Derek Green is a likable facts-and-figures guy. Is the city ready for a mayor who plays nice? | Meet the candidates

Sun streamed through the quiet, corner coffee shop in Kensington as Derek Green walked in wearing a neatly tailored suit and approached the barista. “Hey, how ya doing?” he asked. “I’m Derek Green. I’m running for mayor.”

Green asked about the history of the business, which specializes in Vietnamese drinks and sandwiches, and delved into the menu offerings.

“What is an egg coffee?” he asked. Could he get it decaf?

Green, a former prosecutor and two-term City Council member, is an affable, detail-oriented guy with two decades of public service experience. He’s running for mayor in a crowded field, trying to introduce himself to Philadelphia voters one small business at a time as the May 16 Democratic primary approaches.

He often talks about his lived experience — as a Black man in Philadelphia and as a father of a son with autism — that he says makes him uniquely equipped to understand challenges people face.

“I understand those perspectives that a lot of people are dealing with,” he said. “We want to see criminal justice reform, we also want to see the city safe. This is a great city with a lot of great potential. But people think that the city has taken a step back.”

Green is running as a moderate Democrat with a tough-on-crime and business-friendly platform and a patient, careful demeanor well suited to a high-stress job. But his campaign has struggled to gain traction.

“Of all the candidates, he is the most consensus-building, thoughtful, careful, deliberate, methodical candidate that there is,” political consultant Mustafa Rashed said.

“And if the mayor’s primary was a take-home exam, Derek would win. But in a field this large ... you do have to be a little bombastic to break through and you’re almost better off if some people hate you than everyone generally sort of having a warm feeling about you.”

The question is whether the business-friendly moderate can chat up enough business owners and connect with enough voters to convince them that a wonkish, mild-mannered former legislator should be mayor of Philadelphia.

“My wife gets frustrated, she’ll hear from insiders and outsiders talking about who would be the best mayor and they’ll often say, ‘of course Derek’ but then the question is ‘what’s the path?’” Green said. “That’s why we’re doing these commercials, all these forums, going to all these small businesses, trying to be everywhere.”

Green was born in Philadelphia, though his family resettled in Bucks County and he graduated from Bensalem High School. Growing up, he had an interest in politics — he remembers his father coming home with a “Goode for Philadelphia” pin and watching Election Day returns like the Super Bowl.

He was always advanced for his age, said his mother, a retired Olney High School teacher. He played Dungeons & Dragons in elementary school and he tutored students in middle and high school.

“Derek is so very thorough about things,” said his mother, Anita Green. “He’s always been someone to sit down, talk, strategize, and collaborate with people.”

Before going into politics, Green got his law degree at Temple and worked in the securities division at the Delaware Attorney General’s Office. He then became an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, working criminal cases.

Now a resident of Mount Airy, Green, 52, is active in Philadelphia’s Northwest neighborhoods. He is a faithful churchgoer at Canaan Baptist Church and involved in several boards and nonprofits based in the area.

Green was leaving his job at the District Attorney’s office one night in 2000 when he sensed a police car following him into the parking garage.

He remembers exactly what he was wearing because he dressed down that day: a blue shirt and khakis, carrying an Ernst and Young tote bag.

Before he got to his car, the police lights and siren started blaring.

“I’ve got my DA badge in my left pocket but it’s dusk, it’s dark,” Green recalled. “I’m alone, I can’t just grab the badge and take it out.”

Eventually he was able to explain to the cops that he was coming from work and ask why he’d been stopped.

“You fit the description,” Green said the cops told him.

It’s a story Green repeats on the campaign trail to show that he has both a prosecutorial background to crack down on crime and the experience as a Black man who’s been racially profiled in Philadelphia to know the system needs reform.

“It’s those types of situations that African American men deal with all the time,” Green said. “I can relate. I’m in a suit Monday through Friday but on Saturdays afternoons … if I’m in sweatpants going to Home Depot, I’m not Derek Green, Council member, I’m just a six-foot Black man.”

Green, like most of the candidates running, has made fighting crime a central part of his agenda. He’s one of few candidates to say he’d fire Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw. He also released a plan to circumvent the district attorney’s office to prosecute gun cases, though it’s unclear whether he’d have the buy-in from the federal authorities.

His public safety plan includes adding 1,000 officers to the city’s police force.

Green stresses that he’s the only prosecutor in the race. He was at the DA’s office for two years before going to work briefly in the city’s Housing Department and then for Council.

A fellow former prosecutor, John Han, said Green was a prepared, respected prosecutor well liked by the judges.

