Beyond Campaign Promises: A Bisnow Primer On The 5 Top Candidates In Philly’s Wide-Open Race For Mayor

Track Record

Brown’s Superstores President and CEO Jeff Brown’s campaign is based on the premise that poverty is at the root of the ills plaguing Philadelphia.

“I really believe that the long-term answer to what ails this city is a better list of interventions to help people have a more reliable path out of poverty,” Brown told Bisnow. “Which is work — work and entrepreneurship.”

Brown is the only candidate remaining who hasn’t held public office, but he told Bisnow his family’s businesses developing, owning and operating several grocery stores across the region has been transformational as a job creation engine for thousands of Philadelphians and a remedy for neighborhood food deserts. He also offered as a credential his service on the boards of workforce development organizations; he is the chair of the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board, a private sector group that officially advises Gov. Josh Shapiro.

“This is the one area in which I may be the most qualified person to help people out of poverty in the state,” Brown said.

Support And Opposition

To bolster his job creation bona fides, Brown secured the endorsement of AFSCME District Council 33, the largest municipal workers’ union in the city. He also carries the endorsement of the city’s largest law enforcement union, the Fraternal Order of Police. 

Endorsements have also been a sore spot for Brown, as his campaign rhetoric caused sanitation workers to split from DC 33 and refuse to endorse him. Other parties, including the unions for the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University’s police forces and even Michelle Obama, have denounced Brown for falsely claiming their endorsements.

"FYI: Jeff Brown's campaign has to totally change their recent TV ads boasting he's been endorsed by Drexel, Penn, and Temple Police departments after complaints from Drexel specifically about it being misleading. Those university police departments DID NOT endorse him," journalist and Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists President Ernest Owens tweeted May 1.

Brown dropped to the rear of the pack in private polls in the past couple of weeks after attack ads financed by Domb hit local airwaves, but not by much, Geeting said. The wound to his campaign deepened, though, when the city’s Board of Ethics issued a cease-and-desist order against a political action committee for allegedly coordinating with Brown’s campaign.

Brown has called the order politically motivated, and during a May 4 televised debate, threatened to sue the ethics board, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Looking Forward

Brown expressed the strongest opposition to councilmanic prerogative of any candidate, though he added that its function of giving neighbors a say in the future of nearby properties through their local representative needs to be preserved or replicated.

In his interview with Bisnow, Brown proposed identifying enough city-owned lots to support the development of 5,000 to 10,000 affordable units and introducing them all at once as a way to perhaps circumvent the localized nature of current Land Bank decisions.

“Every year, I’d come back as mayor with somewhere between those unit counts across the city and have city council make an up or down vote on all the units as a package, and whatever the financial investment would be,” Brown said.

As with Brown’s idea to introduce an annual cap on property tax increases due to higher assessments, his Land Bank plan would require legislative support for a radical reshaping of policies that lawmakers have been unable to shift through incremental reforms.

Unless and until he would accomplish such overhauls, Brown would use his agency board appointments to advance his agenda of poverty reduction through job creation, he said.

“I do agree that those are very important appointments, and I believe we need pro-growth people who will listen to the community and address their concerns, but who are focused on growing the city and deploying capital to build new things and create new jobs,” Brown said. “So I’m going to have a bias toward that.”

Track Record

Former Councilmember at Large Allan Domb made his name, and campaign-altering fortune, in commercial real estate. Though he gained the moniker “Condo King” from buying, selling and brokerage in the luxury condo market, his property holdings across the city include multiple asset classes and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the aggregate, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

During his nearly two terms on council, Domb has attempted to apply his business sense to how the city brings in and spends money. One of his signature achievements was spearheading a program to notify renters when their landlords are tax-delinquent and direct them to send rent checks to the city instead, which dramatically improved property tax collection rates, Domb said.

Domb also got a law passed requiring the city to obtain independent appraisals before it acquires any property after the city nearly overpaid for its new police headquarters by millions of dollars without an appraisal. 

“No one in the city government knew we needed to have [an appraisal,]” Domb said. “But it’s real estate 101.”

But for every accomplishment like the above, there were several wastes of money that Domb lacked the authority to prevent, he said — to say nothing of how things were done before his time on council.

“People say we don’t have enough money, but we don’t manage our budget very well,” Domb said. “Our budget went up 50% in the past eight years, and I can’t tell you that the services of today are better than in 2015.”

Support And Opposition

Domb announced his first major endorsement on May 3 — that of Bill Green III, Philly’s mayor from 1980 to 1984.

The Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors endorsed Domb the following day, a possibly unsurprising choice considering he served as the organization’s president for three years before he was elected to council. While HAPCO Philadelphia has not endorsed a candidate and BIA does not give out endorsements, their public positions in favor of major reforms to the city’s Business Income and Receipts Tax closely mirror Domb’s.

“We’re No. 2 in the country for [the highest] business taxes, yet we have the highest poverty rate,” Wertman said. “Gee, I wonder if that goes hand in hand?”

“Our job creation for Black and brown small-business owners is the worst on the East Coast,” Domb said. “Why would anyone come here?”

Some progressive groups have held up Domb’s wealth and vast holdings as points of concern, though Domb released a detailed plan for keeping his business interests separate from his hypothetical administration, the Inquirer reports.

Until the beginning of May, Domb had largely managed to avoid being targeted by fellow candidates in attack ads. But when a union-funded group supporting Parker did put Domb in the crosshairs, it lumped him in with Brown as wealthy businessmen “trying to buy the election,” the Inquirer reports.

Looking Forward

Domb’s deep real estate ties may be the cause of misgivings among his opponents and some progressives, but those same ties would give the city’s market an instant boost were he to be elected, Domb said.  

“I’ve had several real estate people say to me, ‘If you’re elected, we think values will go up 10 to 20% because of the message it would send,’” Domb said. 

For years, Domb has made clear his desire to reduce BIRT and make it apply to businesses’ gross or net income, rather than both. Domb sees job growth as the clearest path out of poverty for disadvantaged Philadelphians and wants to emphasize business skills and entrepreneurship in the Philadelphia School District’s curriculum.

In his focus on job growth and business tax cuts, Domb overlaps most closely with Brown. As with Brown, Parker and Gym, Domb has promised to reverse the decline in city services with an emphasis on making it easier for individuals and small businesses to engage with the local bureaucracy. 

Domb stood apart from his fellow candidates in the number of detailed examples he gave of where city services can be improved, but most of the fixes he proposed centered around one element: time.

“The problem is that there’s no sense of urgency in the city government,” Domb said. “The lesson I’ve learned is time frames. Going forward, I’ll request that all legislations have time frames. City services will have time frames. Zoning variances? Ninety days.”

As for his approach to key appointments, Domb said he will pull liberally from the private sector.

“One of the most positively surprising things since I announced my candidacy for mayor is how many people in the private sector have reached out to me [offering] help,” he said. “Thirty to 40 people have reached out, and who these people are would shock people, though I won’t say their names.”

Track Record

By her own admission, former Councilmember at Large Helen Gym’s list of legislative accomplishments is short. But her bill that created the Eviction Diversion Program gained national acclaim from housing advocates and the Treasury Department alike.

“I don’t pass a lot of laws; I pass big laws that are very impactful, meant to solve big problems,” Gym told Bisnow. “For mayor, if people want folks who have been very comfortable and played it safe within the status quo politics in this city, they have a lot to choose from.”

Though it still only exists as a temporary program, EDP has been extended several times and received fresh resources from the city earlier this year. Gym’s confrontational tone about her politics has roots in her pre-council days as an education activist, and has only been fed by the vehement reaction policies like EDP have produced from business interests.

“It’s actually a really good idea to have someone having difficulty paying rent going in front of a housing counselor,” HAPCO’s Wertman said. “We’re against having it mandatory … If I’m in a situation [as a landlord] where I know I’m not getting any money, or I just want [a tenant] out, it’s just, ‘No.’ That’s Helen Gym for you. We tried to come to some kind of reasoning, and it just didn’t happen.”

The defining issue in Gym’s political career has been education and public schools. The former teacher was a frequent opponent of spending public money on charter schools before and during her time on council.

Support And Opposition

Philadelphia’s progressive organizing machine has coalesced around Gym, with key groups like Reclaim Philadelphia and the Working Families Party endorsing her and engaging their ground games on her behalf. Reclaim and WFP did not respond to requests for comment.

Gym has also landed all-star endorsements from national progressive figureheads like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which gave her opponents an opening to appeal to Philadelphians’ insular instincts. Cherelle Parker claimed in a campaign email that one candidate has bused in activists from outside the city to gain an unfair canvassing advantage  — a claim Parker repeated in her interview with Bisnow. 

Though she stopped short of naming names in both cases, Parker mirrored language from an April 27 Billy Penn report about Gym’s canvassing activity.

Rushdy and Wertman also made it clear that, more than favoring any one candidate, they would prefer if anyone but Gym were elected. Rushdy, who develops multifamily buildings in Fishtown and neighborhoods to its north and east as principal of Riverwards Group, stressed that his position was not the official stance of BIA.

