All of the mayoral front-runners are wealthier than the average Philadelphian. Here’s what we know about their finances.

The top candidates in the mayor’s race are far better off than the average Philadelphian, but there is a significant range in the field of contenders’ personal wealth.

While it’s impossible to determine public officials’ net worth based solely on publicly available documents, it is clear that former Councilmember Allan Domb, who owns a vast real estate portfolio of more than 400 properties in the city, is the wealthiest. It is also evident that Cherelle Parker, the only top candidate who doesn’t live in Center City, is the least wealthy.

But beyond that, it’s difficult to ascertain how rich the mayoral hopefuls are and where they keep their wealth. Candidates and elected officials are required to submit statements of financial interest, but those reports have significant loopholes, such as not including spouses’ income.

» READ MORE: The Inquirer's 2023 Democratic primary voter guide

To get a better understanding of the candidates’ personal finances, The Inquirer asked the top five Democratic candidates in the May 16 primary to submit three years of tax returns. The newspaper promised not to publish the returns in full or disclose any sensitive information.

The two wealthy businessmen in the race, Domb and grocer Jeff Brown, declined to submit their tax returns.

Parker and former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart fully complied with the request and submitted their tax returns for 2019 through 2021. Rhynhart’s campaign has also published her returns and called on others to do the same.

Former Councilmember Helen Gym submitted only the top sheets of her returns for those years, omitting the schedules and worksheets that were attached to her filings to the IRS. Her campaign declined to provide the full returns after a follow-up request.

Patrick Christmas, policy director at the good government group Committee of Seventy, said candidates for major executive offices such as big-city mayors should provide as much transparency as possible around their personal finances to ensure that the public is aware of potential conflicts of interest if they win.

Releasing tax returns, for instance, can reveal “the sort of tax policies that a given candidate benefits from,” Christmas said.

Another benefit: “Tax returns can reveal how much a candidate has in common with the people they hope to represent,” he said.

With a 23% poverty rate, Philadelphia is the poorest of the 10 largest U.S. cities. The median household income is about $52,000, according to census data.

Here’s what we know about the top candidates’ personal finances:

Rhynhart and her husband, wine distributor David McDuff, together made between $235,000 and $275,000 annually from 2019 to 2021.

About $147,000 came from Rhynhart’s city controller salary, and several thousand a year came from interest and dividends, suggesting that they have financial investments but not a vast amount.

Rhynhart called on other mayoral candidates to “stop hiding in the shadows, do the right thing, and release their tax returns and those of their spouses — now.”

“For far too long, corruption, pay-to-play politics, and self-enrichment has plagued city government. Philadelphia deserves a government as good as its people,” Rhynhart said in a statement. “And it starts with transparency -- to make sure public service is always about serving people, not personal profit.”

“The mayor of Philadelphia is required to disclose sources of income for themselves and their spouses each year,” Rhynhart said in a statement. “Voters deserve the same transparency from candidates running for mayor, which is why I have submitted three complete years of my household tax returns to The Inquirer when asked and plan to release them publicly, as well.”

» READ MORE: Rebecca Rhynhart is promising to make government work. Does Philadelphia want a technocrat in a time of crisis?

Rhynhart left a career in finance to join Mayor Michael A. Nutter’s administration, serving as city treasurer and budget director. She worked in the municipal bond market at Fitch Ratings and Bear Sterns, resigning from the latter not long before it imploded during the 2008 financial crisis.

Rhynhart has said that she left Wall Street to help government after seeing cities get the short end of the stick from big banks.

Parker is a single mother who in some years earned little more than her Council salary. In 2020 she made $132,000, and in 2021 her income was $144,000.

In 2019, Parker, a former state representative who lives in East Mount Airy, took a $94,000 early disbursement from her state pension. That year she also made $38,000 for serving on the board of Independence Blue Cross, a position she no longer holds.

Parker said that, given her relatively modest lifestyle among the candidates, it’s “clear that I am truly the only working-class candidate whose lived life experience is the closest to the life experience of most Philadelphians.”

“However, I’m bothered to see people with such great wealth either refuse to be open and transparent or fully open and transparent with voters, who are only left to wonder what they are trying to hide,” she said.

Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter requires elected officials to resign in order to run for a different office, and Parker stepped down from Council in September to launch her mayoral campaign. That rule is often criticized for making it more difficult for less wealthy candidates to run for higher office.

» READ MORE: Cherelle Parker is proud of her West Oak Lane roots. As mayor, could she save Philly’s ‘middle neighborhoods’?

Shortly after resigning, Parker registered with the state as a lobbyist with the Rooney Novak Isenhour Group, a firm with ties to former Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration.

Parker’s lobbyist registration lists her clients as the Moore College of Art and Design and Longwood Gardens. The registration initially included the oil and gas pipeline firm Enbridge Inc., as well, but that client was removed after what the Parker campaign said was a clerical error.

