'This city needs a change': Pittsburgh mayoral contender Tony Moreno rips Gainey in campaign launch

Retired police officer and former Democrat Tony Moreno roundly skewered Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey Friday as he announced plans to run as a Republican for mayor of the city in the spring primary.

“We have no accountability in this city. We have no transparency,” said Moreno, 56, of Brighton Heights, who stood in the snow in front of Jack Stack Playground’s swimming pool, where one person was killed and another wounded in a 2023 shooting.

Moreno, who spent 24 years as a city police officer, intends to run on a three-plank platform, tackling Pittsburghers’ concerns about public safety, housing and homelessness, and the city economy, according to an email from the Pittsburgh Republican Committee.

If he makes it to the general election in November, Moreno will have a showdown with either Gainey or Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, currently the mayor’s only challenger in the upcoming primary.

“They’re the same person,” Moreno told reporters. “They run on the same policies. And this city needs a change.”

Moreno said the Gainey administration’s “failed policies” touched everything from housing and mental health to public safety and day-to-day operational issues like snow plowing.

Moreno was especially pointed about police leadership installed by Gainey. Acting Chief Christopher Ragland has been running the roughly 700-officer bureau in the midst of a staffing crisis since the former chief, Larry Scirotto, resigned Nov. 1 amid controversy over his moonlighting as an NCAA basketball referee.

“We did not hire police officers to be social workers. We did not hire police officers to be babysitters,” Moreno said.

Gainey’s re-election campaign did not respond to phone calls or emails Friday from a TribLive reporter. O’Connor’s campaign declined to respond to Moreno’s comments.

Moreno unsuccessfully ran against Gainey in 2021. He came in third in the Democratic primary, getting 13% of the vote, while Gainey defeated incumbent Bill Peduto that year, denying the mayor a third term in office.

Moreno, however, received 1,379 write-in votes in the Republican primary in 2021, well above the 250-vote threshold to gain the GOP nomination.

He told TribLive he registered as a Republican at that point.

“The Republican Party, there’s issues just like in the Democrat Party,” Moreno said. “But they (the GOP) are more in line with my values.”

Gainey ultimately bested Moreno at the polls in the general election that November.

Moreno said public safety is his top priority. He has said, if elected, he would hire more officers, push for police pay hikes, increase patrols and implement “community-based strategies to reduce crime.”

Gainey, 55, a Democrat and former state representative from Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington neighborhood, is running in the May 20 primary in hopes of gaining his party’s nomination for a second term.

O’Connor, 40, is a former city councilman who lives in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood.

Moreno said he enlisted in the military out of high school and served as an Army Airborne military police officer.

He worked for Pittsburgh police from 1994 to 2018, retiring as a detective, according to his LinkedIn profile. He lists his occupation on the social media platform as an investigator and self-employed contractor.

Change agents?

If GOP voters get behind Moreno, he’ll face an entrenched Democratic voter base in the fall.

More than 900,000 residents in Allegheny County are registered voters, and Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1, according to state statistics released Monday.

About 502,000 county residents are registered Democrats, versus nearly 265,000 registered Republicans, data shows. More than 104,000 county voters are unaffiliated.

Pittsburgh, a longtime Democratic Party stronghold, has not had a Republican mayor since the 1930s.

Mark DeSantis, the Pittsburgh businessman who ran as a Republican for mayor in 2007, admits GOP candidates have long odds of getting elected in Pittsburgh.

“I think people are just used to only voting for a Democrat,” said DeSantis, 65, of East Liberty, a former staffer for President George H.W. Bush and U.S. Sen. John Heinz. “And you have a very heavy Democratic registration advantage, period. That’s a fact.”

DeSantis garnered about 24,000 votes, nearly 35% of the total cast citywide, in the Nov. 6, 2007, election but lost to incumbent Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who received about 43,500 votes, or 63%.

But, DeSantis told TribLive on Friday, a need to modernize municipal government and make it more nimble, added to the ousting of incumbents that voters set in motion in the November election, could help challenger candidates like Moreno.

“Pittsburgh’s municipal government has been horribly managed for a long time (and) I don’t think it’s kept pace with the types of services it should offer,” DeSantis said. “I think voters are more inclined now to think of reform in government.”

Political analyst Joseph Sabino Mistick — chief of staff to former Mayor Sophie Masloff, a Democrat who led the city from 1988 to 1994 — thinks the “change agent,” anti-incumbent message could help both O’Connor and Moreno.

“I think it’s going to be a great race,” he said. “People will be presented with two versions of how to run an urban government.”