Mayor Parker made the most of her DNC trip, even with no speaker slot and recent political mishaps

CHICAGO — Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker gave political pump-up speeches, attended a housing policy forum, and got VIP treatment for Vice President Kamala Harris’ history-making moment while at the Democratic National Convention this past week.

As the first Black woman to hold her office, Parker said she felt inspired and energized as she watched Harris accept the Democratic nomination to accomplish the same feat for the highest office in the nation.

“It was also very pragmatic,” Parker said after Harris’ speech accepting her party’s nomination for president. “It was connected — connected to real people and what they are going through in their daily lives.”

Parker attended the convention as a “party leader or elected official” delegate, more commonly known as a superdelegate, and she stood next to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as he delivered the state’s votes to Harris in a ceremonial roll call vote.

Though she did not have a speaking slot on the convention’s main stage, the week was an opportunity for the mayor to network with other Democrats and build relationships that will, should Harris win the White House, be important for securing federal resources for Philadelphia, Parker said.

Parker’s political team is in a moment of transition, and she doesn’t have any campaign staffers. She was joined in Chicago by a handful of senior administration officials, including Chief Deputy Mayors Aren Platt and Sinceré Harris, who took vacation days and paid their own expenses, Platt said. A special assistant and the mayor’s traveling security detail also made the trip, and their expenses were paid by the city.

Parker made appearances at a handful of events that take place before and after the prime-time convention programming.

She spoke before the Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations; Emerge, a political group that helps Democratic women running for office; and Black Leadership Pennsylvania, a new nonprofit aiming to boost turnout in this year’s elections.

She attended a “midnight brunch” hosted by Higher Heights, which boosts Black female candidates, and as a former cheerleader well-known for her oratorical skills, Parker had no problem convening a Harris pep rally wherever she went.

“Did y’all know the mayor of Philadelphia used to carry pompoms?” she asked the crowd of about 200 people at a Pennsylvania delegation breakfast on Monday. “I was a cheerleader for a little group called the Oak Lane Wildcats.”

Parker led the delegates in chants as they ate eggs at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, and she modified some of her Philly-centric campaign slogans for the statewide audience, saying Pennsylvania will become “the safest, cleanest, greenest — you know — commonwealth in the nation.”

In a rare nonpartisan setting, Parker also participated in a Wednesday panel on city housing policy alongside the mayors of San Diego and Columbus, Ohio.

The moderator, former Chicago housing official Marisa Novara, invited Parker in part because she heard of the mayor’s plan to build or preserve 30,000 new units of housing. Chicago, she noted, was able to build only 2,400 units when it obtained a windfall $1 billion allocation of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.

“So 30,000 is eye-popping,” Novara said at the event, which was hosted by the City Club of Chicago and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “How are you going to do it?”

Parker answered by hinting at a coming announcement about a major partnership involving “multiple sectors and multiple industries.”

“Local government makes a significant contribution,” Parker said, “but you have to look to the philanthropic community. We also have some other stakeholders — I don’t want to put the cart before the horse — who we will surprisingly be asking and they have agreed to make a substantial forward investment in this.”

The political carnival came at a time of transition for Parker’s own political operation. After her victory in last year’s mayoral election, many of the top staffers of her campaign joined the administration, including Platt and Harris.

Since January, the day-to-day operations of her campaign have been handled by lobbyist Will Dunbar, a member of Parker’s “kitchen cabinet” of unofficial advisers.

But Dunbar, who was helping the campaign on a voluntary basis, recently stepped away from that role and hasn’t been replaced. While Parker has consultants for communications and fundraising, she does not appear to have a point person for her political operation.

Parker said Dunbar needed to focus on his lobbying business.

“Will has been a valued friend to me, and let me just say that life is good right now [for Dunbar] and business is good and it’s growing,” she said.

Dunbar, however, said it was primarily Parker’s decision.

“I’m very much still an informal senior adviser but because of a different set of priorities, the mayor has decided to manage her politics herself,” he said. “My business has continued to grow as we work to support our clients.”

Dunbar’s exit in late July came just before two head-scratching moves by the campaign that involved Harris and the DNC.

Earlier this month, when Harris was vetting potential running mates, Parker’s campaign published a video that caused a stir because it appeared to imply that Harris had already selected Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Days later, Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

And on Monday, the first day of the convention, her campaign sent out a fundraising email saying she was “honored and excited to take the stage this week at the Democratic National Convention.” A campaign spokesperson later clarified that she was not speaking on the convention stage.

By the end of the week, those hiccups were far from Parker’s mind.

The mayor was invited to watch the speech from Harris’ own VIP suite in the United Center, sitting with such celebrities as Don Cheadle and Spike Lee, members of Harris’ family, and Walz.

It was a poetic bookend to a moment four years ago that helped both Parker and Harris rise to power. In 2020, when she was President Joe Biden’s running mate, Harris held her first in-person campaign stop in Philadelphia and made an appearance at an event in the backyard of Parker’s Mount Airy home.

The trip was a political boon for Parker, who was then a City Council member plotting her 2023 mayoral run. And it helped connect Parker to Sinceré Harris, who was then working on the presidential campaign and later left the White House to be Parker’s campaign manager. (She is not related to Kamala Harris.)

Parker said she was thinking about that day in 2020 while she watched Harris’ speech Thursday.

“It was packed with potential and pregnant with possibilities,” she said.