Breaking down 5 candidates’ paths to victory | The 100th mayor newsletter
Let’s explore the candidates’ electoral bases and opportunities for growth.
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The primary is less than a month away!
The field has thinned a bit over the last week or so, with former Councilmembers Maria Quiñones Sánchez and Derek Green dropping out of the mayor’s race. But five viable contenders are still running in the May 16 Democratic primary.
Have questions for us about the race? Anna will be doing a Reddit AMA this afternoon at 1 p.m. Hop on over to the Philadelphia subreddit and ask away.
Just 28 days 🗓 left until Election Day. Get the information you need about every candidate here.
— Anna Orso and Sean Collins Walsh
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Let’s talk ‘lanes’
In elections like this year’s mayor’s race, people often talk about about candidates’ “lanes” or “paths to victory,” which means identifying the voters they have a realistic chance at winning over and analyzing whether that will be enough to get them over the finish line.
Let’s look at the potential paths to victory for the top five contenders:
As the only Black candidate among the top contenders and a favorite of many Democratic insiders, former City Councilmember Cherelle Parker has one of the most easily identifiable paths to victory. She needs to run up the score in her home base — Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods like West Oak Lane — and win comfortably in Black neighborhoods in West and North Philadelphia. She is also hoping to expand her support into the Northeast, where she has won over some ward leaders, and with establishment-aligned voters across the city.
Former City Councilmember Helen Gym‘s path is also clear to see. She’s a leader of the city’s progressive movement and will almost certainly dominate in young, gentrifying neighborhoods like Cedar Park, Fishtown, and East Passyunk. She will also find friendly voters among liberals in Center City and could pick up support across the city thanks to her years as a high-profile public education activist.
Former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart is perhaps best situated for a strategy that casts a wide net across the city. While her base appears to be older liberal voters in Center City, Rhynhart has also built support in progressive and pro-business quarters. She beat a party-backed incumbent in her 2017 victory for controller, making her the only candidate in the race to have prevailed in a winner-take-all citywide race.
Former City Councilmember Allan Domb is likely to get some votes from all pockets of the city thanks to his ubiquitous TV ads, made possible by the $7 million (and counting) of his own money that he has poured into his campaign. But as a real estate magnate with a tough-on-crime message, his base is likely to be among white working-class voters in Northeast Philadelphia and pro-business voters in Center City.
ShopRite proprietor and first-time candidate Jeff Brown has had an interesting journey. At first, Brown, who is white, aggressively courted Black voters, pointing to his work opening stores in underserved neighborhoods. But after missteps and an ethics scandal, Brown last week touted the endorsement of Philly’s police union, which is usually what a candidate does when they are — how do we say this — doing the opposite of trying to win over Black voters. Brown will likely win a significant amount of votes in the Northeast. Where else he ends up getting support remains a wild card.
To be clear, all of the major candidates will likely get at least some votes from every pocket of the city. But winning candidates typically have a strong base that they build out from.
As you can see, some of the candidates are fishing from the same pond. Rhynhart and Gym are both vying for liberal Center City voters, and Domb and Brown both probably need strong margins in the Northeast if they are going to win.
And don’t forget about turnout. While Parker appears to have little competition for establishment-aligned Black voters, their share of the electorate has decreased over time, meaning she, too, will have to expand beyond her base to be successful.
Read more here about the state of the race with one month to go.
Spotlight on: Supervised-injection sites
News broke last week that years-long settlement talks between the feds and the nonprofit that has proposed launching a supervised-injection site in the city could soon clear the way for establishing such a facility here.
Opening such a facility would likely require the mayor’s blessing, and Mayor Jim Kenney has been a proponent of the strategy. But three of the top five candidates to replace him have already said they’re against it.
Click here for a rundown of where each of the candidates stand on the issue, and what they’ve said recently about whether it’s a viable strategy to tackle the city’s long-running opioid crisis.
The 67th mayor: Robert T. Conrad was a playwright
A judge, author, and talented public speaker, Robert T. Conrad won the consequential 1854 mayor’s race in a landslide after being nominated by two conservative political parties that are no longer with us.
“As an orator, his personal appearance, melodious voice, and unembarrassed address, at once prepossessed an audience, whom he soon proceeded to carry away with his finished rhetoric and earnest elegance,” The New York Times reported in Conrad’s 1858 obituary. “Indeed, the remarkable success of the combined ticket in his election for Mayor, was mainly due to his own brilliant self advocacy.”
Sounds like unembarrassed self-advocacy has a long history in Philly politics. We’ve seen no shortage of it in this year’s mayoral election.
Here are some fun facts about this fascinating former mayor:
Conrad was the last nominee from the conservative Whig Party to be elected mayor of Philadelphia. The Whigs had a good run, holding the mayor’s office for all but two years from 1832 to 1856. The Republican Party, the spiritual descendant of the Whigs, established their centurylong dominance of city politics shortly after his tenure.
Conrad was also nominated by the Know Nothings, a xenophobic political party that opposed the arrival of largely Catholic immigrants from Europe.
He was a playwright, and he wrote Jack Cade, the piece that gave world-famous Philadelphia stage actor Edwin Forrest one of his most well-known roles. Conrad produced it for a contest Forrest organized in which writers submitted plays that would fit his strengths as an actor.
Conrad was the first mayor to serve after the 1854 merger of Philadelphia’s city and county governments. Before, the city was just one of several municipalities in Philadelphia County. But the Act of Consolidation made the city and county lines one and the same, and consequently made the mayor the chief executive of a much larger operation.
He died suddenly at age 48 in his West Philadelphia home, and is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery.
— Sean Collins Walsh
What we’re reading
The Inquirer’s election team has spent months interviewing the candidates and digging into their records to produce profiles of the major contenders.
Check out what they’re about with these deep dives on the contenders and the key questions that their candidacies present.
Jeff Brown: Is a government outsider qualified to run a city of 1.6 million people?
Allan Domb: Can the man known as the Condo King relate to residents in America’s poorest big city?
Helen Gym: Will she be a mayor with the elbows-out posture of a longtime activist, and is that what the city wants?
Cherelle Parker: Can a political insider from West Oak Lane save Philadelphia’s “middle neighborhoods?”
Rebecca Rhynhart: Does the city want a technocrat in a time of crisis?
Events this week
Today at 1 p.m., join Anna here for a Reddit AMA all about the mayor’s race.
Today at 7:30 p.m., the candidates will gather at Holy Family University for a forum organized by the Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. It will be broadcast on PHL17 and livestreamed on PHL17.com.
Thursday at 5:30 p.m., the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists will host a candidates’ forum at the Museum of the American Revolution.
Scenes from the campaign trail
Will 2023 be Philadelphia’s Year of the Woman? The city has never elected a female mayor, but candidates (from left) Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker, and Rebecca Rhynhart are working to change that.
We explored the potential of history being 🔑 made this year in a recent piece, and let the women running for mayor weigh in on the significance of the race. 🔑
Catch you next week. In the meantime, we’ll be rooting for the 76ers to make it a quick, clean, injury-free series with the Nets.
— Anna Orso and Sean Collins Walsh