Mayor Cherelle Parker has a new nonprofit that’s polling Philly residents
The issue advocacy group plans to promote Parker’s agenda, and is not a political group that will help her in the next election. It is currently circulating a poll about Parker's plans for the city.
Clout’s like anybody else. We just want to be heard. So we appreciated it when “Jake with Metro Research” shot us a text Tuesday night to see how we felt about Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.
Jake sent us a link to a poll that included detailed questions about Parker’s performance and her city budget proposal, which was unveiled last week. It asked about our enthusiasm for her plans to “close the open-air drug market in Kensington,” “expand the use of security cameras in major public areas,” “begin sending residents suffering from drug addiction and mental illness to treatment centers rather than releasing them back on the streets,” and others.
We asked around about how Jake got our number, and it turns out he’s working for a new nonprofit organization called One Philly, which is one of Parker’s slogans. The new group is led by Jeff Sheridan, the political operative who helmed the super PAC that supported Parker’s winning mayoral campaign last year.
He said it’s an issue advocacy group that will promote Parker’s agenda, not a political group that will help her in the next election. Similar organizations have popped up to support former Gov. Tom Wolf’s agenda, and a single-issue group was formed to promote former Mayor Jim Kenney’s tax on sweetened beverages, or the “soda tax.”
Sheridan said the group is very new and will release more details about its operations in the future, such as the amount of money it hopes to raise and the size of its staff. But he said the goal is not to help shape policy proposals, but to boost Parker’s agenda through ads, social media, or in-person organizing.
As a 501(c)4 organization, the group isn’t required to disclose all of its donors, and Sheridan said it has no plans to go beyond the legal requirements. That sounds to Clout like an opportunity for donors to get on the mayor’s good side by laying down some big bucks while keeping their names secret.
Sheridan laughed that one off.
“I am not the person that they should go through to curry favor with the mayor,” he said. “But in all seriousness, there is a shared interest from a lot of people who are potential stakeholders. These are people who care about the future of the city, and Cherelle Parker is the mayor.”
Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.