Cherelle Parker is still recovering from dental emergency following Democratic nomination for mayor
The Democratic nominee for mayor was hospitalized Tuesday for a dental emergency when she found out that she won the hotly contested race.
Cherelle Parker is still recovering from a dental emergency three days after she won the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia mayor and missed her own victory party, her campaign said Friday.
Parker is “feeling better every day,” her campaign said in a statement. She made a surprise appearance Friday afternoon at an awards program hosted by the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, where she spoke briefly and said: “I can’t wait to keep my foot on the gas, and it’s on. That’s why I got out the bed today when they told me not to, to get down here to see you.”
The former City Council member was hospitalized Tuesday for a dental emergency when she found out that she won the nomination. She was released later that night. Parker has conducted two interviews by phone — one with The Inquirer on Wednesday and one on WURD 96.1 FM/900 AM Thursday morning.
During the radio interview, she apologized “to everyone” and explained that she had put off getting a fractured root canal fixed since February because she didn’t want to be pulled off the campaign trail. She ended up requiring an emergency procedure Friday, and severe tooth pain as a result landed her in the hospital Tuesday.
She said her key goal now is to “unify.”
“I don’t care who you voted for in this election,” she said. “We go through a Democratic primary because that is the democratic structure that we work within. That’s democracy in action. We did, and now it’s over, and we have to unify around solving the problems that were front and center during this election.”
In November, she’ll take on Republican David Oh in the general election. Given Philadelphia’s heavily Democratic electorate, Parker is well-positioned to prevail and become the first female mayor in city history. The winner of the general election will take office in January.
While the race for the nomination was hotly contested and polls showed a neck-and-neck race among five top contenders in the final weeks, Parker ended up winning with 33% of the vote and a commanding 10-point lead over the second-place finisher, former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart.
Parker also came out on top of progressive Helen Gym, who was supported by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and a long list of left-leaning groups, as well as Allan Domb and Jeff Brown, two independently wealthy businessmen who each poured millions into their own campaigns.
Organized labor and a bevy of Democratic elected officials backed Parker, undoubtedly giving her a boost in election-day turnout efforts. And through a moderate ideology and a compelling personal story, Parker appealed to working-class voters across the city and was strongly favored by Black and Latino voters. Democrats in more affluent, whiter neighborhoods split their votes among Parker’s opponents.
» READ MORE: The voters who propelled Cherelle Parker to victory
Only about 30% of registered Democrats voted in the primary, so Parker was nominated by fewer than 85,000 people in a city of 1.6 million residents. That’s the lowest winning primary total dating to at least the 1970s, no surprise given the nature of the divided field.
Parker has acknowledged she has work to do to unify a deeply divided city that’s in the throes of any number of crises, most notably persistent gun violence that’s left a large swath of residents feeling unsafe.
If she wins and takes office in January, Parker said her first priority will be implementing her community policing plan, which calls for hiring 300 new cops and making sure more officers are walking the beat and interacting with community members in then neighborhoods they police.
“We’ve got to work on implementing our comprehensive neighborhood safety and community policing plan,” she said in a Wednesday interview with The Inquirer. “We are going to get our community-based officers walking on our streets and riding bikes. We’re gonna get smarter with technology and forensics [and] support for those anti-violence organizations.”
Inquirer staff writer Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.