.
Present Challenge
Republicans have little likelihood of profitable in deep-blue Pittsburgh. That signifies that the Democratic main is the election that issues. And that’s the place the massive donors are attempting to choose Gainey off.
His essential rival within the Might 20 contest, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, has obtained important monetary assist from Trump allies and distinguished Republicans. In response to the most recent evaluation by the Gainey camp, O’Connor has raked in $160,000 from marketing campaign contributors who’ve data of supporting Trump, the president’s political cronies, and Republican teams. With this in thoughts, Gainey says he’s not merely operating for reelection however operating “to cease the MAGA machine that’s attempting to purchase the mayor’s workplace, identical to Elon Musk purchased the White Home.”
Gainey sees Pittsburgh’s mayoral main as one of many first main assessments of the facility of Trump-aligned billionaires and their rich Republican allies to punish mayors, governors, and members of Congress who refuse to bend the knee. “There’s one place I didn’t anticipate to need to fend off the MAGA assault, and that was the mayoral main race,” Gainey defined at an early March occasion the place he appeared with supporters holding indicators that learn, “No to MAGA Donors,” “Pittsburgh Will Not Be Purchased,” “Not for Sale,” and “MAGA $ Outta Pittsburgh.”
“However, sadly, that is precisely the place we’re at,” concluded Gainey. “Trump’s MAGA megadonors, his consultants and company pursuits, are attempting to purchase the mayor’s workplace by attacking me.”
It’s not remarkable for Republican donors in large cities to maneuver their cash behind Democrats they presume can be friendlier to their pursuits. Pittsburgh shouldn’t be even the one metropolis with a mayoral race this 12 months the place complaints have been raised about GOP money going to Democrats. In New York Metropolis, as an example, Democratic mayoral candidate and former governor Andrew Cuomo is underneath hearth for gathering Republican cash to fund his bid. A progressive challenger who’s operating within the Democratic main towards Cuomo, Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander, says, “Marketing campaign filings reveal Andrew Cuomo’s donors gave over $150,000 to Donald Trump’s presidential marketing campaign and the Trump tremendous PAC. New York can’t have a mayor bankrolled by extremist MAGA associates.” One other progressive mayoral contender, Zohran Mamdani, sa ys, “As Trump tries to dismantle the social security internet and assault our elementary rights, New Yorkers have been questioning why Andrew Cuomo refuses to criticize him. Now we all know: they share the identical donors.”
However Pittsburgh stands out as the primary metropolis the place what Gainey decries as “the MAGA cash” has grow to be a significant situation in a Democratic main. It’s been highlighted extensively in native media, with WESA, the area’s well-regarded public radio station, specializing in current reviews in The Guardian and different publications on the difficulty, after which naming names: “Republicans giving to O’Connor embrace Iron Metropolis Brewing proprietor and coal mining magnate Cliff Forrest, whose $1 million donation to Trump’s 2017 inauguration occasion was the most important in Pennsylvania. Amongst different high donors are Kent McElhattan, a giver to Republican Dave McCormick’s 2024 Senate bid and different GOP causes, and Florida retiree Herb Shear, who donated final 12 months to McCormick, native U.S. Home candidate Rob Mercuri, and the Republican Jewish Coalition.”
As well as, famous WESA,
O’Connor additionally attended a Feb. 17 occasion on the Duquesne Membership, lengthy a refuge of the town’s enterprise elite, at which plans to topple Gainey had been mentioned. An e-mail invitation to the occasion reported by the retailers—and seen individually by WESA—was written by Jeff Kendall, an government for a private-equity agency concerned in waste disposal who was energetic in an outside-spending group that sought to elect Republican Joe Rockey within the 2023 Allegheny County Government race (which was finally gained by progressive Sara Innamorato, a Gainey ally).
