Critics say Philly mayoral candidate Jeff Brown is coming across as a ‘white savior.’ He says they’re being divisive.

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Jeff Brown’s pitch to Philadelphia voters has thus far been simple: He says he’s done the work, especially in majority-Black communities, and understands the crises affecting underserved people.

Never mind that Brown is white and lives in a tony Center City neighborhood — the longtime grocer who has never run for office before is running on his decades-long business background in largely Black neighborhoods, and says his efforts to hire people who were previously incarcerated put him on the front lines of the criminal justice reform movement.

Brown’s supporters see an obvious strength: He’s a businessman with a record of working in neighborhoods that lack access to healthy food. He’s allied himself with prominent Black surrogates who attest to his work, and he’s won the backing of labor unions with majority Black memberships.

Another way to look at it, according to some critics, is that he’s using Black communities to win an election. Some say he’s running as a “white savior,” someone who presents themselves as rescuing marginalized communities.

“We don’t need white politicians who don’t live in our neighborhoods to tell us, ‘I’m here for you, I feel your pain.’ That Bill Clinton sh— went out a long time ago,” said Asa Khalif, a racial justice activist. “You don’t feel our pain.”

Over the last several weeks, as Brown has appeared near the top of the crowded field in some polling, he’s taken heat from a variety of fronts on issues related to race, including from two Black opponents. Cherelle Parker said Brown benefited from “white-privilege wealth,” and Derek Green criticized Brown after he said that “people of color, especially Black people, have been [his] life’s work.”

Brown’s campaign took down a social media ad featuring a Black supporter seemingly comparing Brown to God. And pro-Brown commercials featuring Barack and Michelle Obama garnered negative attention from the former first lady’s office, who said the ads relied on old appearances to suggest an endorsement she never made.

The developments in the early months of the mayoral campaign underscore how race stands to play a prominent role amid the sprawling and diverse field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. And they show how some of the top contenders will navigate racial politics in a city where it’s nearly impossible to win without a sizable contingent of Black voters.

In an interview Thursday, Brown said that his critics are employing a “distasteful” political strategy that divides the electorate based on race.

“I don’t have any racial tensions or any racial problems,” Brown said, adding: “I‘ve gotten my directions in life from my customers and the communities I serve. They told me what they wanted, and I was their agent to figure out how to do it. And I’ve done, by most accounts, an exceptional job at that.”

Some see Brown’s messaging that highlights his connections with Black residents as pandering. Last month, his campaign took down a video that it shared on social media featuring a woman singing a gospel song. It included a Black supporter who invoked God and compared Brown to “Big Ma.”

“In our communities, we have people called grandmoms. We call them ‘Big Ma,’ where they can give you a hug or give you a meal,” the man said in the ad. “And that’s the kind of energy that Mr. Brown gives off.”

He continued: “One thing about God is, He’s always going to have your back no matter how hard it gets, and so will Mr. Brown.”

Khalif said the video was “despicable” and framed Brown as “the second coming.” Writer Ernest Owens wrote in Philadelphia Magazine that Brown “used vulnerable Black Philadelphians as props to position himself as a God-like savior for my community.”

» READ MORE: Philly’s largest municipal union has endorsed Jeff Brown for mayor in a surprise vote

But Brown’s supporters say the criticisms have been unfair. Ernest Garrett, president of AFSCME District Council 33, which represents 9,500 municipal workers, strongly defended Brown, saying he is responsive to critiques and has gone to great lengths to understand the needs of his members, a majority of whom are Black.

Garrett, who is Black, said Brown’s connection is authentic, and that he’s working to address his members’ concerns around economic security and public safety.

“A lot of these candidates running,” Garrett said, “none of them have a history with the Black community like Jeff.”

Still, Brown admits some of his comments have gotten lost in translation.

Last month, Brown appeared to take a tough-on-crime tone during a community meeting in a largely white Northeast Philadelphia neighborhood — different than the one he’d taken during an earlier forum in West Philadelphia. He criticized progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner and suggested he would push to repeal the city’s driving equality law, which is aimed at curbing racial bias in police stops.

Brown later reneged, saying he’s concerned about one provision in the bill but would not advocate to repeal it. He said besides backing off that position, his comments have been consistent and that, moving forward, he intends to “take less risks and be more clear.”

» READ MORE: Philly’s next mayor will inherit an unprecedented gun violence crisis. Here’s how it’s defining the race.

Communicating a plan that balances criminal justice reform with crime prevention can prove challenging for any candidate, said Mustafa Rashed, a Philadelphia-based political consultant.

“You have to be extremely gifted to have the conversation he wants to have,” Rashed said. “We’re in the midst of a public safety crisis, and who it impacts are mostly Black and brown citizens. To say you can solve that, it’s hard for it to not sound like you’re trying to save Black people from each other.”

Navigating racial politics is nothing new in Philadelphia, and candidates generally need to stitch together a multiracial coalition to win citywide, as nonwhite people make up a majority of the city. In 2015, Mayor Jim Kenney, who is white, won with the backing of Black elected officials and ward leaders.

George R. Burrell Jr., a Black Democrat who ran for mayor in 1991, said there’s nothing novel about Brown courting Black voters — but Brown has been doing so in a way that is more prominent than other candidates by running television ads for a longer period of time.

Both Brown’s campaign and an outside spending group supporting his candidacy ran ads featuring decade-old footage of Michelle Obama praising his efforts to craft public-private partnerships that brought grocery stores to underserved neighborhoods.

Some of Obama’s remarks were edited — Brown says for the sake of brevity. Obama’s office released a statement saying the ads were “manipulating old appearances that are out of context to suggest an endorsement.”

But Burrell said any candidate with that type of testimonial in their background would have tried to get it in front of voters.

“There’s nothing dishonest about that,” he said. “You hear Michelle Obama’s voice say his name, and people remember that, and the Obamas have a significant impact.”

Brown can’t legally coordinate with the outside group that funded some of the ads, but his campaign stopped running its version after it was on television for about 10 days.

Still, he stood by his campaign’s commercial, saying he worked closely with the Obama White House to scale up programs that would incentivize more grocers to open stores in underserved neighborhoods. He launched a nonprofit focused on food access in low-income neighborhoods, and in 2010, he was a guest at the State of the Union address.

“One of my best resumé pieces is the work I did with the Obamas, and I think the citizens need to know about that,” Brown said. “Why would we hide that?”