Why Cherelle Parker’s relationship with Kenyatta Johnson could make or break her agenda

Since Cherelle Parker won the race for Philadelphia mayor in November, a man who could play an outsized role in advancing her agenda has had a consistent presence alongside her: City Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson, the next Council president.

That includes at multiple news conferences and during her election night victory party, when she summoned him to her side.

“I know it makes for good theater, I will call it, to see a City Council and a mayor not get together, not be able to move this city forward by working in a collaborative way,” she said during a rousing speech. “But if it’s God’s will, we are not going to use that as our strategy, we will not let divide-and-conquer be the tool that people use to stop us from working together.”

The public displays of alignment demonstrate a broader reality: Both Johnson and Parker, herself a former Council member, are longtime politicians well aware that their relationship as leaders of the executive and legislative branches is one of the most important in municipal government.

Recent history has shown that a mayor without the support of the Council president — who controls the flow of legislation — can be stymied at every turn. Council members often want the mayor on their side to back their spending priorities or help provide quality services in their districts.

It all makes for something of a codependent partnership.

Johnson and Parker have worked alongside one another as elected officials for nearly 15 years. Both are scheduled to be sworn into their new offices on Jan. 2, marking a period of significant turnover at the top rungs of city government.

“We’re working together on a common mission to move the city of Philadelphia forward. People are looking to us for leadership,” Johnson said during a news conference this month. “So to the mayor-elect, I pledge my support and most importantly, it’s not a me thing, it’s a we thing.”

The relationship between former Mayor Ed Rendell and then-Council President John F. Street holds a special place in Philadelphia political lore.

When Rendell first took office in 1992, the city was on the brink of financial collapse. Street was elected by his peers to become Council president the same year. Rendell started what has since become a mayoral tradition: Every Tuesday, he walked from the mayor’s office on the second floor of City Hall to Street’s office on the fourth floor.

The two were initially strange bedfellows — Rendell a charismatic cheerleader type; Street the master of legislating and policy. But they worked closely to move complex budgets through Council, with Street often keeping more rebellious members at bay, and turned the city into a story of urban renewal.

The clearest example of what happens when the relationship deteriorates came two decades later.

Street served two terms as mayor, and then in 2007, Michael A. Nutter won a competitive Democratic primary to succeed him by running as the anti-Street, vowing to restore ethics to City Hall. Council repeatedly obstructed Nutter’s reform-oriented agenda, including twice killing a proposed soda tax and refusing to undertake his pension reform plan.

Outgoing Council President Darrell L. Clarke, a former top aide to Street, ascended to the role in 2012, and Nutter’s second term was marked by years of more tension and discord that spilled into public view. Nutter’s relationship with Clarke and Council soured to the point where he couldn’t get a single member to introduce a signature piece of legislation to privatize Philadelphia Gas Works.

Council refused to even hold a hearing on the proposal, an unprecedented move to block a top mayoral priority. Nutter at the time called it “quite possibly the biggest cop-out” in recent Philly history.

Clarke said in a recent interview that he didn’t think their public sniping was “productive.”

“I wish we could have done that behind closed doors, but the personalities at the time didn’t allow it,” he said.

» READ MORE: Outgoing Council President Darrell Clarke reflects on his career in Philly politics

Outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney was elected in 2015 and had a better relationship with Clarke, whom he’d served alongside in Council for years. The two worked together in 2016 to pass Kenney’s signature sweetened beverage tax, which he said recently remains his proudest legislative achievement.

Kenney said in an interview last month that his biggest piece of advice for Parker is “maintain a good relationship with Council.” He said it can be complicated for a mayor to nurture the relationship with Council when 17 members want the administration to fund their sometimes divergent priorities.

“Make sure you maintain that within reason,” Kenney said as if speaking to Parker, “because you’re going to get inundated with stuff you can’t do.”

Through a monthslong internal campaigning process, Parker didn’t endorse a candidate for Council president. But Johnson’s chief opponent, Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., had endorsed Parker in the Democratic mayoral primary while Johnson stayed neutral, leading insiders to surmise that Parker favored Jones.

» READ MORE: How Kenyatta Johnson won the race to become Philly’s next City Council president

But Parker and Johnson have a long-standing relationship that Johnson touted during the race for Council president. From 2009 to 2012, they worked together in the state House when both were representatives and, for a time, Parker chaired the Philadelphia delegation. Parker often emphasizes her experience in Harrisburg as a reason why she can leverage support from lawmakers outside the city.

Johnson took office in Council in 2012, representing parts of South and Southwest Philadelphia, and Parker joined him in 2016, representing Northwest Philadelphia.

While they didn’t come from the same geographic political factions, they showed similarly centrist ideologies. Both have showed openness to charter school expansion, and often sided with longtime residents concerned about gentrification amid development battles in their districts.

Johnson and Parker also each have allies in organized labor and close ties to politically powerful unions like those that represent service workers.

And Parker, like most every other member of Council, stood by Johnson as he faced two federal trials and a yearslong investigation. Last year, a jury acquitted him and his wife, Dawn Chavous, on charges that they accepted bribes and used his position of power to help a nonprofit maintain real estate in his district.

» READ MORE: Inside Kenyatta Johnson's political comeback

Parker appeared twice at pretrial vigils to pray for Johnson. And Chavous, a consultant, is a member of Parker’s transition team, serving as the vice chair of a subcommittee on education.

Clarke said he anticipates Parker and Johnson will work well together, particularly on public safety. Johnson is a longtime antiviolence advocate, while Parker ran on a tough-on-crime platform and pledged to end “lawlessness” in the city.

“The policy and programs in place will drive the relationship to a good place, because they concur on most of the stuff that’s been put out there,” he said. “And both of them are neighborhood-conscious people that believe in significant investment in neighborhoods.”