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If someone asked you ten years ago whether you preferred a woman or an Asian as the Mayor of Philadelphia, you would likely have been puzzled. That's because such an option didn't exist ten years ago.

However, today, if someone asked you the same question, "Do you want a woman or an Asian as the Mayor of Philadelphia?" you should seriously contemplate the question, just like every Philadelphia voter. In the Democratic primary on May 16th, Cherelle Parker, an African-American woman, emerged as the frontrunner among the stock of candidates, while Karean American David Oh, as the sole Republican candidate, won the nomination uncontested.

Regardless of your choice, on November 7th, the Philadelphia mayoral election will make history.

Race and gender should not be the primary focus for voters. Voters should evaluate candidates based on their background, political experience, campaign platform, and controversial issues, with the needs of all Philadelphians centered. This article explores each of these topics for both candidates. 

Table of Contents

The Family and Childhoods

Cherelle Parker had to deal with the loss of her mother and grandmother at an early age; her mother died when she was 11, and her grandmother at sixteen. She grew up in the West Oak Lane Section of Northwest Philly. Her mother was a teenager when she was born, and she never knew her father, so her grandparents helped raise her until her grandmother's death, leaving only her grandfather to care for her through her high school years.

Her grandparents, James and Dorothy Parker, migrated from the rural south, and she attended public schools during her formative years. She was the first person in her family to attend college, graduating from Lincoln University before attending the University of Pennsylvania for her master's degree. 

David Oh was born to Korean immigrants. His father, Ki Hang Oh, was the founder and pastor of Philadelphia’s first Korean-American Christian Church. He was born, raised, and attended public school in Cobbs Creek, a “poor, African-American section with a lot of crime.” The experience living in this community has made him “quite familiar with crime, with illegal dumping, with drug addiction, with all those things that people talk about.”

Education, and Careers before Politics

After Highschool, she interned for then-councilperson Marian B. Tasco before attending college. Her first job after college was as a public high school English and ESL teacher.

David Oh attended Christopher Dock Mennonite High School in Lansdale, PA, before returning to the Philadelphia Public School system to graduate from Central High School. 

After high school, Oh received his Bachelor's degree from Dickinson College before attending Rutgers University Law School-Camden, where he received his Law Degree. While in Law School, Oh started a volunteer free legal aid program geared toward Asian immigrants and received a Human Rights Award from the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. After graduating from Law School, Oh would become an Assistant District Attorney until he resigned in 1988 to join the U.S. Army.

David Oh, served as a 2nd Lieutenant, C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group, Army National Guard, from 1989 to 1992. Oh never became Special Forces qualified. In 1991, Oh was activated with his unit for Operation Desert Storm, but the war ended before Oh's Unit could deploy, and he was Honorably Discharged.

Upon returning to Philadelphia, Oh reopened his solo law practice in Southwest Philadelphia, the successful practice eventually outgrew its space, and he moved it to Center City, where in 2008, he merged it with the more prominent law firm Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy, P.C.

In 1999 Oh organized Governor Tom Ridge's trade mission to South Korea, arranging meetings with Korea's President and major corporate leaders.

Past Political Positions, Campaigns, and Accomplishments

Cherelle Parker began her political career early when she began interning for former City Council member Marian Tasco. She worked in Tasco's office from 1995-2005, filling various roles and becoming one of Tasco's most trusted advisors. 

In 2005, Parker was elected as the youngest African-American woman to serve in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. She represented the 200th District until she resigned in 2015 to run for control of the 9th District's seat on the Philadelphia City Council. The 9th District includes the neighborhood where she was raised; she served her community until her resignation in September 2022 to run for mayor.

During her time in the State House and on City Council, she was a very active legislator, moving significant legislation into law. Parker also served as vice chair of the Council's Committee on Commerce and Economic Development and serves as a member on several committees, including Appropriations; Children and Youth; Education; Housing, Neighborhood Development, and the Homeless; Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs; Rules; and Transportation and Public Utilities.

As Chair of the Philadelphia delegation in the PA State House, Parker worked with the other side of the aisle to pass meaningful legislation that impacted all Philadelphians. The Philadelphia Tax Fairness Package provided the city of Philadelphia with more tools to collect delinquent property taxes, generating more revenue for the School District of Philadelphia. It created the Long-term Owner-Occupant Program and expanded tax-payment installment opportunities. Parker got bipartisan support to pass a two-dollar-per-pack cigarette tax which continues to fund Philly schools.

