Is there a front-runner in the Philly mayor’s race?
The race is still very much in flux, but some candidates are making moves to separate themselves from the field.
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Welcome to the second edition of The Inquirer’s newsletter on the 2023 Philadelphia mayor’s race. March will be a crucial period, one that will separate the viable contenders from the also-rans.
This week, we’ll answer a complicated question on lots of people’s minds: Is there a front-runner? We’ll also take a look at what some Gen Z voters think about the election, use data to explore the Philly electorate, and meet the longest-serving mayor in city history.
There are 77 days 🗓 until the primary. Let’s dive in.
— Anna Orso and Sean Collins Walsh ( @anna_orso and @sbcmw)
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Wait, is there a front-runner?
Mayoral elections aren’t like high-profile Senate or presidential races. We don’t have tons of polling to gauge how people are feeling about the candidates, so it can be hard to say who is pulling away from the pack in this huge field. (You may have seen a poll floating around that was put out by Jeff Brown’s campaign and says Brown is in the lead. Go figure.)
What we can offer is some conventional wisdom, which suggests three candidates are in the strongest positions right now.
Brown has been running television commercials for the longest amount of time, which could give him a big leg up. 🔑 He’s also won some major labor endorsements, which separates him from the other candidate spending big on TV early, Allan Domb. Only time will tell if Brown and Domb end up like Tom Wolf, a relative unknown who spent big earlier to win the 2014 governor’s race, or Tom Knox, who did the same but lost in the 2007 race for mayor.
Former Councilmember Helen Gym has a fervent base of support, and many of her supporters won’t vote for anyone else. Progressives have coalesced around her and will undoubtedly launch a strong voter education and turnout program. (Gym was within striking distance of Brown in that poll he put out, a strong showing given she hasn’t run any TV ads.)
While Brown and Gym have grabbed more headlines, former Councilmember Cherelle Parker picked up what she called a “game-changing” endorsement last week when a coalition of building trades unions backed her. The group spent millions to elect Jim Kenney mayor in 2015.
We can’t emphasize enough: It’s early! We’ve seen come-from-behind wins in this city before, and many voters are likely undecided. What could sway them? Read more here about how millions of dollars are expected to be spent by outside groups trying to influence the race. 🔑
Spotlight on: The youngest voters
“[Politicians] all say that they will win the election and change the city, but to me, that’s lies, because I think you guys just make promises you can’t keep.”
That’s what high school senior Alyssa Perren said last week when four mayoral candidates appeared at Paul Robeson High School in West Philadelphia. About 75 students peppered them with questions about crime, public education, and their lack of trust in elected officials.
A significant chunk of the students had recently turned 18 or will soon, meaning they can cast their first-ever ballot in the May primary. Read our dispatch from Robeson for more about how the candidates tried to court some of Philadelphia’s youngest voters.
The 50th mayor: Wharton is Philly’s (reluctantly) longest serving chief executive
Kenney has taken a lot of heat — from constituents and now mayoral candidates — for saying he’d be happy 🔑 when he was no longer mayor. Robert Wharton might know what that’s like. He was mayor for 14 years — elected 16 times from 1798 to 1824 (back then terms were one year, and mayors were elected by the City Council).
And Wharton wasn’t particularly interested in politics. He declined to run for reelection several times but kept getting pulled back in, including while serving as a colonel in the War of 1812. He got word he’d been reelected while on the base and resigned his post to head back to Philadelphia.
What else do we know about him?
Wharton served on Philadelphia City Council from 1792 to 1795 and became an alderman in 1796.
He’s famous for quelling several riots — a sailor’s riot at the harbor and a prisoner’s riot at Walnut Street Prison, the prison that predated Eastern State Penitentiary.
He was originally trained as a hatter, a lucrative biz in the 1800s when everybody wore a hat, but he never really worked in the trade.
And a hat tip to Julie Wertheimer for correctly guessing Wharton in the last newsletter.
Want to guess which ex-mayor we’ll feature next? Henry Avenue in Roxborough was named in his honor. Email us the answer if you know.
— Julia Terruso
Data dive: The six types of Philly Democratic voters
🎤 This week, we’re going to pass the mic to our colleague Aseem Shukla, a journalist with our data-driven storytelling team, for a look into what past election results say about Philly voters.
Candidates in this year’s crowded mayoral field need to reach voters and communities that are likely to find their messages appealing.
That gave us the idea to try to understand how different Philly neighborhoods vote, so we used an algorithm to group precincts based on past results.
What we found was fascinating: There are six groups of Philly Democrats who tend to vote for the same candidates, and those groups align closely to differences in race and class:
Pro-establishment Black voters
Less politically affiliated Black voters
White working-class moderate voters
Wealthy, liberal white voters
Younger, progressive white voters
Poor voters and Latino voters
To identify the groups, we fed the last eight years of primary results (2015-2022) into an algorithm. We wanted to find patterns purely based on how precincts voted. The algorithm wasn’t told anything about race or class, but it happened upon those patterns anyway.
Demographically similar precincts often vote together regardless of where they are in the city. Dive into the maps with us.
What we’re reading
City Council President Darrell L. Clarke is retiring. The 40-year City Hall veteran has reshaped Council and built up its power. His decision not to run for reelection sets off multiple succession battles and adds to a period of massive turnover in City Hall. 🔑
The super PAC backing Jeff Brown put Tom Wolf in ad. The former governor’s people told the Inquirer they’re not fans of the ad.
There’s another mayor’s race going on. It’s in Chicago, and one of the front-runners is Paul Vallas, who was once the polarizing “CEO” of Philadelphia’s public school system.
🧠 Trivia time 🧠
City Council president Darrell Clarke announced this week that he won’t seek reelection, meaning the mayor and the city’s top legislator will change at the same time. When’s the last time that happened?
A) 1952
B) 1972
C) 1980
D) 2000
Find out if you know the answer. 🔑
Scenes from the campaign trail
It’s still petition season! Candidates for mayor (like Gym, above) and City Council (like incumbent Jamie Gauthier, in the pink hat) are asking residents for support and signatures. Candidates who garner enough siggys officially get their names on the ballot.
Thank you so much for joining us for this week’s edition of The 100th Mayor. We’ll see you next Tuesday, which happens to be the petition deadline. We predict a couple candidates will drop like flies.
- Anna and Sean