David Wassel: Reimagining the Gainey campaign offers deeper look into Democratic Party

Since November, Democratic special and primary elections have been observed to measure how are playing out the internal tensions between progressive and institutional factions. This includes the Pittsburgh mayoral contest between Mayor Ed Gainey and County Controller Corey O’Connor.

In Allegheny County the most prominent progressive candidates have been a trio of then-state representatives running against multiple institutional primary rivals who split the opposing vote. Each contest could have gone the other way. Gainey prevailed against a sitting mayor, in 2021, by a 47% plurality; Summer Lee won the nomination for the open 12th District seat, in 2022, receiving 54% of the vote; and, in 2023, Sara Innamorato triumphed, accruing 50% of the vote, in the fight for the open county chief executive office race. Each then won their general election contests.

How might Gainey have prevailed this year? First, let’s examine how this contest played out and how that looks, relative to his 2021 victory. Voter turnout was 60,210 (36%) votes, 2% more than in 2021. Gainey received 47% of the vote, the same as in 2021. O’Connor accrued 53%, identical to the combined Bill Peduto/Tony Moreno vote.

With turnout at 35%, 1% more than in 2021, Gainey won 16 city wards, including two he had lost in 2021 and one remaining within the margin of error, receiving 63% of the vote. O’Connor prevailed in the other 16 city wards, including one Gainey won in 2021 but was in the margin of error this year. Turnout being 36%, 2% more, than in 2021, O’Connor received 64% of the vote.

The vote increased, from 2021, in 28 wards, of which Gainey won 13, while O’Connor prevailed in 15. Gainey triumphed in both wards where turnout decreased. He and O’Connor each won one ward where it didn’t change. In seven wards each candidate received between 47% and 52% of the vote, within the margin of error. Either could have won any of those wards. In 2021 five of these were also within the margin of error, three of which flipped this year. As in 2021, turnout was 28%.

Gainey increased his vote, by 11%, over 2021 in 10 of the wards in which he prevailed. Turnout was 30%, 1% more than in 2021. Gainey outperformed O’Connor by 39%. In many of those 11 wards where Blacks have at least 30% of the population, Gainey often showed a double-digit increase in his vote. These wards saw a turnout of 34%, 1% more than in 2021, with Gainey winning 68%, 7% more than in 2021. O’Connor accrued 32%, a 7% decline from the combined 2021 Peduto/Moreno vote. Gainey received 36% more votes than O’Connor, in contrast to 21% more than Peduto/Moreno, combined in 2021.

In nine of the wards which he lost, turnout being 37%, 3% more than in 2021, Gainey also increased his vote, by 6%, over 2021, but falling short of O’Connor by 27%. However, Gainey suffered a devastating fall off in the 14th Ward, the most populous ward; a bastion of the progressive voters who supported him in 2021; and, not inconsequentially, the home ward of O’Connor. Turnout was 45%, 2% more than in 2021, but Gainey’s vote cratered by 10 points, to 34%. Just to illustrate how catastrophic was the defeat, Gainey’s trouncing, by 3,337 (31%) votes in the 14th Ward, is nearly identical to his overall loss of 3,311 (6%) votes. Excluding the 14th Ward vote, Gainey received 24,625 (50%) votes, as opposed O’Connor’s 24,599 (50%), a mere 26 vote difference, in favor of Gainey.

While Gainey increased his vote in wards with both Black and white majority populations, proving that a progressive could hold their own against a sole opponent, he could not surmount his crushing defeat in the 14th Ward, bringing us back to the original question: How could Gainey have reversed these results? If, in each of the 402 precincts, Gainey had received the highest percentage of his vote from either 2021 or 2025, adjusted for current Democratic registration, and 2025 turnout remaining the same, he would have finished at 51%, a 3% increase, with O’Connor down 4 points, at 49%. What else could Gainey have done to pad a still very close finish?

Gainey could have identified and prioritized those precincts with the greatest opportunity to increase his vote, then mobilized the impressive ground game that has been instrumental in progressive victories, up and down ballot. The outcomes of those three previously mentioned high profile elections in which progressive candidates secured their nominations, and the 2024 contest in which Lee was nominated for reelection, offer an insight.

The first step is determining in which precincts, on at least two occasions, each of these nominees received between 46% and 54% (the margin of error) of the vote; or underperformed in Black majority population precincts, by less than 46%; or overperformed in non-Black majority population precincts, by greater than 54%. Then, a goal of flipping 4% of the vote in each of these precincts could be set. Success would afford Gainey 52% of the vote, in contrast to 47% for O’Connor. Targeting the remaining Black majority population precincts nets Gainey an extra percent of the vote.

In either case, the outcome remains within the margin of error. There is no guarantee that this would have worked perfectly; however, it might have offered Gainey his best path forward in such a closely contested match-up, and further demonstrated how narrow the results were probably always going to be. Perhaps this is an accurate reflection of the current state of the Democratic Party at all levels, as it sorts out what it wants to represent, at least through the 2026 midterm elections.

David Wassel is an attorney and political consultant from White Oak.