A look at Cherelle Parker and David Oh’s first encounter of the general election

With the Phillies’ playoff run and the Eagles back to their winning ways, we know it’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

But now is the time to make your plans for voting in the Nov. 7 election. You can find everything you need to know about how to vote on the City Commissioners website.

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll be talking about the first in-person meeting between the two mayoral candidates during the fall campaign, laying out the process for how the next mayor officially takes office, and running the numbers on the Philly GOP as it faces an existential crisis.

Please note: Philly will be better off if everyone has the facts they need to make an informed decision about this election. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

There are 14 days 🗓 until Election Day. Let’s get into it.

— Anna Orso and Sean Collins Walsh

The Inquirer’s editorial board, which operates separately from reporters like your faithful newsletter writers, invites candidates to come in for interviews before making endorsements.

Parker and Republican nominee David Oh visited the newsroom Friday to meet with the board, which allowed us to observe. And as it happens, the joint interview was the candidates’ first public event together during the general election campaign.

Oh has called for a series of debates. But Parker, who is expected to coast to victory in deep-blue Philly, has only agreed to one real debate, which will be broadcast by KYW Newsradio at 8 a.m. Thursday, and very few other joint appearances.

But if the candidates’ appearance with the editorial board was any indication, we’re not missing much in terms of fireworks or revelations. Both candidates are former City Council members and moderates within their respective parties. They had similar messages on some issues, disagreed over a few, and kept things cordial.

Here are the highlights:

Public safety: Both candidates stressed the need for the city to hire more cops, with a focus on having them do a better job of building relationships with the communities they police. Parker, however, reiterated her support of the controversial policing tactic known as stop-and-frisk, which Oh opposes.

76ers arena: One area of clear-cut disagreement between the candidates is the 76ers’ proposal to build a new arena in Center City. Oh is against it and said it will be detrimental to neighboring Chinatown, where community leaders have expressed fear that the mega-development will displace their community.

Parker hasn’t officially taken a side, but she never misses an opportunity to point out the project’s potential upside. The poorest big city in America, she told the editorial board, cannot afford to turn up its nose at a $1.55 billion economic development opportunity.

Character: Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas asked the candidates about character, pointing to episodes in their past that may give voters pause. First, Parker discussed her conviction for driving under the influence in 2011, when she was a state legislator. Parker said she learned from the experience and grew as a leader.

“It made me more resilient. I’m stronger today,” she said. “I fight harder today because it was a life experience.”

Oh was asked about the controversy over how he has characterized his military service over the years. But unlike Parker, contrition was not on his mind.

While running for Council in 2011, Oh apologized for calling himself a member of the Green Berets, the Army elite special forces unit. (Oh served in the 20th Special Forces Group of the Army National Guard. But he never saw combat and was not selected for the Special Forces Qualification Course that Green Beret veterans say is required to join their ranks.)

“I will return any contributions made to my campaign under the misrepresentation that I was ‘Special Forces,’ a ‘Green Beret’ or a ‘Special Forces Officer,’” Oh wrote in a 2011 apology. “Though I served in the 20th Special Forces Group, I was none of those things.”

Oh has apparently changed his tune again and is saying once more that he served as a Green Beret, in part because his unit was issued berets that were green. He doubled-down on that stance with the editorial board.

“I live with the fact that my military history has been maligned,” he said.

Click here to read more about Parker and Oh’s interview with the editorial board.

Parker and Oh will participate Thursday in the only actual “debate” of the general election campaign, and it won’t even be televised.

But Philly’s general election debates weren’t always a snooze. Take 1987, when incumbent Mayor W. Wilson Goode was running for reelection. His opponent was — you may have heard of him — Frank Rizzo, the erstwhile police commissioner and mayor who by the late ‘80s had switched his party affiliation to Republican.

The campaign was heated, and so was their only debate. Here’s how then-Philly Daily News writer Ron Goldwyn summed it up: “The two best known politicians in Philadelphia spent last night being rude to each other.”

Some highlights:

🥊 Rizzo called Goode a liar for failing to disclose that he’d received free suits from a clothing workers union. Then Goode called Rizzo a “certified” liar for failing a Daily News-sponsored lie detector test about an alleged political deal in 1973.

