Progressive mayors of American cities are on the front lines of the pushback against the Trump administration’s assault on economic, social, and racial justice. And Ed Gainey, the Democratic mayor of Pittsburgh, is proud to play his part in that fight. “I think the role of a mayor in the Trump era is really to [defend communities that are under assault] and,” he says, “to stand up to the type of authoritarian government that you see happening right now.”

Gainey has done just that. Rather than cave to Trump’s pressure on cities to cooperate with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport immigrants, the mayor announced in the first days of Trump’s second presidency, “My administration will not work with ICE.” Rather than parrot GOP attacks on DEI programs, he has championed initiatives that promote diversity in local leadership positions and employment, and says, “The Mayor’s office right now is the most diverse administration in the history of the mayor’s office, period. The reason why I wanted this diversity is because I believe that people have different lived experiences. And when you put a people’s lived experience on a problem, you come up with multiple solutions.”

Gainey, who appointed the first openly trans woman to serve as the city’s press secretary, has forcefully repudiated GOP attacks in members of the LGBTQI community. And as Trump races to undermine union protections at the same time that billionaire “special government employee” Elon Musk dismisses thousands of unionized federal workers, Gainey declares, “Pittsburgh is a union town, we will remain one, and we will stand with our union brothers and sisters.”

A familiar face on picket lines, Gainey pulls no punches when it comes to the threat posed by the new administration to working people, and to historic working-class communities like the ones he represents. “We’ve got a real fight right now on our hands—Donald Trump and Elon Musk in the White House, fighting for corporations, trying to make our workers lose their jobs at every turn,” he says. “We’ve always known Donald Trump to be a scab.”

Gainey also favors bracing clarity when asked why he’s stood up so forcefully to Trump and Musk at a time when many DC Democrats have gone weak in the knees.

“I believe there’s a lot of danger in the White House,” the mayor tells The Nation. “But once you take this initiative to be a leader, once you decide that you want to make sure that our progressive values are being pushed so that people know that they have someone who is going to stand up for them, then you have to [take bold stands]. If I’m going to be in this position as a mayor, I want people in the city of Pittsburgh to know they are welcome here. I want people to feel safe here. And I want everyone to know we are building a coalition based on our people, and we want you to be a part of that movement. And the only way I can get you to do that is if I, as a leader, as a mayor, stand up.”

Unfortunately, standing up can make you a target. Musk has made no secret of the fact that he plans to spend substantial portions of his vast fortune to support administration allies and support primary challenges to Republicans who fail to show maximum loyalty to the president. And he is not the only wealthy campaign donor who is determined to punish those who object to the Trump agenda, be they members of Congress, governors, or mayors. That determination has become particularly evident for Gainey this year, as he mounts his bid for a second term.

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Republicans have little chance of winning in deep-blue Pittsburgh. That means that the Democratic primary is the election that matters. And that’s where the big donors are trying to pick Gainey off.

His main rival in the May 20 contest, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, has received significant financial support from Trump allies and prominent Republicans. According to the latest review by the Gainey camp, O’Connor has raked in $160,000 from campaign contributors who have records of supporting Trump, the president’s political cronies, and Republican groups. With this in mind, Gainey says he is not merely running for reelection but running “to stop the MAGA machine that’s trying to buy the mayor’s office, just like Elon Musk bought the White House.”

Gainey sees Pittsburgh’s mayoral primary as one of the first major tests of the power of Trump-aligned billionaires and their wealthy Republican allies to punish mayors, governors, and members of Congress who refuse to bend the knee. “There’s one place I didn’t expect to have to fend off the MAGA assault, and that was the mayoral primary race,” Gainey explained at an early March event where he appeared with supporters holding signs that read, “No to MAGA Donors,” “Pittsburgh Will Not Be Bought,” “Not for Sale,” and “MAGA $ Outta Pittsburgh.”

“But, unfortunately, this is exactly where we’re at,” concluded Gainey. “Trump’s MAGA megadonors, his consultants and corporate interests, are trying to buy the mayor’s office by attacking me.”

It’s not unheard of for Republican donors in big cities to move their money behind Democrats they presume will be friendlier to their interests. Pittsburgh is not even the only city with a mayoral race this year where complaints have been raised about GOP cash going to Democrats. In New York City, for instance, Democratic mayoral candidate and former governor Andrew Cuomo is under fire for collecting Republican money to fund his bid. A progressive challenger who is running in the Democratic primary against Cuomo, City Comptroller Brad Lander, says, “Campaign filings reveal Andrew Cuomo’s donors gave over $150,000 to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Trump super PAC. New York cannot have a mayor bankrolled by extremist MAGA associates.” Another progressive mayoral contender, Zohran Mamdani, sa ys, “As Trump tries to dismantle the social safety net and attack our fundamental rights, New Yorkers have been wondering why Andrew Cuomo refuses to criticize him. Now we know: they share the same donors.”

