Cherelle Parker Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia

After an unusually expensive and crowded primary, Cherelle Park, a former City Council Member who campaigned for hiring more police won the Democratic nomination as Philadelphia Mayor on Tuesday night. She emerged from a field that had competed to be perceived as the rescuers of a struggling, disheartened, city.

Ms. Parker, the first female mayor of the city, will be the 100th Mayor if she wins the election in November. This is a win that's all but guaranteed in a city with Democrat outnumbering Republicans by more than 7 to 1.

Parker was the only Black candidate among the five leading mayoral candidates in the final polls. This is in a city with a population of over 40% Black. She received support from prominent Democratic politicians, trade unions and was often compared with Mayor Eric Adams of New York City. She also bucked the progressives of her party by promising to hire hundreds police officers and to bring back constitutional stop-and -frisk.

She stated that many of the solutions she proposed had their roots in "middle neighborhoods" -- working- and middle-class communities that have struggled in recent years to resist decline.

They know that it is not Cherelle who is engaging in 'I know best what you people should do' policymaking. It's been done from the bottom up', Ms. Parker told a group of voters in northwest Philadelphia, where she lives, on Tuesday.

She said that solutions should come from within the community. "Not people thinking they are coming in to rescue poor people. People who have never walked in those shoes or lived in an area with high rates violence and poverty." I've experienced that.

David Oh is her Republican opponent for the general election in November. He was a member of the City Council.