County Controller Corey O’Connor is attracting serious money to his campaign to unseat Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, indicating that the May 20 Democratic primary could be highly competitive and O’Connor will be able to reach voters through advertising as much as, and perhaps more than, the incumbent.
While the $1 million O’Connor has reported raising since launching his campaign in December comes from various sources, a PublicSource analysis found that at least one in every four dollars he received came from professionals, executives and political action committees involved in building and selling housing and commercial real estate.
Notably, 80% of mayoral campaign contributions PublicSource identified as coming from the real estate, development and construction industries went to O’Connor, about $285,000 of $359,000 total.
“If you’re looking at people that own land in the city and they want to see it developed for affordable housing, we have a lot of people that are pro-housing, affordable housing developers that support me, because they see that the city’s not functioning properly to build affordable or market-rate housing,” O’Connor said.
Overall, Gainey has raised less than half O’Connor’s sum, just under $420,000, and received 17% of his dollars from people in the real estate, construction and development industries.
Gainey said some donors are siding against him because he won’t “sell to the highest bidder.”
“My opponent hasn’t said anything about affordable housing except for the fact that he will do it,” Gainey said. “But you can’t convince me you’re going to do it when all the real estate tycoons are supporting your candidacy. It’s the same ones that want to say, ‘just build and people will come,’ which we know has been a failed model.”
It’s commonplace for developers and builders, who rely on the city for key zoning and permitting actions, to donate to local elected officials, and some donated to both Gainey and O’Connor.
Gainey and O’Connor will face off in the Democratic primary May 20.
O’Connor received more than $13,000 from people who listed Walnut Capital as their employer, including co-founders Todd Reidbord and Gregg Perelman. Walnut Capital facilitated the Bakery Square redevelopment in the 2010s and is pushing to expand the multi-use complex — a process that will rely on approvals from the city at various stages.
“[It’s] anti-business friendly kind of stuff,” Reidbord said, explaining his opposition to Gainey’s reelection. “And there’s no reason for that … It feels like it’s extremely divisive. And that’s why you find that most people in the business community and the real estate community aren’t supporting the mayor.”
O’Connor also received almost $10,000 from employees of Oakland-based Senko Construction and several thousand each from employees of commercial real estate brokers Newmark, Jones Lang and LaSalle, Howard Hanna and MJ Kelly Realty.
Gainey received more than $10,000 from leaders of Lindy Paving and almost $10,000 from employees at Mistick Construction, a firm with a significant affordable housing focus.
Unanswered calls
Reidbord, the Walnut Capital president, said Gainey has treated the development and business community differently than previous mayors.
Chief among Reidbord’s concerns, and one that was echoed by other industry members interviewed for this story who declined to go on record, is a lack of hands-on attention from the mayor’s office.
“This is the first administration where if I needed to pick up the phone and call somebody in city hall for questions or to get through the red tape, there [wasn’t] someone available,” he said. “Nobody answers phone calls.”
John Petrack, the executive vice president of the Realtors Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, said O’Connor “has actually basically said he is going to help with the [permitting] process” for commercial properties.
Jake Pawlak, Gainey’s deputy mayor, said he’s not surprised developers are wishing for more access to the mayor’s office.
“I am a little surprised they would say it out loud so openly,” Pawlak said. “What they are talking about is what has long been an unspoken way of doing business in Pittsburgh, which is calling in political favors to get preferred treatment. That’s something that’s been done a lot in the past that we absolutely don’t do.”
He added that the administration has taken steps to streamline the permitting process, with some changes taking place late last year, possibly too recently for development executives to have appreciated the difference.
Petrack said there are several reasons people in the industry would donate to candidates for city leadership. Deed transfer tax rates, property tax rates and management of the city’s own property inventory all have a direct bearing on the bottom line for real estate professionals, he said.
Big efforts, modest numbers
Petrack said his organization, which has yet to endorse a candidate, urges the city to “liquidate” the thousands of properties it owns, many of which are in disrepair.
The Pittsburgh Land Bank has begun the process of doing just that, but slowly. The land bank, which can clear tax liens on properties and sell them to new owners that will rehabilitate them, sold no properties during the first seven years of its existence, but has picked up the pace under Gainey’s leadership, processing dozens of properties in the last year with more in the pipeline.
Gainey touted his administration’s processing of more than 150 properties through the land bank, three of which he highlighted at a press conference in Hazelwood in February. The city worked with a neighborhood nonprofit, using a mixture of private and public funds, to build three houses that were sold to low-income neighborhood residents.
The press event kicked off his “Keep Pittsburgh Home” initiative, focused on efforts to ward off displacement and what he described as predatory landlords and real estate speculators. But the event also highlighted the challenge posed by the scale of Pittsburgh’s housing needs.
The three new Hazelwood homes, built on Flowers Avenue, required months of effort and funding from multiple banks, state government and local housing authorities. A housing needs assessment for the city from 2022 found a gap of more than 8,000 housing units available to households of modest means. Asked if efforts like the one in Hazelwood can be scaled to fill the gaps, Gainey hedged.
“Are there other avenues that we’re going to have to approach in order to get that done? Yes,” Gainey said. “You ask me if it’s scalable, ask me that in six, seven, eight months when we have an opportunity to really pay attention to the growth that we’ve caused. … It’s like anything else, I always say, ask me when it’s done.”
Gainey said his administration had overseen the creation of 2,000 affordable housing units, though he said some of those were still “in the pipeline.”
O’Connor criticized the volume of construction recently, saying “We are not building enough housing for everyone in Pittsburgh.”
He dismissed the idea of the city taking a central role in building housing.
“Obviously the city can’t do it all by ourselves. We don’t have any money,” O’Connor said. “As the mayor, you have to go and negotiate with developers and say, I know you want to build 20 units. In this market, we deserve 10 that’s affordable, or whatever the number is. Different markets are different.”
O’Connor favors a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to affordability requirements while Gainey is pushing a citywide inclusionary zoning plan that would mandate a certain number of affordable units in new developments no matter the location. Some developers and pro-growth activists have rallied against Gainey’s plan, including at an 11-hour city planning meeting at which Gainey’s plan was ultimately advanced to City Council.
O’Connor said he voted for inclusionary zoning to apply to Lawrenceville when he was a council member. “But Lawrenceville’s market is different than Lincoln Place’s market, and West End’s market is different than Greenfield’s market.”
Gainey said the city’s current affordable housing deficit is proof that the model of building market-rate units without inclusionary zoning requirements has failed.
“We’ve built all this market-rate housing [just] to have a decrease in population,” Gainey said. “When they use that [supply and demand] concept to say ‘just build,’ we did that. It didn’t work. The build, build, build is just about maximizing their dollar.”
About the data
Campaign finance disclosure law mandates that donors of $250 or more must reveal their occupation and employer. PublicSource gathered data for this report based on the information donors provided. Many donors indicated that they are self-employed, retired, or did not disclose any information. Thus, the figures presented here are minimums.
This report includes data from 2024 and the first two months of 2025. Data from March is not yet available. This report also excludes donors of less than $250, because they are not required to disclose employment information. This group makes up a small percentage of candidates’ funds.
Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.
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