Who’s running for mayor of Philadelphia? What to know about Cherelle Parker, David Oh, and the election.

The two candidates running this fall to become the 100th mayor of Philadelphia know each other well.

Democrat Cherelle Parker and Republican David Oh served on City Council together until resigning to run in the race to replace outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney.

Philadelphia has not had a competitive general election in a mayor’s race in two decades. Oh is hoping to change that this year, but he faces long odds against Parker thanks to Philadelphia’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

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Here’s what you need to know about the November general election:

Parker, 50, has lived in Northwest Philadelphia for almost her entire life.

A West Oak Lane native, she was raised in part by her grandparents and by a single mother who died when Parker was 11 years old.

While at the Parkway Program high school in Center City, she won a citywide oration contest that led her to meet Councilmembers Augusta Clarke and Marian Tasco, trailblazing Black female politicians who took Parker under their wings.

Parker graduated from Lincoln University and worked as a teacher for one year in New Jersey before joining Tasco’s office, where she eventually became the top staffer.

She won a special election for state representative in 2005 and served 10 years in Harrisburg, including a stint as chair of the Philadelphia election. She was convicted of driving under the influence after being pulled over and arrested in Germantown in 2011.

Parker replaced Tasco on Council in 2016, and was elected majority leader in 2020. She represented the Northwest Philadelphia-based 9th District.

She has a 10-year-old son, Langston, and she co-parents with her ex-husband Ben Mullins, an official with the operating engineers union.

If she wins in November, Parker will become the first female mayor of Philadelphia.

Oh, 63, is a former prosecutor and veteran who grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, where he still lives, to a Korean American family. His father was a pastor.

Oh has had an unusual political career, getting elected to Council three times despite having few fans in either the GOP or Democratic machines. He held one of two at-large seats that are effectively set aside for members of minority parties or independents and have traditionally been held by Republicans.

He succeeded in large part by championing the interests of disparate communities across the city, rather than just the Republican strongholds in Northeast and South Philadelphia. He has appealed to veterans and immigrant communities and has enjoyed some support from labor.

That unusual coalition allowed him to survive the 2019 election, when the progressive Working Families Party attempted to win both minority party Council seats but were unable to unseat Oh.

During his 2011 campaign and previous unsuccessful runs for Council, Oh exaggerated his military service in the Maryland National Guard by implying that he had been a member of the Army Special Forces, or Green Berets, when he had not. He later apologized.

In 2018, Oh was investigated by the Department of Human Services for suspected child abuse after accidentally breaking his son’s collarbone while practicing martial arts. Investigators cleared Oh, but he was nonetheless outraged by the investigation and held hearings chastising the agency.

He graduated from Dickinson College and from Rutgers University’s law school. He lives with his wife, Heesun Oh, on the same block where he grew up. They have four children.

If he pulls off an upset in the general election, Oh would become the first Asian American mayor of Philadelphia.

Oh and Parker had very different paths to winning their parties’ respective nominations for this year’s mayoral election.

Oh waited until February to resign from Council and enter the mayor’s race, and he won the GOP primary unopposed in May.

Parker resigned in September 2021 and emerged in a crowded Democratic field that at one point appeared to have as many as eight serious candidates. She ended up pulling away from the field to finish with about 33% of the vote, nearly 10 percentage points better than second-place finisher Rebecca Rhynhart, a former city controller.

With a tough-on-crime message and a compelling personal story, Parker won the endorsements of scores of Democratic Party ward leaders and elected officials, and she dominated her competitors in Black and brown neighborhoods.

The general election campaign will ramp up after Labor Day, but it appears that the two candidates will be largely talking past each other this fall.

As political underdogs often do, Oh has called for a series of debates between the two nominees. Sparring on stage with Parker would give Oh more exposure and give him the opportunity to try to force Parker into a verbal misstep.

» READ MORE: Here’s what Cherelle Parker has been up to since winning the Democratic nomination for mayor

Parker, however, has not committed to a debate, and in July she said the focus of her campaign will instead be “on earning the support of the voters of the city.”

Parker, whose signature community policing plan calls for hiring hundreds of more cops, is viewed as a political moderate. That will make the road to victory even more difficult for Oh, who may have been able to win over centrist Democrats if a more progressive nominee emerged from the primary.

Philadelphians can vote in the mayor’s race and other municipal elections in person on Nov. 7 or by mail in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

City residents can register to vote, check the status of their registrations, or apply for a mail ballot via the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ website.

The deadline to register in time for this year’s general election is Oct. 23.