The gossip we didn’t tell you about | 100th mayor newsletter

After nine months and well over $31 million spent, the election that will effectively decide who will be Philadelphia’s 100th mayor has finally arrived.

It’s been a wild ride. More than a third of City Council resigned to run in this year’s mayoral election. The Board of Ethics sued a “dark money” group that played a big role in the early days of the campaign. There was even a tragic shooting on the campaign trail involving political canvassers. And it was the most expensive election in Philadelphia history.

But don’t worry — the 100th Mayor newsletter isn’t over just yet. We’ll send out another edition next week to analyze the results before taking a hiatus over the summer. Then shortly after Labor Day, we’ll resume the newsletter to dig into the general election in the mayor’s race, the transition process for the next mayoral administration, and other city elections (there will be competitive Council races).

📋 Philly will be better off if everyone has the facts they need to make an informed decision about this race and the general election in November. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

— Anna Orso and Sean Collins Walsh

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Answering your questions about the results 🗳️

The last few months of campaigning were intense, and we know folks will have a lot of questions and thoughts about what went down. Anna will be joining the folks over at r/philadelphia for an AMA right around lunchtime Thursday to talk all about the results of the election, what happens next, and how the winner could reshape City Hall. You’ll be able to drop questions in a thread a few hours in advance.

📮 Have questions or thoughts on the outcome that we should think about ahead of time? Email us here.

The mayor’s race officially began in September 2022. But for us City Hall reporters, it started many months before, when we began hearing rumors about who would run.

The rumor mill in Philly politics usually has a pretty spotty record. But now that the race is drawing to a close, we have been feeling reflective — and it occurred to us that nearly every bit of gossip and cocktail-hour forecasting we heard about this year’s mayoral election has come to pass.

All those City Council members who were said to be planning to give up their seats to run for mayor? They all took the plunge. 🔑 Would the ShopRite guy who hated the “soda tax” really run? He sure did. 🔑 Would super PACs continue to play an increasingly big role in Philly politics? Yes, and then some.

The conventional wisdom wasn’t just right about what would happen, but how it would go down.

Lots of folks, for instance, hypothesized that Derek Green and Maria Quiñones Sánchez would struggle to raise enough money. They both ended up dropping out due to fundraising shortfalls. 🔑

As soon as building trades unions leader John J. Dougherty got convicted in 2021, Cherelle Parker’s stock went up in the minds of political insiders. That’s because Ryan Boyer, Dougherty’s presumed successor, was a strong Parker ally. Lo and behold, the trades, thanks to Boyer, have funded a super PAC that has been crucial to Parker’s chances. 🔑

After it became clear that grocer Jeff Brown was indeed running, the gossipers embraced a couple possibilities. On the one hand, a first-time candidate could generate huge buzz 📈 at a time when many voters are sick of City Hall. On the other hand, a first-time candidate could make a bunch of rookie mistakes 📉. Check 🔑 and check. 🔑

Many in the chattering class also thought that if progressive stalwart Helen Gym was going to ride her left-wing base to victory, she would need a crowded field to be competitive. That appears to be how things have panned out for Gym.

So in some ways, this election has had very few surprises for those who follow City Hall closely. But despite all the prognostications, there was never a consensus on who would win, and there still isn’t.

That leaves us with one big surprise on the final day of the race.

🎤 This week, we’re going to pass the mic to our colleagues Julia Terruso and Ryan W. Briggs to talk about margins of victory in Philly mayoral elections:

Mayor Jim Kenney’s winning number was 130,775. Michael Nutter’s was 106,805.

In this year’s crowded, highly competitive mayoral field, the number of votes that advance the candidate likely to be the next mayor could be much, much lower.

It’s not just that there’s a lot of people running — Philadelphia is used to crowded ballots. It’s that so many candidates are still polling so closely together. With three or four running even, as recent polls suggested, some speculate Philadelphia’s next likely mayor could be decided by the smallest slice of the pie yet.

