Today, local community activists and advocates joined together with elected officials and labor leaders to condemn the racist and untruthful mailer that many people received from an independent expenditure group supporting Corey O’Connor.
It is the most recent in a series of racialized and anti-black attacks on Pittsburgh’s first black Mayor from O’Connor’s campaign and the organizations supporting him. .
The use of problematic ads and mailers when it comes to political races where Black candidates are running in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County is fast becoming an issue as similar tactics were denounced in 2020 and 2022.
This kind of anti-Black, anti-woman campaigning is unacceptable and Pittsburgh’s community leaders, activists, advocates, and elected officials demand that it be denounced.
In addition to the mailer being racist, it also contained falsehoods and misleading innuendo. To set the record straight:
- The home featured on the mailer is a picture from 2018 of 2031 Tustin Street Uptown in 2018. It is not actually blighted. It was repaired and renovated a number of years ago.
- The money allotted to a third party to support the unhoused was transferred to the Office Community Health and Safety in Mayor Gainey’s Public Safety Department, where it has been used to provide dedicated support to our unhoused neighbors – helping get the vast majority out of tents and into housing that meets their individual needs.
- The lie that the mayor added $5 million to his staff when he simply brought existing roles together to put 311 and Neighborhood Services under one roof, so that they can collaborate better and serve residents better. Now every neighborhood in Pittsburgh has someone from the Mayor’s office going to their community meetings and focusing on their needs.
- The ad even attacks the Mayor’s wife, claiming that a contract awarded to someone she knows was somehow inappropriate, when it is well known that the particular contract in question – like all contracts unless otherwise approved by council – went through the legally required RFP process.
We also heard from State Representatives Aerion Abney and La’Tasha D. Mayes, who spoke on their experience as Black elected officials in Pittsburgh and representing Pittsburgh’s historically overlooked and underserved Black communities. Representative Abney told us it is so important for all of Pittsburgh to denounce this kind of campaigning, not just because it is unfair and untrue, but because if our area politicians are willing to lie this way and use anti-Black racism to tear down Mayor Gainey, they are willing to do this to all of our Black elected officials and absolutely not the kind of politicians who should be representing Pittsburgh’s Black Communities.
To summarize:
- Corey O’Cononor, his campaign, and the organizations supporting him have been engaged in a long-term campaign of racialized and anti-black attacks on Pittsburgh’s first black Mayor. This mailer is a clear demonstration of how these tactics are unacceptable in our city.
- As Congresswoman Lee noted over the weekend, Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh have been systematically and intentionally neglected for decades. Sold out to developers, like the Historic Hill District and East Liberty. Torn in half by racist road projects, like Chateau and Manchester.
- Not until the last few years have people from our communities started to even scratch the surface on political influence and power. There’s a reason there’s never been a Black mayor before now.
- Now you’re seeing (or not seeing) some of the very same power players behind the scenes who administered, orchestrated or ignored that divestment trying to convince you that a Black mayor’s inability to overcome their DECADES of poor leadership in 1 term is somehow a reflection of his (and our) failure, instead of theirs. They are doing this to try and reclaim the power they have had for decades.
- For 3 short years, Black and poor and non connected people and communities have been able to finally pull up a folding chair to their table.
- This mailer leans into deeply racist tropes — calling the administration of a Black mayor filled with cronies, implying he has misappropriated funds, saying he is enriching his friends, and alleging financial mismanagement is highly inappropriate.
- In particular, this mailer is harmful to Black women by implying that the contracts they earned through the required RFP process were not deserved or transparent – a particularly spurious claim considering the city’s recent achievement of increasing MWDBE contracts by 35% over the past few years.
- Corey must denounce this racist, lying attack from his PAC, acknowledge the harm that it causes our Black community, and commit to stop using them from here on out. Because our politics deserves to be so much more than this.
1Hood Power stands with all of today’s speakers and other elected officials and community leaders who have condemned this mailer and the ongoing anti-Black campaigning in this election in calling on not just the O’Connor campaign, but all of our elected officials – at every level of government – to say “NO MORE” this kind of racist campaigning. It is deeply harmful especially at a time when our very democracy is being challenged at the federal level by anti-diversity white nationalist sentiment and Pittsburgh will not stand for it.
See the complete press conference on 1Hood Power’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EESBKfaxk/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Photos and additional video of the event: April 21, 2025 Press Conference
