Inside the big get-out-the-vote plans ahead of the Philly mayor’s race

Philadelphia, get ready for an even bigger deluge of text messages, phone calls, and people knocking on your door.

For all of the TV ads in the tight mayoral race, it’s the ground operation to get people to the polls that could be the difference maker in who wins the May 16 Democratic primary.

“It could come down to actual election day turnout,” said Amanda DeMaria, a campaign consultant based in Philadelphia who is not affiliated with a mayoral campaign. “Which means, how good is your day-of operation?”

The campaigns are planning to blanket the city with people pitching their case or even physically guiding voters to the polls on election day. Recent polling suggests that as many as five candidates have paths to victory, so a small number of votes could separate the winner. And upward of 20% of voters said they were undecided, meaning the final 10 days won’t just be about turning out committed voters — but persuading some to vote at all.

And primary voters are more likely to change their minds than general election voters, meaning every campaign and the groups supporting them are jockeying to reach voters in the final days and hours.

For years, much of the work to sway voters was coordinated by the Democratic City Committee and labor unions aligned with its candidates. Committee members aim to turn out Democrats in their neighborhoods, and they hand out sample ballots at the polls that list the party’s preferred candidates.

The city committee is technically neutral in the mayor’s race, but chairman Bob Brady has embraced Cherelle Parker’s candidacy, and she has been endorsed in more than 40 of the city’s 66 wards.

But many observers say progressives have the strongest ground game in town, and that group has coalesced around Helen Gym.

Left-leaning groups like Reclaim Philadelphia, the Working Families Party, and labor union Unite Here are known for their ability to mobilize volunteers and voters to knock doors and hand out literature at the polls. Many of the same groups supporting Gym were key to lifting progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner to his first victory in 2017.

And their influence has only grown since then.

“Whoever works the hardest between now and the election is going to win,” said Emiliano Rodriguez, political director of Unite Here Local 274, which represents hospitality workers and is knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors alongside other progressive groups. “We know field, we know how to do the work, and we know how to talk to voters in the city.”

He added: “We’re knocking on doors until 7:59 p.m. on election day.”

In addition to having much of the Democratic Party’s elected officials and ward leaders in her corner, Parker also has the backing of the city’s Building Trades and Construction Council, which is known to deploy members in big numbers to help with get-out-the-vote efforts.

Ryan Boyer, business manager for the building trades, said the group is planning a “maximum effort to knock on every door of voters we’ve identified to be pro-Cherelle Parker.” He said he sees particular opportunity among the large number of Black voters that polls showed were undecided.

“We believe they’re not really undecided as to their candidate, but sharing a general mood in the country of skepticism about elections,” he said. “If we get them out to the polls, they’ll be positively disposed to vote for Cherelle Parker.”

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Parker also has the carpenters’ unions on her side. A super PAC supporting her candidacy this week reported an in-kind donation of $500,000 from the carpenters for canvassing efforts alone.

But labor is not entirely aligned. The unions that represent law enforcement and the city’s largest municipal union are backing Jeff Brown.

And the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is one of Gym’s biggest backers. PFT President Jerry Jordan said the teachers union is calling members and knocking on voters’ doors to move people into Gym’s corner.

“You can watch a commercial and you might have a question or questions after you watch the commercial, but you don’t have the ability to ask that question,” he said. “And that’s why canvassing door to door is so important. We have the ability to really spend the time with the individual.”

» READ MORE: Philly's progressive organization aims to rival the Democratic Party itself in size

Gym’s campaign said in a statement that they believe she has “the strongest base of grassroots support” compared to her rivals. In addition to working with organizations like the Working Families Party, they’re also coordinating with “open wards,” or Democratic Party wards that have an open endorsement process seen as friendlier to progressives.

Those groups and Gym’s campaign also have a multipronged election day plan that includes handing out their own sample ballots at the polls and conducting so-called “knock-and-drags,” where volunteers knock on doors and then walk with or transport voters to the polls.

DeMaria — who worked for Councilmember Kendra Brooks during her bid for City Council as a member of the Working Families Party — said that can be key to a strong ground game.

“A lot of times voters will vote for the last person they hear about,” DeMaria said. “That’s why the campaigns all spend a lot of money to have people at the polls. It’s the theory that the last person you see is the person you’re likely to vote for if you’re undecided.”

Allan Domb’s campaign manager Rashad Taylor said they’ve lined up hundreds of canvassers and aim to make tens of thousands of phone calls and texts. The campaign also set up field offices in Northeast and West Philadelphia.

“Close elections really come down to turnout, and so the next two weeks are going to be critically important,” Taylor said. “We’ve probably got one of the most aggressive field operations out there, from union workers to teachers to small-business owners volunteering.”

With mail ballots coming in earlier, Taylor said the campaign has had to treat every day since ballots were mailed out like election day.

This is the first time no-excuse mail voting will play a major role in a Philadelphia mayoral race. So far, about 30% of the nearly 80,000 Democrats who requested mail ballots have returned them. Campaigns can access data on who has requested mail ballots and not returned them — and then target those voters.

“We know they’re voting — they’ve already taken the step of requesting a mail-in ballot,” said Joe Corrigan, another unaffiliated campaign consultant in Philadelphia. “Those are voters you want.”

Rebecca Rhynhart’s campaign has also touted the strength of its field operation, including how she submitted more nomination petition signatures in March than any other candidate.

A spokesperson said her campaign has had more than 1,000 people volunteer to knock on doors and call “tens of thousands of voters.” Rhynhart’s campaign stressed that their canvassers are unpaid volunteers.

Parker’s campaign spokesperson Aren Platt said their campaign has always assumed there’d be many undecided voters late in the race who could be swayed by a strong field program.

“These are voters who have a lot on their mind; there’s meals, there’s rent, there’s getting to work. Casting their vote for the next mayor is very important, but it’s not necessarily top of their mind,” Platt said. “It’s a large swath of undecided voters who tend to break later, and we want to make sure we’re in front of them.”

Ultimately, DeMaria said, the final weeks are about controlling everything you can, given other unpredictables.

“I keep saying rain,” she said, “could make or break this election.”

Inquirer staff writers Chris Brennan and Jonathan Lai contributed to this article.