Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey is mid-speech when Pittsburgh City Paper arrives on a chilly Saturday. His re-election campaign office, a former dentistry, is packed with volunteers. A folding table is heavy with pastries and bottles of water.
“Why are we scared to talk about racism?” he says. “Racism is nothing to be scared of. It’s something to talk about so we can overcome it.” Gainey says hostility from certain corners has made him battle-tested to stand up locally against President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging rollback of civil rights legislation.
Volunteers applaud and fan out with literature while the incumbent takes a quick break for lunch. City Paper follows his team back through a warren of dental exam rooms to a back office. It’s been a bruising primary so far; the mayor’s challenger, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, and Gainey have been trading attacks for months.
O’Connor’s campaign slogan “Pittsburgh Deserves Better” is a clear jab at the incumbent. Gainey accuses his opponent of a “MAGA assault.” The candidates’ records, fundraising, and commitment to public safety have all come under scrutiny. Both have also received a raft of endorsements from local unions and political groups. Much of the noise, especially from rightwing radio, has centered on a perception of downtown deterioration and high crime. On the left, many have concerns about expensive housing and gentrification.
CP was interested in hearing from the mayor on his 2021 campaign promises toward easing some of these concerns.
Gainey’s 2021 campaign website listed seven priorities: Public Safety, Economy, Housing, Environment, Education, Mobility, and Youth. (His 2025 version lists six: Housing, Safety, Economy, Jobs, Infrastructure, and Climate.) The mayor says his administration has made strides but still has room to grow in a variety of areas — CP has compared Gainey’s responses with the available reporting to identify his term-one campaign promises as Stalled, In Progress, or Complete.
Public safety: In Progress
Gainey is quick to point out the city’s dramatic reduction in homicides and gun violence. “When you talk about non-fatal shootings, we’re down 45%,” he tells CP. He also cites a reduction in homicides over his first three years in office.
He credits part of this to investing in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. “When you talk about the morale of the police force, we’ve had to do a lot to try to improve it in three years,” Gainey says. “We gave them the first raise they’ve ever had in over 20 years without arbitration.” This raise came with a disciplinary matrix, and Gainey says meetings between police and community members have helped win the Bureau “more respect.”
“We’re not over-policing in Black and brown communities anymore,” he says.
Acknowledging that the controversy around former chief Larry Scirotto and acting chief Chris Ragland has not been helpful, Gainey says “I wish Chief Ragland all the love and success in the world. I thought he was the right man for the job. I stand by that.” (Ragland reportedly came under pressure from city officials to make certain hires and said his nomination had become a “political football.”)
Gainey says recruiting the right people to serve in Pittsburgh has been challenging. Of 200 recent applicants, “only 40 made it,” he says — but he credits community policing, combined with his approach to Pittsburgh’s youth, with falling crime and improved police-community relations. “Are we there? No. Are we getting there? Yeah. It’s gonna take more than three years, though,” he tells CP.
Economy: Stalled
The centerpiece of Gainey’s economic plan in 2021 was making large nonprofits, especially the “Big Four” (UPMC, Highmark/AHN, the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University), “pay their fair share.” Such an agreement has yet to materialize.
Gainey tells CP he thought he had reached a tentative Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement with UPMC last year on Valentine’s Day, but the deal fell apart after he was asked to divide any payments with the county, who was not “at the table.” UPMC has denied the existence of such a deal.
“I shouldn’t have to burden the taxpayers [with] raising any taxes when our nonprofits can enter into a PILOT program,” Gainey says. “Highmark already said, ‘Hey, we’re on board. We’re willing.’ But they’re not going to do it without UPMC. None of the other three want to come unless the [Big Four] are at the table.”
While the mayor has achieved a more diverse workforce in the City-County Building, another 2021 goal, and the City’s Fitch bond rating has risen, the prize of an accord with the Big Four remains elusive.
Housing: In Progress
Housing has been a flashpoint between O’Connor and Gainey, with the county controller characterizing Gainey’s administration as “stagnant,” while Gainey backers question O’Connor’s relationships with developers and landlords. However, the mayor says his record speaks for itself.
“In three years, we got 2,000 units of affordable housing completed with 1,000 in the pipeline,” Gainey says. “That’s an amazing accomplishment when you think about the fact that when we took office, we had moved one property out of the [Pittsburgh] Land Bank.”
