Philly Mayor Cherelle L. Parker says election is ‘in the rearview mirror’ as she prepares to work with Trump administration
Parker said she is “laser focused” on local issues such as improving public safety and cleaning up the city, and refused to criticize the Harris campaign or the Democratic Party.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, who was a key surrogate in the city for Vice President Kamala Harris in the homestretch of the presidential campaign, said Thursday that the election is in “the rearview mirror” and that she is preparing to work with Donald Trump’s future administration.
Asked if she could have done more to elect Harris, Parker said that she refused to Monday-morning quarterback and that she “didn’t promise the people of Philadelphia perfection.”
”I wish everything that I tried to accomplish in my life had come true,” Parker, a Democrat, said during a news conference Thursday afternoon outside City Hall. “Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. … If you’re a lifelong Philadelphian, you know we never give up.”
The news conference Parker hosted alongside two dozen members of her administration was the first time she publicly addressed the results of the election. She spoke earlier Thursday during a nonpartisan conference for women but did not directly mention the results or Trump’s win, aside from an oblique reference to being a “first” — she was the first female mayor in Philadelphia history. Harris would have been the nation’s first female president.
» READ MORE: Donald Trump improved in Philly with working-class voters and Latinos
“Becoming a footnote in somebody’s history book doesn’t mean a damn thing if you don’t make room for other women,” she said at the Convention Center before exiting the stage to Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a song about continuing to put on a show when you’re miserable.
But Parker struck a somewhat sunny tone later outside City Hall — despite her party suffering bruising losses across the country and Trump improving his margins in Philadelphia compared with four years ago — and said she is “laser focused” on local issues such as improving public safety and cleaning up the city.
The mayor said she had spent much of the last two days reflecting and listening closely to addresses delivered by Harris and President Joe Biden. She said she watched Harris’ concession speech Wednesday and compared it to sitting in church and feeling like the pastor is “specifically talking to you.”
”I felt that,” she said. “Stay focused on the work. You can’t get tired now. You don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘Oh, I’m sad, I’m throwing up my hands.’ No. You gotta stay engaged, and you stay focused on what we need to accomplish to move the needle forward for our nation, our democracy, and our freedom.”
» READ MORE: Pa. Democrats on what went wrong against Donald Trump and what’s next
Parker was a constant on the campaign trail for Harris in the final weeks of the election, stumping for the vice president across the city and speaking during a star-studded election eve concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Harris’ campaign poured resources into the deep-blue city, where she needed to run up the score to blunt Trump’s strength in the state’s rural areas.
Midday on Election Day, Parker even suggested that Philadelphia voter turnout might break records and that the city could deliver 650,000 or more votes for Harris. With some ballots still being counted, it appears that Parker’s estimate was far off: Harris received just over 550,000 votes in the city, and turnout is likely to be slightly lower than or equal to what it was four years ago.
But Parker said she is preparing to work with the Trump administration, which will take over the federal government in January. The mayor said she is working closely with Council President Kenyatta Johnson to develop a legislative agenda.
And she, unprompted, called the city’s top lawyer, Renee Garcia, “the best city solicitor in the nation.” Parker didn’t elaborate, but under former Mayor Jim Kenney, the city sued the Trump administration several times over issues such as immigration and health-care policy. Kenney was something of an antagonist of Trump and frequently criticized the former president’s policies, especially around immigration.
Trump has said repeatedly that he would strip federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, where local officials don’t cooperate with warrantless federal detainer requests for undocumented immigrants. Philadelphia has been a sanctuary city since 2016.
Asked if she was concerned about losing federal funding and if she is committed to retaining Philadelphia’s sanctuary status, Parker said Thursday: “I don’t know what will happen in the future.”
”We will make sure that we are prepared,” she said, “to address issues that come before us under a Parker administration.”