In 2013 Parker helped push through an infrastructure bill for the commonwealth that included 2.3 billion dollars to repair aging roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure, including a 450 million dollar investment in public transportation throughout the state.

In 2012 she got bipartisan support for a bill to amend Title 42 to allow expert testimony regarding victim behavior in cases of sexual assault, strengthening victims' rights.

She fought vigorously to safeguard Philadelphia's Paid Sick Leave ordinance, ensure that school district resources were used in the classroom, provide our students with access to better resources, and preserve the city's ability to secure local safety ordinances protecting residents against the sale and use of illegal guns. She led the effort to prevent the legalization of predatory payday lending in the Commonwealth, a fight she began as a senior staffer in the City Council of Philadelphia.

During her time on City Council, Parker created the Restore, Repair, Renew program with Darrell Clarke, making it easier for homeowners to access low-interest loans for home repairs. She increased the Realty Transfer Tax by 0.1 percent to get 100 dollars in bonds to eliminate the backlog in income-based home repair programs. Parker also drafted a bill requiring development projects to fill out a Project Information Form that would inform the project's neighbors about its impacts on their community.

Parker helped establish Power Up Your Business, a free small business training and technical assistance program to help small businesses get off the ground. Parker also fought to increase the wages of service workers at some of the city's profitable establishments receiving city money or tax breaks. 

Public Safety has been a top-of-mind issue since the pandemic, and Parker has been at the forefront of the subject, even if at times in controversial ways. Before she resigned from City Council to run for Mayor, Parker introduced the Philadelphia Neighborhood Safety and Community Policing Plan, which aims to increase police budgets, add 300 police officers, increase funding for security cameras, and bring back the practice of signing off on a log when officers visit specific locations along commercial corridors. The plan also increases the number of officers doing actual police work instead of work that civilian workers could do.

It calls on the City Council to fully fund the Police Department's forensic science crime lab. If it had a better, upgraded facility, it could expand its operational capabilities, improving efforts to tackle violent crime. It suggests various ways the city could improve efficiency and cooperation throughout city agencies on quality-of-life issues.

Parker started the PHL Taking Care of Business program, hiring people with little to no work experience to clean around commercial corridors in the city while providing soft skills job training like resumé writing to prepare them to enter the workforce. The Philly First Home program offers 10,000 dollars or six percent of the home's purchase cost to first-time low-income home buyers or those who have not owned a house in the past three years to assist with down payments and closing costs. 

In 2003 and 2007, Oh ran for one of the two at-large seats on the City Council designated for a minority party, losing to Jack Kelly and Frank Rizzo Jr. before succeeding in 2011, defeating former mayoral candidate Al Taubenberger, becoming the first Asian-American to hold a political office in Philadelphia. He held the seat for three terms until he announced his candidacy for mayor in 2023.

As the only Republican on the council, Oh has had difficulty passing legislation. Some of his proposed laws that failed to pass include a shortening of the number of days COVID-19 restrictions are in effect, auditing the Philadelphia Parking Authority, lowering taxes, eliminating the soda tax, and a budget amendment that would withhold 10 million dollars in funding from SEPTA unless the transportation agency commits to recruiting more officers and improving wages.

During his time in City Council, Oh created a Veterans Tax Credit for businesses that hire veterans, introduced a bill that would require employers to provide a private, sanitary place for mothers to breastfeed their child, as well as enough time to do so, and secured more funding for firefighters.

Notable Policies

Cherelle Parker is tough-on-crime, at least when compared to other Philly Democrats. 

Parker is opposed to supervised injection sites.

Parker supports Terry Stops, also known as Constitutional stop-and-frisk because “we cannot afford to take any legal tool away from law enforcement so that they can ensure that our public health and safety is our No. 1 priority. I support what’s called ‘Terry stops.’ That means law enforcement must have just cause and reasonable suspicion.”

The majority of Parker's public Safety plan was laid out in the Neighborhood Safety and Community Policing Plan she passed in the City Council. She largely relies on hiring 300 more police officers, pulling current officers off administrative duties that non-police officers could perform, distributing them equitably throughout the city, and increasing funding for the police forensics lab.

A significant portion of her plan focuses on quality-of-life issues, like fixing street lights, adding more cameras, cleaning streets, and repairing homes.

Parker plans on establishing a hotline for victims and witnesses.

