PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia playground was already packed by the time Josh Shapiro arrived. The attorney general and candidate for Pennsylvania governor paraded into North Philly on Saturday, where he was cheered by neighborhood activists who wanted a fist bump and welcomed by elected officials who wanted his ear.
He paused for a moment to take a selfie video with Muriel Taylor, a 65-year-old grandmother who couldn’t wait to tell her sister whom she’d met.
She was thrilled, no matter the obvious dynamic: Shapiro is a white politician from an affluent suburb in Montgomery County who was crashing a party in the heart of the city’s Strawberry Mansion section, a mostly Black community that’s one of the most economically depressed in the city.