Beyond the land bank’s success, Gainey says the city’s $30 million affordable housing bond was a “major accomplishment” and highlights the pending overhaul of Bedford Dwellings. He also heralds the $600 million total investment planned for Downtown by the city, state, and local businesses. The investment is intended to create affordable as well as market-rate units, increase safety, and improve public spaces such as Market Square.
The extent of these plans longer term could hinge on the hot-button topic of inclusionary zoning (IZ), an issue currently dividing Pittsburgh City Council after its contentious passage by the city’s planning commission. But Gainey is optimistic.
“We did this in three years,” he tells CP. “I mean, I’d put that record up against anybody.”
Environment: In Progress
While lingering issues persist in the region, and bigger polluters including U.S. Steel are located outside the City of Pittsburgh, Gainey says progress within city limits has been substantial. “We continue to electrify our fleet,” he says. The city is “in the process of having conversations about building a solar farm on the slag heap,” part of Gainey’s 2021 goal of “investing in green infrastructure,” and has an agreement with an Ohio company to have “40% of our energy come from windmills.”
In the meantime, Gainey says ALCOSAN’s Regional Tunnel System and county action are leading to gradual improvements in air and water quality. Landslide preparedness remains top of mind for his administration, and he says, “we’ve talked to FEMA and PEMA in regards to funding” for landslide mitigation, but those talks remain a work in progress.
Education: Stalled
Pittsburgh Public Schools’ challenges are well documented. In 2021, Gainey tied much of the success of additional funding for local schools to taxing large nonprofits, which has yet to actualize, and Gainey says PPS is currently facing existential questions about its aging buildings — district leadership has recommended closing 14 of them.
“At some level, I think we have to talk about it, and it’ll be an investment up front,” Gainey says. He says he’s in frequent contact with superintendent Wayne Walters about the district’s future.
Mobility: In Progress
The centerpiece of Gainey’s Mobility priority is Vision Zero, an ambitious goal of eliminating traffic deaths and injuries in Pittsburgh. Pedestrian and cyclist deaths have remained a challenge, but Gainey says the city has made strides on traffic calming, citing projects including the reopening of Penn Circle.
“I got it in neighborhoods that’d never seen it, like Homewood, like Hazelwood, like Greenfield, they’d never seen street calming … automatic red lights, that’s coming soon,” Gainey explains. “We’ve still got our [Department of Mobility and Infrastructure] doing different engineering projects to find out what intersections need to be fixed.”
The streetscape has definitely changed in the East End, but there have been multiple pedestrian deaths in 2025 in neighborhoods including Uptown and East Allegheny. It remains to be seen if red light cameras and traffic calming can make a dent in the stubborn national trends of distracted driving. Potential cuts to transit funding could further complicate the picture for whoever wins on May 20.
Youth: Complete
When asked about both public safety and education, Gainey makes sure to talk about his programming for young people.
“If you keep children in structural environments, they learn to live a structured life,” Gainey says. He says his administration has extended rec center hours and worked with the Penguins to improve Ammon Recreation Center in the Hill District.
Gainey says his administration has also focused on programming including youth internships and civic education classes. “We also partner with CCAC, so that they get three credit courses to learn about city government,” Gainey says. “Our Youth Commission will be very relevant in going around with our comprehensive plan to talk to residents, to engage them, to … learn how to engage people in your neighborhood.”
Partial progress
As the interview winds down, Gainey says he’s excited to show off what the city has become at the 2026 NFL Draft. “It’s the first time that we really, on a global level, get to market our city for who we are today,” he says. He imagines former Pittsburghers flocking back and finding the industrial cityscape transformed.
But the city faces headwinds, and the mayoral primary looks close, if not unfavorable, for Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor. Implicit in his responses is a desire for more time both to work on his policy goals and win over change-averse local voters. “You’ve gotta have somebody that’s gonna stand up to Trump,” he says. “You have to have someone that is willing to stand up for, to protect, the citizens of the city.”
His pitch, distilled, is that the city has made hard-won progress toward “stabilization and growth.” Gainey frames his first term as a start toward a forward-looking city — perhaps a tough sell in a place known for toxic nostalgia.
“ââThe picture I’m trying to paint is that we’ve done this in three years because we are dedicated and committed to creating a city that is improving and growing,” Gainey says. “I think the whole situation [of] talking about ‘managing decline,’ that’s just a fear tactic from Republicans.”
“There’s no other city like this city, and that’s why we always have to appreciate growth and change,” Gainey adds. “Yesterday ain’t coming back.”
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.