But Pittsburgh stands out as the first city where what Gainey decries as “the MAGA money” has become a major issue in a Democratic primary. It’s been highlighted extensively in local media, with WESA, the region’s well-regarded public radio station, focusing on recent reports in The Guardian and other publications on the issue, and then naming names: “Republicans giving to O’Connor include Iron City Brewing owner and coal mining magnate Cliff Forrest, whose $1 million donation to Trump’s 2017 inauguration event was the largest in Pennsylvania. Among other top donors are Kent McElhattan, a giver to Republican Dave McCormick’s 2024 Senate bid and other GOP causes, and Florida retiree Herb Shear, who donated last year to McCormick, local U.S. House candidate Rob Mercuri, and the Republican Jewish Coalition.”

In addition, noted WESA,

O’Connor also attended a Feb. 17 event at the Duquesne Club, long a refuge of the city’s business elite, at which plans to topple Gainey were discussed. An email invitation to the event reported by the outlets—and seen separately by WESA—was written by Jeff Kendall, an executive for a private-equity firm involved in waste disposal who was active in an outside-spending group that sought to elect Republican Joe Rockey in the 2023 Allegheny County Executive race [which was ultimately won by progressive Sara Innamorato, a Gainey ally].

According to Kendall’s email, O’Connor was slated to “open the meeting with his pitch and answer questions,” after which Kent Gates, a Republican political consultant previously active in Western Pennsylvania with the firm BrabenderCox, was to “discuss recent polling and the plan to win this race.”

O’Connor, who has also come under fire for his fundraising from real estate interests, announces in his TV ads, “I’ll be the progressive mayor who gets the job done.” He dismisses criticism of his raising funds from Trump backers and Republican mega-donors by claiming that the mayor accepted money from local Republicans in past campaigns. The challenger is highlighting his work on issues such as gun safety and the support he’s received from several of the city’s building trades unions. O’Connor downplays his much-discussed meeting with GOP strategists and donors, and gripes that Gainey’s focus on his rival’s accumulation of MAGA money “shows desperation in the mayor’s office.” O’Connor, the son of a former Democratic mayor, told the Pittsburgh City Paper, “To me, it’s a joke from a campaign that is running scared. They’re not talking about citywide issues.”

But Gainey argues that the support his rival is receiving from Trump backers and top Republicans—at this critical juncture—is a citywide issue for Pittsburgh. Referring to the president, Gainey says, “You’re talking about a guy right now that’s talking about trying to defund the Department of Education, trying to rip food right out of children’s mouth, eliminating programs that help our people with cancer get treatment. Look what he’s doing with the veterans—cutting programs and healthcare for our veterans. He’s making it hard all the way around.”

Gainey also argues that he’s been targeted for defeat this year because of the progressive movement he has helped to build and advance in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County. There’s no question that progressives have achieved big victories in western Pennsylvania in the past several years, with the election of Congressional Progressive Caucus member Summer Lee to the US House in 2022, and of Bernie Sanders–backed Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato in 2023. Gainey campaigned hard for both Lee and Innamorato, just as he did for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024, when the party ticket showed notable strength in the Pittsburgh area. “I think this is a pivotal moment in Democratic politics. I believe that the movement that we started is evidence of that,” says Gainey. “The city and the county held strong in the presidential election. We got our turnout. For Vice President Harris, we matched what we did for Biden in 2020. So, we continue to do our part here.… I think that’s why, right now, they’re targeted me in this race. They want to be able to say, ‘Listen, this movement is not real.’”

Republicans, Gainey says, don’t want a Democratic Party that is both firmly progressive and knows how to mobilize voters for critical elections. “They want to stop the movement,” the mayor says of the GOP donors. “They took over Washington. So, now, they are looking at mayors in blue states—[on the theory that] if they can take one out, they can take more women out, they can take more Black and brown mayors out. We can’t have that. We have to be able to stand up in this defining moment and say, ‘This is the direction that the Democratic Party is going!’”

That message has energized activists like Monica Ruiz, the executive director of Pittsburgh’s Casa San José community resource center, who appeared with the mayor at a March campaign event and declared, “Trump’s people know Pittsburgh won’t elect a Republican. So instead, they’re pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads lying about Mayor Ed Gainey’s record into our Democratic primary on behalf of a candidate they think will be easier to influence, because they know damn well that Mayor Gainey will never bow down [to the Republicans]. He’ll always protect the people of Pittsburgh against Donald Trump and Elon Musk.”