“Cherelle is not a Superwoman, she’s a real working mom who has to pay her mortgage, utility bills and support her 10-year-old son,” Parker spokesperson Aren Platt said in a statement. “She currently has a consulting position that she is eminently qualified for, given her master’s degree in public policy and unmatched understanding of the legislative process.”

Voters know the least about Brown’s personal finances because he did not provide his tax returns and because he has not had to comply with government disclosure requirements for years like his opponents who have previously held public office.

But despite that uncertainty, it’s clear the fourth-generation grocer and longtime ShopRite proprietor is exceptionally wealthy.

A statement of financial interest Brown filed to get on the ballot lists income from 12 financial institutions and firms, in addition to income from the parent company of his ShopRite stores and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where he is a board member. The disclosure form does not include the amounts he made.

» READ MORE: Jeff Brown could be Philly’s first outsider mayor in a century. Can a grocer run the city?

“The campaign will not be releasing Jeff’s tax returns,” campaign spokesperson Kyle Anderson said. “The required financial disclosure form provides more than adequate information about the candidate’s finances.”

When Brown moved to Philadelphia from New Jersey in 2014, he purchased a palatial $4.3 million Rittenhouse brownstone that made headlines when it went up for sale.

The home has five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, nine fireplaces, three terraces, an elevator, a sauna, a gym, a wine cellar, and a two-car garage. Now assessed at $5.6 million, it is the second-most valuable rowhome in Philadelphia, according to city property records. (Coincidentally, the most valuable is owned by one of Brown’s biggest supporters, real estate developer Bart Blatstein.)

Brown inherited a partial 10-year property tax abatement from the previous owner that is currently valued at almost $2.5 million, reducing Brown’s property tax bill by more than 40%, to about $44,000 a year.

Brown has been critical of the tax abatement, a controversial tax break for new construction or renovation, and recently attacked a rival for trying to expand it while saying, “We are trying to eliminate it.”

Brown has given at least $1 million to his own campaign.

Gym and her husband, lawyer Bret Flaherty, made between $364,000 and $451,000 during the three-year period for which her campaign supplied partial tax returns. They took in small amounts of investment income during that period.

At the time, Flaherty worked for the Conshohocken-based pharmaceutical company AmerisourceBergen, which has been criticized for helping to fuel the opioid crisis. His role with that firm has recently become a flashpoint, with TV ads attacking Gym for voting in 2019 against a Council bill that would have increased oversight of pharmaceutical sales representatives.

» READ MORE: Helen Gym wants to finish the fight she started 30 years ago. Would she be Philadelphia’s activist-mayor?

Gym consulted with the Board of Ethics over how to handle the potential conflict of interest, and the board’s general counsel told her she did not have to recuse herself from the vote.

Gym campaign manager Brendan McPhillips said that accusations that she acted unethically are “plainly false” and that her critics “want to tear Helen down because they know she stands up for public education, and for everyday people over their narrow and greedy special interests.”

Flaherty left AmerisourceBergen in February and now works at a medical device company in the Lehigh Valley.

Before running for Council, Gym worked briefly as a journalist and a teacher, and was a community activist.

Domb’s immense personal wealth has been a point of contention in City Hall since he first ran for Council in 2015. He has poured at least $7 million into his mayoral campaign, transforming the election and allowing him to air TV ads long before all but one of his rivals.

The self-styled “condo king,” Domb has a rags-to-riches story of growing up working class in New Jersey and becoming one of the most successful real estate brokers in the country. He specialized in the Center City condo market and went on to become a major property holder.

An Inquirer investigation last year found that he owns more than 400 properties in the city, a portfolio assessed at more than $400 million, according to city property records. Those assessments likely undervalue his holdings, and they do not account for any debt he may have on his properties. Domb also has extensive holdings in restaurants and parking facilities.

» READ MORE: Allan Domb grew a real estate empire from nothing. Can one of the city’s biggest landlords be its mayor?

“Allan Domb has repeatedly disclosed everything he owns — every apartment, every business, and every parking spot,” Domb campaign spokesperson Jared Leopold said. “Domb has also publicly disclosed every source of income and the amount he receives from each.”

City employees such as code inspectors and property assessors interact constantly with Domb’s properties. To quell concerns about how he would navigate potential conflicts of interest as mayor, Domb in February released an ethics plan that calls for him to place his financial assets in a blind trust and sell his properties to an entity owned by his son and other investors.

That entity would have significant restrictions placed on it, including being prohibited from seeking zoning variances or applying for new construction permits from the city while Domb is mayor.

“Our residents, workers, and business owners must have confidence that decisions are being made for the right reason,” Domb said at the time. “I will adopt a conflict-of-interest policy that goes far beyond what current Philadelphia and Pennsylvania ethics laws require.”

This story has been updated to reflect that Rhynhart has released her tax returns publicly.

Staff writers Ryan Briggs and Anna Orso contributed to this article.