Cherelle Parker Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia

Following an unusually crowded and expensive primary, Cherelle Parker, a former City Council member who campaigned on hiring more police, won the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia mayor on Tuesday night, emerging from a field of contenders who had vied to be seen as the rescuer of a struggling and disheartened city.

If she wins in November, which is all but assured in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than seven to one, Ms. Parker will become the city’s 100th mayor, and the first woman to hold the job.

Of the five mayoral hopefuls who led the polls in the final stretch, Ms. Parker, 50, was the only Black candidate, in a city that is over 40 percent Black. She drew support from prominent Democratic politicians and trade unions, and was often compared to Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, bucking the party’s progressives with pledges to hire hundreds of police officers and bring back what she has called constitutional stop-and-frisk.

She said that many of her proposed solutions had roots in “middle neighborhoods” — working and middle-class areas that have been struggling in recent years to hold off decline.

“They know it’s not Cherelle engaging in what I call ‘I know what’s best for you people’ policymaking, but it’s come from the ground up,” Ms. Parker said on Tuesday morning at a polling place in her home base of northwest Philadelphia.

Solutions should come from the community, she said, “not people thinking they’re coming in to save poor people, people who never walked in their shoes or lived in a neighborhood with high rates of violence and poverty. I’ve lived that.”

Her Republican opponent in the November general election is David Oh, a former City Council member.