What kind of mayor does Cherelle Parker want to be?

It sounds at first like a laudable if unexceptional plan, something many mayors have promised to do.

Democratic mayoral nominee Cherelle Parker wants to create advisory councils of industry heavyweights, faith leaders, and policy stakeholders to help guide her administration if she wins the general election.

But there’s an underlying message in Parker’s recruitment of stakeholders across the city: Get on board now — or forfeit your right to complain later.

“I need a structure and an organized vehicle that has anyone who has a nickel in the quarter in that industry at the table, so no one is left out,” Parker said in an interview last week at her campaign headquarters in Stenton. “You may not like the ultimate outcome of the decision, but I will never give anyone the opportunity to say, ‘I have a nickel in the quarter, and this administration didn’t even bother to hear me.’”

The plan is emblematic of how Parker operated as a legislator in Harrisburg and on City Council, and how she would likely govern as mayor if she defeats Republican David Oh in the Nov. 7 general election, as she’s heavily favored to do given the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

Parker, 51, is known as a dealmaker. But instead of forcing her will on others during negotiations, her style is to force everyone to the table, whether they like it or not, and to stay at the table until the deal is done.

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That approach has led to some of her most notable accomplishments, as well as some head-scratching moments. It’s also opened her up to a narrative — fueled by her second-to-none credentials as a Philadelphia political insider — that her vision doesn’t go far enough in challenging the status quo. After all, plans tend to get watered down once everyone has a say.

Parker’s insistence on hearing from numerous stakeholders also reflects a core aspect of her personality. She is a meticulous planner, often to the frustration of her own staff, and she abhors surprises.

“I need structure,” she said. “I have watched leaders who prefer and thrive in chaos and confusion. Some people do well with that. My mind doesn’t work that way.”

Kyle Darby, a lobbyist who worked as a policy adviser on Parker’s primary campaign, said “there’s no detail that’s too small for her.”

“She’s not someone that feels comfortable when she’s in the dark about things,” he said. “Some leaders like plausible deniability or some leaders don’t care for some of the details. She is not that.”

In one of her first extensive interviews since winning the Democratic nomination in May, Parker said her insistence on structure and preparation has everything to do with her background. She is on track to become Philadelphia’s first female mayor, and she overcame a series of tragedies in her childhood, including being raised by a single mother who died when she was 11.

“I am Black, I am a woman who comes from humble beginnings, and I don’t have the luxury of giving a knee-jerk reaction that will be accepted coming from someone else,” she said. “My homework always has to be done.”

Philadelphia mayors are often remembered for their strengths and weaknesses. And for decades, perceptions about the primary failure of the outgoing mayor have aligned with a defining strength of his successor.

Ed Rendell was a cheerleader for the city in one of its darkest hours, but he was biased toward Center City and big business. John Street then focused on neighborhoods, but his administration suffered corruption scandals. Michael Nutter was a reformer, but he couldn’t get along with Council. Jim Kenney pushed major initiatives through Council, but he appeared to run out of gas when crisis struck and the city needed an energetic leader.

Energy would not be a problem in a Parker administration.

“I’m naturally a high-energy person. I literally was a cheerleader,” Parker said. “I was the athlete, I ran track, and I was a cheerleader.”

Parker speaks with a booming voice, and says she would “not apologize” for so many things — her upbringing, her tough-on-crime policies, her thoughts on the parking tax — that it has become a joke among political insiders.

And she doesn’t want to be compared to Philadelphia’s first 99 mayors.

“There is some added value that I can take from each of them,” she said. “But because no one like me has ever gotten an opportunity to get as close to doing this — if the people decided to choose me — no one should expect me to act like and or be like, walk, talk, govern like any of them.”

Parker keeps a tight inner circle. Since winning the primary, she has been making decisions in consultation with two key staffers: Sinceré Harris, who left a job at the White House to manage the campaign; and senior adviser Aren Platt, a political consultant with experience in state politics who was involved in the earliest conversations about Parker’s campaign.

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Parker, a former Council staffer and a ward leader, has an enormous network of political relationships. She rewards those who have stayed loyal to her, and like many politicians, she has a reputation for remembering those who don’t.

Lately, Parker seems to be going out of her way to be magnanimous. She appeared at an event last week with Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson, the only veteran Council member who did not endorse her primary run. And she’s spoken favorably about the 76ers’ plan to build a Center City arena, despite the team apparently funding a “dark money” group that backed Jeff Brown in the primary.

“A narrative that has been promoted that I’ve heard from people is that Cherelle Parker is vengeful, and she holds grudges,” she said. “And nothing could be further from the truth. We can’t afford to hold a grudge about something that occurred in the primary election. We have to think bigger, quite frankly, stand taller.”

As a legislator, Parker rose to leadership positions and thrived behind the scenes.

In 2014, when she was chair of the Philadelphia delegation to the state House, the city was struggling to recover from the recession and needed a cash infusion for schools. Parker played a key role in legislation that authorized the city to create a new cigarette tax for that purpose, no simple task in a GOP-controlled legislature.

Parker knew that Republicans would use any hint of division among Philly leaders as an excuse not to pass the legislation. At the time, City Council President Darrell Clarke and then-Mayor Nutter were barely on speaking terms.

Parker cajoled them into signing a joint letter to state lawmakers, who approved of the new tax, and the schools opened on time in September.

“She’s a convener. Everybody knows that. She’s been in this business for a long time,” Darby said.

But Parker’s insistence on forging a compromise with all sides is also visible in her defeats.

Parker in 2021 pushed for a cut to the city parking tax. She was hoping to strike a bargain between wealthy parking lot owners who would benefit from the cut and Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents lot attendants.

The deal: Council would lower the tax from 25% to 17% if the lot operators improved pay for their workers.

For Parker, it would have been a win-win. But progressives opposed cutting taxes, urbanists didn’t want to encourage car-friendly infrastructure, and many of her Council colleagues saw it as an unnecessary distraction during high-stakes budget talks.

Parker abandoned the bill when she couldn’t get all lot operators on board, but it’s not clear that it could have passed.

It was a bad day for Parker, but it helped to cement her relationship with Local 32BJ. The union often supports more progressive candidates than Parker, a centrist, but it had worked with her for years.

In this year’s primary, she won their endorsement, a major coup that boosted her and likely deprived candidates running to her left of needed resources.

Parker admits that her insistence on preparation can have downsides, including making her appear inaccessible.

As a candidate and a Council member, Parker was far from the least accessible of her peers, and she almost always responded to media inquiries. But she almost never responded quickly.

“You don’t know how many times I fought with my team when [reporters] called and they want to call back in two minutes,” she said. “No, I’m not calling back right now. I asked for some information — can you please go and get the information I asked? Let me read it. And then I will give you what my response is.”

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Parker’s commitment to accessibility is already being questioned. Last month, a campaign staffer accidentally forwarded to a journalist an internal discussion about how to handle media inquiries that included demeaning comments about smaller and diverse news outlets.

Parker apologized for her staff’s actions and has said the episode doesn’t reflect who she would be as mayor. Others have doubts, given her lack of public appearances over the summer and her team’s reluctance to agree to debates with Oh.

As she looks toward January, Parker is asking Philadelphians to judge her not by how she handles the media, but by how she changes the city.

“I want you to be able to say, ‘Well, you know what, I see something different in my community or my neighborhood,’” she said. “Not because Cherelle gave a speech, not because something she said, but because people can tangibly touch it, see it, taste it and feel it.”