Cherelle Parker

Cherelle Lesley Parker (born September 9, 1972) is an American politician who has served as the 100th Mayor of Philadelphia since 2024. She is the first woman to hold the office.

Parker served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2005 to 2015, representing the 200th district in Northwest Philadelphia. She was elected to represent the ninth district on the Philadelphia City Council in 2015 and re-elected in 2019, serving as majority leader from 2020 to 2022.

In September 2022, Parker resigned from City Council and announced her candidacy in the 2023 Philadelphia mayoral election. She won the Democratic primary in May 2023, going on to defeat Republican David Oh in the general election in November.

Early life and education
Parker was born in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Northwest Philadelphia to an unmarried teenage mother. Her mother died when Parker was 11, and she was raised by her grandparents, a disabled U.S. Navy veteran and a domestic worker who both grew up in the South.

In 1990, as a senior at Parkway High School, Parker won a citywide oratorical competition. In winning the competition, she was awarded a cash prize, a trip to Senegal and Morocco, and was introduced to then-Philadelphia City Council member Marian B. Tasco, who hired Parker as an intern.

Parker graduated from Lincoln University in 1994. She is a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

Career
After graduating from Lincoln University in 1994, Parker worked briefly as a high school English teacher in Pleasantville, New Jersey, and then returned to Tasco's office in 1995, where she did a variety of roles for a decade.

In 2005, Parker ran in a special election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to fill an open seat vacated by LeAnna Washington after Washington was elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate. Parker won the election, and became the youngest Black woman ever elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. She remained in that office for ten years, and for five years was chair of the Philadelphia delegation. In the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, she supported the "Philadelphia Tax Fairness Package", a new and special tax on the purchase of cigarettes, and the Act 75, which in 2012 amended state law to allow expert testimony in sexual assault cases.

Tasco retired from Philadelphia city council in 2015, and encouraged Parker to succeed her. She was supported by the city's Democratic Party, and won. As a member of the Philadelphia City Council, she led the passage of the "Philly First Home" program, which aids first-time home buyers in meeting down payments and closing costs on the purchase of a home.

In January 2020, Parker defeated Bobby Henon to become majority leader for Democrats on the city council. In February 2021, Parker was elected the chair of the board for the Delaware River Port Authority.

Primary election
On September 7, 2022, Parker resigned from the City Council and announced her candidacy for Mayor of Philadelphia in the 2023 election. Following her resignation, she also registered as a lobbyist in Pennsylvania, and secured Longwood Gardens and Moore College of Art and Design as clients.

In the mayoral campaign primary, Parker ran as a moderate Democrat compared to other more progressive candidates. Her campaign focused on crime and public safety, pledging to hire 300 new police officers and opposing the establishment of a supervised injection site for heroin and other injectable drugs in Philadelphia.

As a Philadelphia City Council member, Parker opposed the police tactic of "stop and frisk", also known as a Terry stop. But during her campaign for mayor, she reversed her position on them, saying, "Terry stops are what I wholeheartedly embrace as a tool that law enforcement needs, to make the public safety of our city their number one priority. It is a legal tool."

Polling ahead of the mayoral primary found that Parker was in a statistical tie with Rebecca Rhynhart and Helen Gym. Parker was endorsed by several labor unions and members of the city's political establishment, including former mayoral candidates Maria Quiñones-Sánchez and Derek S. Green. Parker lagged in fundraising behind most of the major candidates. Campaign finance reports showed she and Rhynhart were the only two candidates to raise a majority of their funds from Philadelphia residents.

On May 16, 2023, Parker was declared the winner of the Democratic primary, receiving 32.6% of the vote and defeating her closest opponent by ten percentage points, due to her strong support in Black and low-income neighborhoods in the city.

General election
Parker faced Republican city council member David Oh in the general election.

For almost a month after securing the Democratic primary, Parker did not campaign, citing complications from an earlier dental root canal procedure. Even after recovering, Parker refused to debate Oh, claiming that the 7 to 1 voter registration advantage the Democrats made any effort to interact with Oh a waste of campaign resources. Jennifer Stefano in the The Philadelphia Inquirer called Parker's decision not to debate Oh "Trumpesque" and "a danger to our democracy". Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, also criticized Parker's refusal to debate Oh, saying it would be the first time in 24 years without a debate between the city's mayoral candidates in the general election.