In response to Kendall’s e-mail, O’Connor was slated to “open the assembly together with his pitch and reply questions,” after which Kent Gates, a Republican political guide beforehand energetic in Western Pennsylvania with the agency BrabenderCox, was to “focus on current polling and the plan to win this race.”
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O’Connor, who has additionally come underneath hearth for his fundraising from actual property pursuits, broadcasts in his TV advertisements, “I’ll be the progressive mayor who will get the job performed.” He dismisses criticism of his elevating funds from Trump backers and Republican mega-donors by claiming that the mayor accepted cash from native Republicans in previous campaigns. The challenger is highlighting his work on points akin to gun security and the assist he’s obtained from a number of of the town’s constructing trades unions. O’Connor downplays his much-discussed assembly with GOP strategists and donors, and gripes that Gainey’s give attention to his rival’s accumulation of MAGA cash “reveals desperation within the mayor’s workplace.” O’Connor, the son of a former Democratic mayor, instructed the Pittsburgh Metropolis Paper, “To me, it’s a joke from a marketing campaign that’s operating scared. They’re not speaking about citywide points.”
However Gainey argues that the assist his rival is receiving from Trump backers and high Republicans—at this essential juncture—is a citywide situation for Pittsburgh. Referring to the president, Gainey says, “You’re speaking a couple of man proper now that’s speaking about attempting to defund the Division of Training, attempting to tear meals proper out of kids’s mouth, eliminating applications that assist our individuals with most cancers get remedy. Look what he’s doing with the veterans—chopping applications and healthcare for our veterans. He’s making it laborious all the best way round.”
Gainey additionally argues that he’s been focused for defeat this 12 months due to the progressive motion he has helped to construct and advance in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County. There’s no query that progressives have achieved large victories in western Pennsylvania up to now a number of years, with the election of Congressional Progressive Caucus member Summer time Lee to the US Home in 2022, and of Bernie Sanders–backed Allegheny County Government Sara Innamorato in 2023. Gainey campaigned laborious for each Lee and Innamorato, simply as he did for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024, when the occasion ticket confirmed notable energy within the Pittsburgh space. “I feel it is a pivotal second in Democratic politics. I consider that the motion that we began is proof of that,” says Gainey. “Town and the county held sturdy within the presidential election. We received our turnout. For Vice President Harris, we matched what we did for Biden in 2020. So, we proceed to do our half right here.… I feel that’s why, proper now, they’re focused me on this race. They need to have the ability to say, ‘Hear, this motion shouldn’t be actual.’”
Republicans, Gainey says, don’t need a Democratic Occasion that’s each firmly progressive and is aware of how one can mobilize voters for essential elections. “They need to cease the motion,” the mayor says of the GOP donors. “They took over Washington. So, now, they’re taking a look at mayors in blue states—(on the idea that) if they will take one out, they will take extra girls out, they will take extra Black and brown mayors out. We are able to’t have that. Now we have to have the ability to get up on this defining second and say, ‘That is the path that the Democratic Occasion goes!’”
That message has energized activists like Monica Ruiz, the manager director of Pittsburgh’s Casa San José group useful resource heart, who appeared with the mayor at a March marketing campaign occasion and declared, “Trump’s individuals know Pittsburgh gained’t elect a Republican. So as a substitute, they’re pouring a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} value of assault advertisements mendacity about Mayor Ed Gainey’s document into our Democratic main on behalf of a candidate they assume can be simpler to affect, as a result of they know rattling effectively that Mayor Gainey won’t ever bow down (to the Republicans). He’ll at all times shield the individuals of Pittsburgh towards Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”
Donald Trump’s merciless and chaotic second time period is simply getting began. In his first month again in workplace, Trump and his lackey Elon Musk (or is it the opposite method round?) have confirmed that nothing is protected from sacrifice on the altar of unchecked energy and riches.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Writer, The Nation
John Nichols
John Nichols is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on subjects starting from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Occasion to analyses of US and international media programs. His newest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Instances bestseller It is OK to Be Indignant About Capitalism.
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