Two of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s largest Republican committees are refusing to back Tony Moreno, the GOP nominee for Pittsburgh mayor, as part of a widening split with a fractious candidate they view with suspicion and distress.

The heads of the Pittsburgh and Allegheny County GOP committees told TribLive on Friday they will not provide Moreno with money, volunteers or ground-game support.

Allegheny County GOP Chairman Jason Richey and Todd McCollum, who heads Pittsburgh’s Republican committee, slammed Moreno Friday for what they characterized as drama and discord.

“We don’t want drama or conflict within our party,” said Richey, 53, a Sewickley-based attorney and former gubernatorial candidate. “(Moreno) loves to stir the pot … that’s not conducive to success. We’re here to win. Allegheny County is depending on us to be competitive and start winning.”

“There was a decision made to let Tony campaign on his own,” said McCollum, 54, of the city’s Perry North neighborhood. “There needs to be more unity in the party. We can’t have leaders blasting one another. And, in the end, Jason’s the top dog right now.”

Moreno told TribLive Friday the decision for GOP party insiders to refuse to support him is “a crooked effort.”

“I am supporting the people of Pittsburgh and not bowing down to them,” added Moreno, 56, of Brighton Heights. “It makes them angry that I won’t bow down to the Republican Party.”

GOP leaders confirmed Friday that while they won’t back Moreno, they plan to support a slate of their party’s three candidates for Pittsburgh City Council.

Moreno is the only Republican Party candidate in Pittsburgh not receiving funds or backing from the county or city committees, McCollum said.

There are worries the intra-party dissension might sow division within a GOP that some view as resurgent in a traditional Democratic stronghold.

Republicans, whose voter registration is dramatically outnumbered in deep-blue Pittsburgh, are running more candidates at the local and county levels than any time in recent memory.

Moreno, a sometimes-brash, retired Pittsburgh police officer, ran for mayor in the city as a Democrat, then as a Republican on a write-in campaign, in 2021. Four years later, as a Republican, he beat challenger Thomas West in last month’s primary by a 3-1 margin.

No invitation

The tension for what some Republicans characterized as an ongoing feud between the men started boiling over last week, when Moreno attacked the region’s GOP leadership in a Facebook post.

Moreno told TribLive he was angry GOP candidates from Pittsburgh were not invited to a PPG Paints Arena event on May 29 celebrating the recent multibillion-dollar deal between U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel.

President Donald Trump visited Allegheny County’s Mon Valley the next day to cheer the pending partnership between the steel companies.

Moreno took to Facebook that day to air his grievances. He gave a dig to his Democratic rival in the mayor’s race, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, who defeated Mayor Ed Gainey in last month’s primary.

“Was Corey O’Connor there? He received all the Republican donations for the mayor race,” Moreno wrote, knowing full well O’Connor had not been invited to a Trump event.

“The political machine is in our face telling us to shut up and sit down,” Moreno continued. “That doesn’t work well for me. It is only us Pittsburgh. No one is coming. The political parties are sold out and I’m done begging.”

Moreno said his reference to O’Connor on Facebook was no accident.

O’Connor collected nearly $133,000 from donors who had supported Republicans, Gainey’s campaign previously claimed.

The O’Connor campaign countered that about $82,000 of donations to Gainey came from people with Republican ties.

Moreno, in the meantime, said he still has received no checks from wealthy GOP donors.

Richey defended the GOP’s treatment of Moreno on events surrounding the steel deal.

“The Nippon/U.S. Steel event was a private dinner honoring those that helped make the deal happen — I could not invite anyone to it. This fact was related to both Tony and his campaign manager,” Richey wrote in “The Weekly Trunk.” “Ironically, Tony did not bother to attend the U.S. Steel/Nippon public rally the next day (something we did invite him to) to support President Trump and one of the biggest economic stories in Pittsburgh history.”

Wishing him well

Less than a week after Moreno’s blast on social media, Richey shot back in “The Weekly Trunk,” a newsletter sent Wednesday to Republican voters in the region.

