Maria Quiñones Sánchez is the second ex-mayoral candidate to endorse Cherelle Parker

Former mayoral candidate Maria Quiñones Sánchez is endorsing her erstwhile rival Cherelle Parker as the tightly contested race heads into the home stretch.

“The city is at a moment in time where it needs a mayor that was raised in Philadelphia and has lived experiences navigating the challenges the city faces,” Quiñones Sánchez told The Inquirer. “With me out of the race, the person I felt best aligns with that important perspective is Cherelle.”

Quiñones Sánchez joins Derek Green as a former candidate now backing Parker in the May 16 Democratic primary. All three served on City Council together until resigning in the same week last September to enter the mayor’s race.

The race remains remarkably close, with five candidates appearing to have paths to victory. Parker, a former state representative who also served as Council’s majority leader, has racked up endorsements from elected officials and large unions.

Quiñones Sánchez, who represented the Kensington-based 7th District for 15 years, in early April became the first candidate to drop out of the heated race, citing an inability to keep up with the “obscene amount of money” keeping other candidates in the field.

Despite both getting their start in politics working in the office of the trailblazing former Councilmember Marian Tasco, Parker, and Quiñones Sánchez have not always been on the same side over the years.

Quiñones Sánchez, for instance, has a long history of clashing with the building trades’ unions, which she has criticized as lacking diversity. Those unions endorsed Parker and are helping to fund an outside spending group backing her candidacy. The former lawmakers also differ on the controversial policing tactic known as stop-and-frisk, which Quiñones Sánchez has opposed but Parker has embraced on the campaign trail.

But Quiñones Sánchez hasn’t been shy about the kinship she feels with Parker as two women of color who served diverse and often under-resourced Council districts.

“Cherelle and I have always had to be that much better than the people next to us,” Quiñones Sánchez said last month following the Latino Mayoral Forum. “There’s a certain lived experience that Cherelle and I share as Black and brown women.”

She praised Parker for being willing to listen to those she disagrees with and forge compromises.

“Cherelle will listen,” Quiñones Sánchez said. “At minimum, there will be conversations around those tension points, particularly as they impact my community.”

When she dropped out of the race, Quiñones Sánchez unveiled her Agenda Latina platform, which includes increasing language access and representation of Latino leaders at all levels of city government, and invited the mayoral candidates to embrace it. She met with all of the top candidates, except for former Councilmember Helen Gym, whom she did not consider endorsing.

Quiñones Sánchez said that Parker affirmed the agenda. But overall, she said, conversations with the other candidates were largely disappointing — even though some included talk about her rejoining city government in the next administration — and she called on Philly’s next crop of leaders to make Latino representation a top priority.

“I felt like the teacher who gave answers to the test and the students didn’t understand,” Quiñones Sánchez said. “My interest right now is not securing a cabinet position for me, but ensuring that Latinos are represented in all parts of government.”