Parker agreed to participate in a joint interview with Oh at the Please Touch Museum, where they took questions from children related to their vision of Philadelphia. Parker said she wishes to see Philadelphia be the "safest, cleanest, and greenest big city in the nation, with economic opportunity for all". Shortly afterwards, Parker reversed her position on debating Oh and agreed to participate in a single debate on October 26 on Philadelphia's Morning News, KYW radio program. As of September 27, Parker had only raised an additional $875,000 in campaign donations compared to her $2.2 million raised during the primary, but she spent roughly twice that of Oh, who raised a total of $467,000.

Parker defeated Oh with 75% of the vote in the general election, which was the lowest showing by a Democrat since John F. Street in the 2003 election.

Mayor of Philadelphia
Parker's term as mayor began at midnight on January 1, 2024, but she was not formally sworn in until January 2 to avoid conflicting with the Mummers Parade, an annual New Year's Day tradition in Philadelphia. In contrast to her predecessors, her transition team was slow to appoint commissioners for a majority of city agencies, leaving some departments without permanent leadership for over a month into Parker's mayoral term, while others retained appointees from the Jim Kenney administration.

Parker's administration proposed a media policy which required all public statements to be approved by the Mayor's Office of Communications, drawing criticism from many branches of the Free Library of Philadelphia, who warned on the evening before the policy went into effect that it would prevent branches from communicating promptly with patrons about programming and unplanned closures. Staff also cited concerns that the policy could be used to censor print and digital content. After public outcry, the policy was reversed.

Parker ordered a return to full time, in-person work for city employees by July 15, 2024.

First Budget
On 14 March, Parker released her proposed city budget for Fiscal Year 2024–25. The budget plan proposed increased funding for the police and for city cleaning and greening efforts, as well as an increase in the School District of Philadelphia's share of the real estate tax. Unlike previous mayors, Parker's first budget proposal did not include a major, potentially controversial spending priority. The mayor's office received the largest funding increase of any city department, with its budget growing by 151% and the mayor's direct staff increasing from 39 positions to 113. Parker proposed a $1 million cut to funding for Prevention Point, a harm reduction and syringe exchange organization that operates in Kensington. This proposal was criticized by physicians and public health researchers, with the city's Director of HIV Health saying it would lead to a spike in HIV cases among needle users. The budget cut funding for Vision Zero, an initiative to end traffic deaths, and initially did not include funding needed by the Philadelphia Housing Authority to develop the site of the UC Townhomes, though that funding was later added. Tax rates remained flat and two property tax relief programs were expanded, while code enforcement and sanitation programs received budget increases.

Public Safety
On 11 April, Mayor Parker visited Kensington to commemorate her 100th day in office and released her public safety plan for the neighborhood and the city at large. On 8 May, Parker ordered police and municipal workers to clear a large encampment between McPherson Square and Allegheny Ave in Kensington. Witnesses reported sanitation workers using water hoses and leaf blowers to drive people off the streets. Several harm-reduction advocates refused an order by police to disperse. Of around 75 people who were counted living on the block, the Parker administration said 59 were placed in a shelter or treatment since April, with 31 institutionalized after the encampment clearance.

Education
In 2023, Parker supported opening schools for a longer duration of the day and mandatory year-round schooling, arguing that "children are no longer working the farms in summertime". She proposed launching a pilot program, and increasing the allocation of real estate taxes that go toward the Philadelphia School District from 55% to 58% to accommodate for the increased air conditioning costs associated with longer operating hours during the school year.

Public safety
Parker's platform was described as "tough on crime". Parker opposes supervised injection sites. She supported Terry stops, also known as "constitutional stop-and-frisk", in her mayoral campaign after having previously fought to end them on the Philadelphia City Council, labeling them unconstitutional and discriminatory. In a 2022 op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Parker pledged to hire 300 additional police officers.

Personal life
In 2010, Parker married Ben Mullins, a leader in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They live in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, and have a son, Langston, who was named after Langston Hughes.

In 2011, Parker was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol after she was stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. She was convicted, and after losing an appeal in 2015, was sentenced to three days in jail, a $1,000 fine, and a one-year driver's license suspension.