“As Mo Rushdy of Riverwards Group, you’ve got candidates that are full of rhetoric and activism and movement politics saying very big things, and when asked how they’re going to pay for it, there are no answers,” he said. “It’s OK to dream, but you can’t have a dreamer sit in the chair of the largest executive office in the city of Philadelphia.”

Starting near the end of April, an independent expenditure committee — Pennsylvania law’s term for super PACs — called Coalition for Safety and Equitable Growth began blanketing the city in attack ads against Gym on television and in mailers. 

Rushdy is listed by city campaign finance records as the group’s treasurer.

Campaign finance reports published by the city on Friday show that Rushdy gave $25K to the group, one of the biggest contributions it has received. At $750K, by far the Coalition’s largest donor is local investment billionaire Jeffrey Yass, who gave nearly $10M last year to charter school advocacy group StudentsFirst. 

Looking Forward

Though powerful groups in commercial real estate may be working to keep Gym from office, such opposition may not have anything to do with her actual policies toward real estate, she said.

“I don’t think there’s a sector that’s uniformly doing this; I think there are individuals and small groups who have been behind slanderous attacks, just like there are specific people who lobbied for very specific tax breaks,” Gym told Bisnow. “My relationship with real estate overall is positive. 

“There are plenty of realtors who see themselves in my agenda, which is to make Philly the most livable city in America. A vibrant public school system is probably the biggest selling point for realtors in the city.”

Gym said she supports commercial rent assistance for small businesses and that she would hire an adviser specifically to improve Philadelphia’s bids for national funding programs such as the bipartisan infrastructure bill. 

As for who she would hire, Gym said she would prioritize expertise over “cronies and buddies” across her appointments. She cited national nonprofit Local Progress, which she co-chairs, as a source of ideas and relationships.

“We’re focused on transformative changes on the ground in core areas, one of which is housing and land use,” Gym said of Local Progress. “A lot of people have come into politics based on their energy around that. I’ve been fortunate, even though I’m not a housing and land use expert, to surround myself with experts from a range of interests and approaches in how you look at land use.”

Track Record

Former District 9 Councilmember Cherelle Parker worked in former District 5 Councilmember Marian Tasco’s office for years, then from 2005 to 2015 served as state representative for Northwest Philadelphia. Her campaign website touts her record in the state house of pioneering financing programs for low-income homeowners and Philly’s public schools.

Parker’s two terms in the city legislature included a stint as majority leader. Rising up the ranks in the same body as retiring Council President Darrell Clarke, Parker focused on protecting “middle neighborhoods” between deep poverty and affluence, including those that made up a large part of her council district, according to her campaign page. That her legislative record while she served on council was light on citywide impact has little to do with how she would govern as mayor, Parker told Bisnow.

“I thank you for distinguishing a difference between being a member of the legislature and the mayor,” Parker said when asked how she would approach being mayor differently. “I’ve never had access to the power to convene around laws and to have that bully pulpit.” 

Support And Opposition

Parker’s steady rise through city politics has resulted in a long roster of endorsements, including Clarke; Philly’s two U.S. representatives, Dwight Evans and Brendan Boyle; multiple state senators; and former councilmembers Derek Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, once they dropped out of the race.

“As mayor, you transition to a new role, and you need to think about things in a broader perspective,” Green told Bisnow. “So having relationships is key if you want to effect change.”

Perhaps even more impactful than all of those elected officials are the endorsements Parker has received from organized labor — specifically, the Building Trades Council, which Rushdy and Wertman said was a key factor in Mayor Jim Kenney’s election in 2015. But that was when John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty led the council as part of the biggest source of campaign cash in the state.

In this cycle, union money has been dwarfed by Yass and his affiliated groups, as well as Domb’s personal assets.

The legacy of Dougherty and the continued strength of organized labor have led other candidates to call Parker’s endorsements a strike against her, the Inquirer reports. With the endorsements of the building trades, elected officials, and a majority of Democratic wards in the city, Parker seems to be the choice of plenty of Philly’s most established power brokers — one who has made housing and development choices based on relationships rather than policy priorities, Geeting said.

“She has a record of supporting some individual development projects that needed political support, but hasn’t been in favor of policy changes that would allow more by-right development to take place differently from what is allowed now,” said Geeting, who has backed Rhynhart on social media. 

Looking Forward

Parker has gained a decent amount of support from the business community, which is encouraging for the prospect of a more development-friendly administration, Rushdy said.

“This election cycle has seen a lot of alignments between building trades, business and communities, elected officials and ex-elected officials,” he said. “I can tell you that there is a consensus between different groups that this is the direction that we need to go in.”

