How Jay Young rose from a high-school intern in City Hall to a lawyer poised to succeed Darrell Clarke on Philadelphia City Council

Jeffery “Jay” Young Jr. was a high school senior at Girard College in 2003 and needed to complete an internship to graduate. He landed three, all in city government.

He worked one day a week in City Councilmember Darrell L. Clarke’s office. Another day, he worked for then-Councilmember Blondell Reynolds Brown. On a third day, he interned at the Managing Director’s Office during former Mayor John Street’s administration.

Now, Young is poised to replace Clarke as the 5th District Council member, after an unusual turn of events left him as the only candidate on the ballot in the May 16 Democratic primary.

But to Young, his unexpected rise is no accident.

“I learned the power of networking at a very young age,” Young said in an interview last week. “I’ve been preparing to run since I was 17.”

Young, 36, who returned to work in Clarke’s office, among other jobs, after becoming a lawyer, has experience in legal work surrounding development — a major issue in his Council district, which includes the rapidly gentrifying area surrounding Temple University.

He’s also been a frequent poster on social media for years, including some openly offensive tweets about women, sexual orientation, Asian people, and other racial issues. And he’s railed against bike lanes and a lack of available parking spaces, hinting how he’d approach serving as a City Council member.

“My thinking has evolved and changed a lot since I first got on Twitter,” he said when asked about the offensive tweets. “I’ve matured a lot since then and my views and positions have evolved, as well.”

Young and six other Democrats scrambled after Clarke, the Council president and one of Philadelphia’s most powerful politicians, made a late-in-the-game decision to not seek another term. But all of the other candidates — some of whom had backing from Clarke or other elected officials — withdrew or were removed from the ballot amid legal challenges.

No Republican filed to run in the 5th District. Still, write-in candidates can try and third-party or independents can qualify for the November general election ballot.

“I’m not taking anything for granted,” Young said. “I’m still campaigning.”

Young enrolled at Girard College in the seventh grade. His mother, who had worked at the University of Pennsylvania, had been permanently disabled in a 1998 car accident. His father, who did not finish high school, worked odd jobs.

“I wouldn’t be here but for Girard College,” Young said. “It takes children from low-income backgrounds who are academically capable and puts them in an environment that nourishes learning.”

Young said he always wanted to be a lawyer but thought of the profession mostly in terms of criminal or civil cases. In Clarke’s office, he met a young lawyer working on governmental issues.

“I did not know the role lawyers played in government,” he said. “That sort of opened by eyes and changed my strategy with what I wanted to do with myself.”

Young enrolled at Kutztown University and later transferred to Temple University. There were more internships — including with former Mayor Michael Nutter and Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. in his senior year.

Jones now credits Young for being the only candidate willing to circulate petitions required to get on the ballot before Clarke announced his plans. Others had waited for the Council president to signal his plans, making it difficult to secure enough signatures from registered voters to survive legal challenges.

“He said luck and preparation intersect to make success,” Jones said, recalling a conversation with Young about the legal challenges. “It took a whole lot of courage for him to do that.”

Young went on to law school at Rutgers University, graduating in 2012 after more internships, including at U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s Washington office, the Register of Wills Office, and Community Legal Services.

He passed the bar exam in 2013 and then joined Clarke’s Council office as an attorney. By then, Clarke had become Council president.

Young worked on zoning and other development issues in the 5th District, which stretches from the western side of Center City up though North Philadelphia to Temple University’s campus and then up to Hunting Park.

Jones, who represents the 4th Council District, predicted that Young’s knowledge on zoning would be an asset if he were elected.

“That district is beset with good development and bad development,” Jones said. “And you have to know the difference between the two.”

As Clarke’s legislative counsel, Young was involved in a controversial transaction when city-owned properties near Temple University were sold to Shawn Bullard, a former NFL linebacker who became a real estate developer, for $125,000 below the appraised value.

Clarke, who had backed Bullard’s proposal, initially said it had little else to do with that deal when The Inquirer first reported it in 2019. But Council emails obtained by The Inquirer three months later showed that Young told Bullard that Clarke’s office would look into a dispute about the price of the properties.

The city’s Office of Inspector General later said Bullard “exploited shortcomings in the land-sale process” to get a discounted price.

Young left Clarke’s office later in 2019 to practice law and has since represented developers. The Bullard controversy, he said, played no role in his departure.

Clarke, who declined to comment for this article, wanted his former chief of staff Curtis Wilkerson to replace him in the 5th District. But Wilkerson, like Young’s other opponents, was removed from the ballot in a legal challenge.

Young has maintained an unfiltered social media presence for more than a decade, casually posting jokes or simple musings.

Most posts are innocuous, but some, especially from before he joined City Council staff, are offensive.

He has described white women as less “crazy” than Black women, suggested that Asian takeout restaurants reserve the best food for Asian customers, and used other offensive language.

“Dear Chinese Stores, we don’t eat dog, cat, or rat here in America, on purpose at least,” he wrote in 2013.

“I tweeted a lot of stuff back then, not knowing what my future would be as a 23-year-old or 24-year old,” Young said.

Still, Young in late January responded to a tweet from someone who said “Men that act like females <<<<<” by tweeting, “That’s what happens when men are raised by a bunch of women.”

More recent posts also include commentary hinting at how Young would operate as a City Council member.

Young lamented “a war on cars and parking in Philly” and wrote of the Philadelphia Parking Authority that “if I’m ever in a position to dismantle that organization I will not hesitate.” He’s also frequently written disparagingly of policies favored by “urbanists” — talking trash about SEPTA, bike lanes and denser housing, such as apartments.

He has characterized these policies as being out of step with the desires of the mostly Black and higher poverty district.

“If I’m an elected official and my constituents are screaming about parking, parking, parking and less density, what would you do?” he wrote a 2018 post. “What people who support those urbanism views should do is actually go to these neighborhoods and attempt to explain to people their position.”

Young is also a proponent of “councilmanic prerogative” — the unwritten rule that district Council members have final say over all manner of land use decisions within their district.

“People love to bash prerogative until it helps thwart unwanted development in neighborhoods,” Young wrote in 2015.