PHILADELPHIA — National progressives were looking for another big win in Philadelphia this week, but Cherelle Parker, a moderate Democrat born and raised in the city's Northwest section, won the historic nomination.
Progressive political celebs had lined up behind Helen Gym, hoping she might continue a wave of mayoral victories in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
"We're taking this movement from the West Coast to the East Coast!" U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told an amped-up Gym crowd at a rally on Sunday.
Ultimately, with 94% of votes counted, Gym came in third place in the Democratic mayoral primary, trailing Parker and former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and frustrating progressives who hoped to propel gains in recent years into the city's biggest office.
"I think the unfair criticisms of her down the end of the road and the large amount of money that was spent hurt her," George R. Burrell, a former City Council member and mayoral candidate who endorsed Gym, said Wednesday. "But you look at the enthusiasm ... I don't think that's going away."
Philadelphia's race was more complicated than Chicago's, with several candidates here factoring into the outcome, and Rhynhart and Gym splitting votes. Of the five contenders, Parker was also the only Black candidate in a city which has historically voted along racial lines. And while the race was light on specific policy proposals, Parker ran with a tough-on-crime stance that supporters seemed to latch onto.
And in Gym, her opponents found a left-leaning bogeywoman to attack, for her personal wealth, a husband who once worked at a pharmaceutical company, all of which became an obstacle to growing her support.
As Gym's race ended Tuesday, she said the movement she helped start in Philadelphia would endure.
"What we have built was unimaginable eight years ago," she said. "Our city has a strong and vibrant, diehard progressive bench that is ready to meet this moment. ... We have always believed that a stronger, safer, more just Philadelphia is possible. Our work is not done. We will keep pushing, fighting and organizing to build the city we all deserve."
Working-class appeal fell short
While Gym ran to help working people — she often said she was running to change the way people live — her biggest appeal wound up being with wealthier voters in the city.
Gym won 29% of the vote in precincts where people made an average of $100,000 and more and just 11% in precincts where the average income was less than $50,000 a year, an Inquirer analysis shows.
In wealthier districts, like Center City and affluent parts of the Northwest, Gym almost certainly split votes with Rhynhart, who ran an effective campaign as a budget wonk and problem solver.
Gym had a lot of progressive organizations behind her, and backers said they had the strongest ground game in the race. The results show some signs that her voters were particularly motivated. While turnout citywide was on pace with 2015 — about 30% —precincts that outperformed their 2015 turnout voted disproportionately for Gym. That's in line with trends in those precincts in more recent years, though.
Gym also led in neighborhoods with a lot of "newer" voters, precincts with a high percentage of voters not registered there in 2013, according to Inquirer analysis.
Gym's message that she is a fighter with bold ideas to tackle big problems was embraced by her base but attacked by opponents who called her proposals unrealistic. Attack ads — largely funded by a conservative Main Line billionaire — likely had a big impact, too.
Her activist background may have soured some voters looking for someone to manage the city through several crises, argued Sam Katz, a former candidate for mayor.
"I don't think it was a movement thing," Katz said. "I don't think Helen's candidacy clicked. A lot of folks concluded that her style of leadership did not fit with being mayor. Being an advocate and a hard-charging person is a good quality maybe for the Council or the Congress."
Katz suspected that some voters shifted from Gym to Rhynhart.
That was the case for Lisa Brown, a 34-year-old from East Kensington.
"I considered Helen Gym — like three people came to my door supporting her, so she obviously has a lot of support," Brown said at her polling place. "But I think she was just a little too progressive for me. I like her and she sounds fair, but I'm just not sure she's right for the entire city."
'Crime was the most important issue'
Crime was a big issue in the Los Angeles and Chicago races, where progressive candidates facing criticism over their ability to tackle the issue won anyway.
In the mayor's race, none of the candidates downplayed the severity of crime, a key issue for voters. Parker projected a particularly tough stance that hinged on hiring more police officers and supporting the controversial tactic known as stop-and-frisk. But she combined that posture with a promise to have "no tolerance for misuse or abuse by police" and her personal story of being a mother to a 10-year-old Black boy, which struck a balance for some voters.
"When I heard her talking about it and she was talking about how she wanted to protect her son, because now little kids are getting killed, that was the most important thing to me that made me vote for her," said Stephanie Clark, 61, of Mantua, on voting for Parker.
Rhynhart and Gym's public-safety platforms were not as aggressive on law enforcement. Rhynhart's was largely focused on making changes in the police department and implementing new antiviolence programs. Gym's led with investments outside policing, including a guaranteed jobs program for young people.
"If you are inclined to think that more effective law enforcement is a really important part of the response, Helen was the weakest on that," said Joseph P. McLaughlin, an adviser to two former mayors.
Parker campaign spokesperson Aren Platt said he thought progressives can misread the nuanced way a lot of people feel about addressing crime.
"In certain progressive circles everything is a binary thing," Platt said. "It is either you are for police reform or you want Frank Rizzo to come back to life and run the Police Department, and they tried to paint Cherelle with that brush."
Parker's campaign manger, Sinceré Harris, said that misunderstanding is why Parker won big in communities hardest hit by violence.
"I'm from one of those communities," Harris said. "And it's bull—. The average person doesn't feel that way. The average person doesn't feel that binary."
With the exception of candidates occasionally attacking Parker's comments on stop-and-frisk, there was little public policy debate about crime, indicating the race wasn't so much about differences in tactics as leadership style and personality.
"Crime is clearly the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters," said political strategist J.J. Balaban. "But that doesn't make it decisive in terms of how people vote. It depends whether it becomes the center of the debate and here, it hasn't."
Progressivism is 'here for the long haul'
Gym's loss follows several big wins for progressives in the city that reelected Larry Krasner district attorney and Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks to City Council in 2019. A parade of progressive state representatives have also gone to Harrisburg in recent years.
And while some progressive candidates, such as political organizer Amanda McIllmurray, lost their City Council bids on Tuesday, others, such as Rue Landau, who had been embraced by the movement, won primaries.
And progressives didn't perform badly statewide. In Western Pennsylvania, former State Rep. Sara Innamorato, who had the backing of the Working Families Party, won the Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive.
Nicolas O'Rourke, who is running for City Council this fall as a member of the Working Families Party, said "the movement, win or lose, we press on."
"This movement is not tethered to a particular individual," he said. "Regardless of what outcomes are in a single election, the work continues, because the values that we share are focused on materially improving people's lives."
Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the nonprofit Straight Ahead and a top supporter of Gym's, said the city's progressive movement may have been "spoiled with winning."
"But there's lessons from losing," he said, "and one thing I can say about our people is we're here for the long haul. We're not going to settle for what happened. ... Part of fighting is winning or getting your a— kicked. This time, we came up short."
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Staff writers Sean Collins Walsh, Layla Jones, Aseem Shukla, and Ximena Conde contributed to this article.