Parker has continually emphasized in debates and her interview with Bisnow that she will not preemptively oppose or support any project, including the 76ers’ proposed arena, without due consideration and conversation with involved and affected parties.

“I do think that the people closest to the arena should have their voices heard, taken seriously and addressed, but in the poorest large city in the nation, in no way should any large project be met with reflexive opposition,” Parker said. “Philadelphia doesn’t have the luxury for that.”

Such open-mindedness is central to Parker’s appeal to both unions and business interests as a potential difference-maker, she said. When asked if her endorsements signaled a vote for the status quo, Parker’s response echoed Rushdy’s characterization of her.

“I would say that there couldn’t be anything further from the truth,” Parker said. “I am proud that as mayor of this city, I would have the wherewithal to bring the building trades along with the development community to the table to figure out a way to get to yes. It’s extremely important to have a mayor and a leader who can be an honest broker between the industry and the people and groups that make up the labor.”

Parker expressed support for reforming the Land Bank, but not by casting aside councilmanic prerogative. She proposed establishing “mayor’s councils” in every council district to serve a similar purpose that Registered Community Organizations do on a neighborhood level.

“As a former district councilmember who understands the importance of the district councilmember’s role in overseeing land use, you are not going to get me to criticize [councilmanic prerogative], and I'm not talking about what you would call abuse,” Parker said.

For potential appointments, Parker said she would seek the “best and brightest” through searches at the local, state and national levels.

Track Record

Before she was elected as city controller in 2017, Rebecca Rhynhart served as Philly’s city treasurer beginning under Mayor Michael Nutter at the onset of the Great Financial Crisis. Nutter has called her crucial to keeping the city’s lights on back then in interviews supporting Rhynhart’s campaign. She was promoted to budget director, a post she held until she resigned in 2016 to run for controller.

As controller, Rhynhart fought for transparency of city departments and finances, even when it drew Kenney’s ire — which it frequently did. Her city jobs didn’t lend themselves to much interaction with commercial real estate, but her time as controller makes her the only candidate who already has experience in a citywide executive position, she said.

“That ability to get things done within the city system, the ability to maneuver and operate an office, absolutely sets me apart and will enable me to hit the ground running on day one,” Rhynhart told Bisnow.

Support And Opposition

In addition to Nutter, Rhynhart secured the endorsements of mayors John Street and Ed Rendell, the latter of whom also served as Pennsylvania’s governor. Rather than backing her ideology or campaign platform, the three former mayors supported Rhynhart because of her competence, she said.

“[Nutter, Street and Rendell] could not be more different in terms of leadership style and even policy priorities,” Rhynhart said. “But what they all agree on is that I’m the best person to lead this city forward. And all three of them know what it’s like to run this city, like when there’s a crisis. And they’re picking me as the best person to lead our city forward. I think it speaks volumes about my ability to lead and bring different stakeholders and viewpoints together.”

Among direct donations to Rhynhart’s campaign, real estate is the economic sector from which she took in the most cash through the end of March, nonprofit Philly Power Research reports. The largest individual donor from the sector was multifamily developer Post Brothers.

Wertman described Rhynhart as the rare politician without a real estate background who could nonetheless follow along as he “talked shop,” he said.

“I really liked her,” Wertman said. “I was really impressed by her.”

Looking Forward

Rhynhart shares the desire to create a citywide plan for Land Bank properties with other candidates, but acknowledges that doing so would require the cooperation of city council, and by extension, the neighborhood constituencies they represent.

“To me, this isn’t about two different sides fighting each other; It’s about bringing different stakeholders together and figuring out how to move forward,” Rhynhart said.

When asked to specify which stakeholders she was referring to, she answered: “developers, community leaders, people from the preservation area and different groups that have a say.”

Rhynhart’s campaign platform on her website includes references to more specific policy points, such as rent subsidies for landlords of three or fewer residential units, unmasking anonymous LLCs that own property in the city and expanding the use of the Eviction Diversion Program to apply to more causes for eviction.

Yet during debates and media interviews, Rhynhart has been short on specifics to the point of frustrating even supporters like Geeting.

“I think Rhynhart is maybe benefiting from a perception of vibes around her, with people reading her vibes to say she wouldn’t have as much of an emphasis on the inclusionary [zoning] aspect,” Geeting said. “It’s more guesses, supposition and inferences than what you’d want.”

When discussing what her priorities would be in making appointments to key bodies, Rhynhart mentioned one quality she would value that others did not: diversity.

“It’s about the experience and knowledge to do a good job, and it’s about diversity of representation as well,” Rhynhart said. “It’s about making sure that things are looked at from different perspectives, and that we have the most qualified people on these boards and commissions that can truly move the city forward with decision-making.”