🥊 Both candidates said solving the city’s “trash crisis” was a key priority. (The more things change, eh?) Goode said that he expected to garner Council support to build a trash-to-steam plant at the Navy Yard. Rizzo said of his own plan: “City Council won’t run this city. Frank Rizzo will.” OK, then.

🥊 Rizzo had several more zingers, including hitting Goode repeatedly for his handling of the MOVE bombing. Then, after Goode described himself as something of a workaholic, Rizzo suggested he “take off for a couple of months so the city will work.” Goode went on to be reelected, winning nearly 57% of the vote.

Mayor Jim Kenney is set to leave office in January, when the winner of the race between Parker and Oh will take over. But when exactly does that transition occur, and how does it work?

Here’s what you need to know about the process, and how a quirk of the calendar will shake things up a bit this year:

🪩 When: The Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, which is like the Constitution for city government, sets the first Monday of January after a mayoral election as the start of each four-year term. This time, that will fall on Jan. 1, meaning Kenney will no longer be mayor after the ball drops in Times Square. The next mayor is usually sworn in during a special inaugural meeting of City Council that Monday morning.

🏛️ Where: The special Council meeting is traditionally held at the Academy of Music, but Council and the next mayor may pick a different venue. Kenney, for instance, had his second swearing-in ceremony at The Met on North Broad Street.

🗳️ Who: The inauguration ceremony isn’t just for the mayor. All 17 City Council members will take oaths of office for their new four-year terms. Additionally, they will vote on the Council rules and on their Council president. (Council President Darrell L. Clarke isn’t running for reelection, and we hear that Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson has secured the votes to replace him.)

🗓️ Twist: Because the first Monday of January will be New Years Day, that means the inauguration’s usual time would conflict with the Mummers Parade. Clarke has consequently scheduled the inauguration ceremony for Tuesday, Jan. 2. That means the next mayor will technically hold the office for about a day and a half before they are publicly sworn in.

😶 But: The Charter requires elected officials to take an oath before he or she can use the powers of the office, such as making appointments or signing executive orders.

🗣️ Oath: The oath, however, does not have to take place in public. If they want, the next mayor can be sworn in at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1 so long as they have a witness. That would make the inauguration largely symbolic. But it would enable the new administration to get started right away.

📖 Solemnly: If you’re curious, here’s the oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth and the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter and that I will discharge the duties of [the office] with fidelity.”

Click here to read more about Clarke’s decision to schedule the inauguration for Jan. 2.

We’ve talked before about how this election will be a big test for the GOP as it faces the possibility that it could lose its presence on City Council.

We took a look at the city’s Republican Party to explain how it lost power over the years and what its leaders say they’re doing to avoid extinction.

Here are three numbers that tell the story of the Philly GOP:

115,000: That’s the number of registered Republicans in Philadelphia who would for the first time in modern history have no representative on Council if three of the GOP’s candidates lose. For context, there are nearly seven times as many registered Democrats (775,000). And there are more people in Philadelphia registered as independent or third-party members (135,000) than there are Republicans, which has only been the case since 2017.

600: That’s the approximate number of Republican committeepeople in Philadelphia. The Democratic party has more than 3,000. Committeepeople are the foot soldiers who register voters and build the party apparatus. GOP party chair Vince Fenerty said recruiting more committeepeople is a key priority and that 600 is “nowhere near” enough.

13.2%: That’s the share of votes won by Melissa Murray Bailey, the Republican nominee for mayor in 2015, the year Democrat Jim Kenney ran for his first term. It was the largest victory spread in modern Philadelphia history.

🧮 The bottom line: Philly’s Republican Party leadership knows they have work to do if they want to be relevant again. Dive into our story for more on why the chair says Trump and the national party aren’t helping.

During the primary this spring, The Inquirer’s editorial board — seen above during last week’s interview with Parker and Oh — didn’t endorse either of the candidates who are now duking it out in the general election.

Oh ran unopposed for the GOP nomination, so there was no need to get involved there. And in the crowded Democratic primary, the board went with former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, who finished second. But it also threw in some nice words for the eventual winner, saying Parker had “the grit and passion to go with a record of accomplishment.”

That’s a wrap for this week, folks. It’s pretty wild that next week’s edition will be our last newsletter before Election Day. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

— Anna and Sean