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Get to know the top candidates for Philly mayor

Dive into each of the candidates’ backgrounds, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Top candidates for Philadelphia mayor, from left, former City Councilmember Cherelle Parker, former City Councilmember Derek Green (who has since suspended his campaign), businessman Jeff Brown, former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, former Councilmember Allan Domb, former Councilmember Helen Gym, and State Rep. Amen Brown gather for a debate in Philadelphia on April 11, 2023.
Top candidates for Philadelphia mayor, from left, former City Councilmember Cherelle Parker, former City Councilmember Derek Green (who has since suspended his campaign), businessman Jeff Brown, former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, former Councilmember Allan Domb, former Councilmember Helen Gym, and State Rep. Amen Brown gather for a debate in Philadelphia on April 11, 2023.Read moreJose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer

With five top Democratic contenders for Philadelphia mayor, there’s a lot voters can learn about the candidates ahead of the May 16 primary election.

Inquirer reporters have spent months covering the field, talking to candidates and campaigns about their visions for the city, and chatting with supporters and detractors about their strengths and weaknesses. We compiled snapshots of the candidates that dive into their backgrounds, experiences, and personalities.

One candidate’s first job was shining shoes. One was a spunky teenager who won a high-school speech competition. One is so cliche Philadelphia that he met his wife one summer at the Jersey Shore.

While nine candidates will appear on the Democratic primary ballot, The Inquirer featured five top contenders based on fundraising, institutional support, and limited polling.

» READ MORE: Voters guide: See candidates' policy positions here

Below are excerpts from each of the stories:

Jeff Brown

Brown, a longtime ShopRite proprietor, is billing himself as the anti-politician ahead of the May 16 Democratic primary, running in a crowded field of people who have been elected officials during some of the most turbulent times in generations. Brown is betting that Philadelphians are so frustrated with city government that they’ll take a gamble on a grocer who has never held elected office.

The question now: Is a government outsider qualified to run a city of 1.6 million people?

Read the full story here.

Allan Domb

After nearly two terms on City Council, Domb is pitching his business background as a way to improve the city’s fiscal health, his managerial style as a way to bring leaders together to tackle gun violence, and his entrepreneurial upbringing as a roadmap for bettering schools and lowering unemployment.

The 68-year-old mild-mannered pragmatist has poured more than $7 million into his campaign, self-funding his run as a centrist who he says will look out for businesses but also tackle poverty in the city that gave him his big break.

The question is whether the man known as the Condo King can relate to residents in the poorest big city in America and handle the ethical entanglements that could come with electing one of the city’s biggest landlords as mayor.

Read the full story here.

Helen Gym

Through three decades in Philadelphia, Gym has evolved from a teacher into a leader of the city’s social justice movement and now a mayoral candidate running as a “tough Philly mom.”

The question is whether she’d be a mayor with the elbows-out posture of a longtime activist — and if that’s what the city wants in its next chief executive.

Gym has become a polarizing political figure, in part because she occupies a clear lane as a progressive in the mayoral field. It could also be because she has so often described herself in fighting terms. And fighters have opponents.

Read the full story here.

Cherelle Parker

The former Council member is running for mayor with a mission to help preserve the village that raised her and others like it. She calls them “middle neighborhoods” — proud, blue-collar areas stuck between the extremes of poverty and wealth, and struggling to hang on. Middle-class Black neighborhoods have been shrinking in cities across the country as some families fall into poverty and others flee to the suburbs.

The question is whether Parker could restore that sense of pride and save those neighborhoods as mayor.

Read the full story here.

Rebecca Rhynhart

The former city controller is running on a pledge to make government work. She’s touting her bona fides as a fiscal watchdog, talking seriously about racial justice and economic inequality, and pitching herself as the candidate most prepared to tackle the city’s problems on day one.

Now the question facing Rhynhart’s candidacy is: Does the city really want a get-it-done technocrat in a time when many people don’t see how government could possibly work for them? And can someone without the political stagecraft of her opponents deliver the bold leadership so many are craving?

Read the full story here.