“He was an aggressive district attorney but it was always tempered with exercising proper discretion and proper judgment,” Han said. “He never lost sight of the goal and the goal wasn’t to get convictions and put people in jail — the goal was to do what was right in each individual case and do justice.”

Green got his start in politics as a lawyer working for then-Councilmember Marian Tasco. He lost his first bid for Council in 2007 but was the top at-large vote-getter when he ran again in 2015. He quickly developed a reputation as a sharp legislator who did his homework.

“Derek was somebody even when he was a staff member, a lot of people turned to because he was an attorney and knows the law well,” former Councilmember Bill Greenlee said.

Greenlee said Green was extremely detail-oriented, getting into the weeds on bills and asking lots of questions. When one of Green’s bills was under consideration, he was helpful and accommodating about making adjustments, Greenlee said.

Being a facts-and-figures guy when some colleagues were more into speechifying can make it harder to get noticed, though.

On Council, Green was instrumental in negotiating for a business tax cut in last year’s city budget.

He authored a bill updating city standards on asbestos inspections following reports of environmental hazards in city schools, and advanced a bill to make funding to the Housing Trust Fund mandatory.

Some of his boldest ideas never made it out of Council. He fought to establish a public bank to help disadvantaged businesses access credit. The proposal made little progress, due in part to limitations in state law. He also pushed for widespread ethics and election reforms such as ranked-choice voting.

Ranked-choice voting is top of mind this year for Green in a race with 10 candidates, as he may be some voters’ second, third, or fourth pick.

“I think coming out of this election there’s gonna be a high appetite for that,” Green said.

Julian was on the brink of a meltdown. Green could see it in his son’s face as the boy stood at the top of the escalator at the King of Prussia Mall, paralyzed with fear.

His son, who is on the autism spectrum, gets different tics each month and a new one was escalators. He started repeating the word “escalator,” screaming it, as his parents tried to coax him over to an elevator, instead.

Green marvels when he tells the story at the fact that his son didn’t budge, and eventually took a step forward and descended.

“He wanted to fight through. He was screaming and upset but I can see the determination, too.” Green said. “He’s saying, ‘I’m not gonna be defeated. I’m gonna get through this.’”

Green sees many of the city’s problems through the lens of his 22-year-old son. He worries about a police run-in where Julian can’t communicate (he carries a card in his backpack that explains he has autism, in case he’s stopped). And Green is aware of the educational needs of students with developmental challenges, having fought to get autism support at his son’s elementary school.

In the first TV commercial about his campaign, Green put Julian front and center.

The ad shows Green helping get Julian ready for the day, shaving him and making him breakfast. In addition to showing Green as a father, it put developmental challenges at the forefront of a mayoral campaign.

“Running for office is challenging,” Green said. “But when I open the door at night, could be 9 p.m. or 11 p.m., he’ll say, ‘Hi, Daddy.’ He will stay up ‘til I open the door. It’s that type of motivation that keeps me going. He’s my inspiration”

Green runs six miles three times a week, lays out his outfits and workout clothes for the week on Sunday nights, closely monitors his steps on his Fitbit, and fastidiously counts his calories.

“A chicken sandwich like this, would be anywhere from 575 to 635 calories,” he approximated, finishing up a chicken bahn mi he ordered at the Vietnamese coffee shop in Kensington.

But he also has a sense of humor, something his campaign staff is trying to show voters on the trail with a tour of 100 small businesses. He projects a goofy dad vibe on Instagram, where his campaign has posted video of him dancing, a photo of him fist bumping a record store owner, and another mugging outside Four Seasons landscaping.

“A lot of people know Derek the Councilmember, serious guy,” Green said. “But Sterling is actually my middle name.” It’s something like an alter ego, his jokester side, he said. And his campaign staff is always asking for “more Sterling.”

In 2019 Green won reelection with a “Derek Is Everywhere” campaign. In many ways that’s what he’s trying to repeat this time around. Trailing nearly all of his opponents in money and in the few polls available, he’s hoping to find other ways to connect. Green’s campaign notes that while he lags considerably in money raised, he has almost twice the number of small dollar donors of any other campaign, a sign that support is out there.

“The rest of the field is gonna start swiping at each other,” campaign manager John Dolan said. “We’re just gonna worry about ourselves. We know we might not have the most resources in the campaign but the race has always been about if people hear his message, they meet him, they see he’s super personable and he knows how to do this job.”

The question is whether enough people do. Thirty-six small businesses to go.