Mustafa Rashed, a political consultant uninvolved in any of the campaigns, guessed the winning percentage could be as low as 25% of the vote. That would be in the range of 65,000 to 80,000 votes, assuming turnout is in the high 200,000s or low 300,000s.

If the total number of votes the nominee gets falls below 100,000 — a real possibility — that would be the lowest winning raw vote total since at least the 1970s and would represent less than 10% of all registered voters, according to an Inquirer analysis of past election data.

Now, it’s not like the mayor typically strolls into office with a mandate. Michael Nutter and John Street each won their respective Democratic primaries with 36% of the vote. Considering how few registered Democrats actually vote (about 30% in 2015) most mayors are getting nominated with just a sliver of the eligible electorate’s support.

Of course, with 15% of voters undecided, there’s still a chance a coalescence takes place and the nominee wins with a larger slice of the pie.

Click here to read more about what history tells us about Philly mayors and electoral “mandates.”

This year, public safety has undoubtedly been the most important issue in the mayor’s race, an appropriate and unavoidable consequence of the city’s devastating gun violence crisis.

But education is always an important policy area in Philly politics, and the mayor plays a big, if indirect, part in setting the school district’s agenda. Here’s how Inquirer education reporter Kristen A. Graham broke down the mayor’s role in education issues:

The mayor does not directly control the city’s schools. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. is in charge of day-to-day operations of the 113,000-student Philadelphia School District, and he reports to the nine-member school board, which controls the district’s $4.5 billion budget and approves policy.

The mayor does select every school board member for terms that run in conjunction with their own term, giving them significant control over the board’s politics and philosophy. That’s a relatively new power; the district for 17 years was under state takeover, with a majority of School Reform Commission members chosen by Pennsylvania’s governor.

Mayor Jim Kenney engineered a return to local control in 2018, appointing the first school board since 2001.

Philadelphia’s unusual school-funding structure, the only one of its kind in Pennsylvania, means that the school board actually has no authority to levy any taxes for its own revenue. Instead, it depends on the state and city for the majority of its money. As such, Philadelphia’s mayor plays a role in proposing about half of the district’s budget, but Council ultimately approves the plan for the district.

Kristen also broke down where the mayoral candidates stand on education issues in this handy story.

In this newsletter, we have shied away from featuring more modern mayors because there are so many historical gems who have been largely forgotten.

But as this is the last newsletter before the primary, we thought we’d state the obvious: James Francis Kenney is the current mayor of Philadelphia. It was about this time eight years ago that the Inquirer was writing about his trouncing of Tony Williams in the last open mayor’s race, which did not have the nail-biter nature of this year’s contest.

On election night 2015, The Inquirer described Kenney as “a true son of South Philadelphia ... a passionate if sometimes intemperate son of a firefighter who learned the art of politics as a staffer of then-State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo before winning a seat on Council in 1991.”

There are, of course, plenty of folks willing to share some not-so-fun facts about Kenney these days. We’ll assume you’re up to speed on all that. So here are some fun facts about our mayor:

How times have changed. 🔑 As many have observed, Kenney appears ready to be done with the whole mayor thing. After polls close today, we’ll find out who among those champing at the bit for his job will be make history as the city’s 100th mayor.

Mayoral candidate Helen Gym brought in some out-of-town star power to help her campaign in the home stretch, rallying with progressive champions Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Franklin Music Hall on Sunday.

We assume that all of our lovely 100th Mayor newsletter readers have a plan to vote Tuesday if they haven’t already cast their ballot by mail. So please encourage your friends and family to do the same! Municipal elections usually have very low turnout, and it would be great for the city if more folks were engaged in the political process.

And remember that even if you’re not registered with a political party and can’t participate in either of Tuesday’s primary elections, you can still vote on the proposed amendments to the city’s Home Rule Charter.

— Anna and Sean