“No one (including Democrats) deserve to have a defamatory message written about them and then posted on Facebook or other social media,” Richey wrote. “This type of attacking is exactly what we have to stop if we hope to start winning and defeating the Democrats. We need: No drama. No chaos. No infighting.”

Richey, who said 15,000 receive “The Weekly Trunk” email, told TribLive that county officials also are taking steps to boot Moreno from the county committee, of which he is a member.

“He said he’s done with the parties? Well, we’re not going to support someone that doesn’t want to be supported,” Richey told TribLive. “We wish him well in the election.”

Moreno stressed he does not plan to resign from the committee.

The scenario that played out in Washington, D.C. during last year’s presidential race — where President Joe Biden, who won the Democratic Party primaries in 2024, yielded the ticket to then-Vice President Kamala Harris amid concerns about Biden’s age and health — is not likely to repeat itself in Pittsburgh.

County officials said the Republican Party would face a steep, uphill battle should they decide to try putting someone else’s name on the ballot instead of Moreno’s.

“(Moreno) would have to die or be medically incapacitated,” Abigail Gardner, a county spokeswoman, told TribLive. “You’d have to go to court and you’d have to have a really good reason.”

State department officials also said losing candidates in the primary — such as Gainey or businessman Thomas West, who lost the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively — can’t be nominated by a minor party or political body to appear on ballots Nov. 4.

West told TribLive that county party leaders told him he or Moreno “would be supported” upon winning the primary.

“Any infighting right now does not represent Republicans in the city,” West said. “But nothing surprises me when it comes to how things are playing out.”

West, 48, of Highland Park, said his political future remains unclear.

Unhelpful infighting

Richey said there are no set rules about who the county committee, which remained neutral in the Republican Party’s spring primary, backs or doesn’t back.

He didn’t know about what happened in terms of endorsements and fundraising before he was elected chairman earlier this year.

Mark DeSantis, a GOP candidate in Pittsburgh several years ago, said he “didn’t even understand the premise for not endorsing (Moreno).”

DeSantis, a tech entrepreneur and Carnegie Mellon University adjunct professor, ran as a Republican against incumbent Mayor Luke Ravenstahl in 2007. A year earlier, Ravenstahl, then 27, was thrust into Pittsburgh’s top post by the death in office of Mayor Bob O’Connor, the father of Corey O’Connor.

DeSantis — who netted about 35% of the vote, compared to Ravenstahl’s 63% — told TribLive the county committee supported his 2007 campaign.

“Politics is not about personalities, it’s not about taking things personally,” DeSantis, 65, of East Liberty, said. “It’s about what’s good for the citizens. And egos need to be put to the side.”

DeSantis lamented what infighting would do to GOP support in a city where registered Democrats outnumber their Republican counterparts 5-1.

“For a Republican in the City of Pittsburgh to be in a fight with his own party, that doesn’t help him,” DeSantis added. “I think citizens need a race. They need a race where issues are discussed about how to run things in Pittsburgh. They don’t want inside-baseball — that’s what kills campaigns.”

‘We have no choice’

McCollum, the city GOP leader, told TribLive intra-party maneuvering and politics is bound to happen — but doesn’t always look as a bad as it might appear.

“I can see how this is being spun as a conspiracy, but it is not,” McCollum said. “I hope (Moreno) wins. He’s my friend. I want him to be my friend. Am I going to vote for him? Probably. But, I can’t have him wrecking the party.”

“He’s backed us against the wall,” he added. “It’s to the point where we have no choice.”

Moreno, in the meantime, maintains that the GOP has known about his political style, opinions and expectations for fundraising assistance from party officials since they first encouraged voters to write in his name as a Republican in 2021.

After losing the Democratic Party primary to Gainey that spring, Moreno lost at the polls as a Republican, again to Gainey, that fall.

“They’re trying to take me away from everything that’s positive about me and my campaign,” Moreno said.

“I am who I am,” Moreno added. “I am the same person now I was when I started. The letter after my name on the ballot changed. But that’s it.”

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