David Oh says, "Minimal bail determinations, lenient sentencing, and ineffective criminal prosecutions have created a revolving door policy that releases repeat offenders in our communities." While at the same time disparaging treatment and rehabilitation for drug offenders.

Oh, echoes Parker's call for more police, 911 operators, and effective coordination between what he terms "peacekeepers," who regularly patrol as a visible presence from courteous, well-trained, and responsive law enforcement personnel. These peacekeepers would focus on crime "hot spots" to ensure that our neighborhoods, schools, recreation areas, public gathering spaces, public transportation, and commercial areas are peaceful and safe.

Oh, promises more funding for up-to-date technology to improve responses and response time and a strategy of community-oriented policing based on a partnership between stakeholders and law enforcement that ensures a focused public service.

David Oh also addresses that we must arrest drug dealers to stop violence over drugs, which is a major cause of crime, and the key solution to the public safety crisis should be more and better policing and police presence in communities, not rehabilitation. Faster 911 response times are also important. 

Addressing root causes of crime once we've "stopped the bleeding." Oh says that because young people are the biggest contributors to crime, providing them an avenue for expressing themselves and pursuing a career through the arts is the best way to do this. Oh says he would accomplish this by providing more funding to the Philadelphia Community College and its arts programs. 

Parker’s education plan calls for extended school hours (7:30 AM- 6 PM) for more time for extracurricular activities like athletics, music, the arts, language, technology, etc., and after-school childcare, with a year-long school year consisting of shorter breaks spread across the school year instead of one, long continuous summer break.

She calls for building partnerships between high schools and businesses, city departments, and the Building Trades for student job training, building partnerships between high schools, colleges, and universities to provide solid in-class preparation for students planning to attend college, and increasing funding for public education.

David Oh proposed legislation for a model school board where the general population would elect five of the nine members. As Mayor, he will continue advocating for elected board members to represent parents' concerns better. “Parents must have a more powerful voice in selecting the school board in Philadelphia,” says Oh.

Oh says he would work tirelessly with educational stakeholders so that parents have more of a voice regarding their children’s education; he would utilize City resources to support and supplement initiatives in education to facilitate academic achievement.

Oh, plans to improve tax collection to bring in more public school funding; he estimates these improvements would generate an extra 26 million dollars per year.

Oh says he would steer efforts to increase transparency and accountability for all stakeholders involved in our children’s education and build bridges between the community and schools so that teachers are better supported in the class.

To support the superintendent in improving the overall district infrastructure and remediate safety-related problems. Oh says he would request the school district review COVID and other federal and State funding available to help improve infrastructure and conduct remedial activities.

Parker says she would increase the minimum wage in Philadelphia to $17.53 per hour and expand the PHL Taking Care of Business Program to the entire city. She wants to get more people with little to no work experience back into the job market and provide them with the soft skills training needed to get better jobs while making the city cleaner and greener.

She says she would push legislation to make starting and building a business easier while expanding her Power Up Your Business to ensure more entrepreneurs have access to the skills needed to succeed.  

David Oh says he wants to end the era of top-down control through “mandates and costly regulations” that stifle and shutter small businesses. He says he will measure the economic impact of every new regulation on businesses.  

Oh says he would “lower the taxes and penalties on the poor" so consumers would have more money to spend. Including repealing the sugary drinks tax, which he says is a regressive tax that harms people with low incomes and hurts the economy.

He believes this would spur an infrastructure renovation in the city to attract employers and investors, allowing entrepreneurs and business owners to bring their services and products to Philadelphia, including those associated with the global economy creating a renaissance of increased job growth for Philadelphians.

Parker said “I have not publicly affirmed whether I’m for or against. I do know that residents in any neighborhood have a right to have a say in what land use takes place in their community. How about we actually know the details about what is being proposed?”

However, when the arena was announced in July, she was supportive, claiming that “[o]ur city has been presented with a plan that would create thousands of family-sustaining, union jobs that will lift Black and Brown Philadelphians out of poverty and place them on the path to self-sufficiency.”

David Oh, however, argues that Philadelphia’s Chinatown is unique and that there aren’t similar projects in the past. Instead of looking at similar projects in the past to come to a conclusion about the proposed arena, Oh says that “you would have to look at the actual architectural design, you would look at, for example, the transportation flow, you would look at the parking study, you would look at the construction, you will look at the demographics of who's coming. What's the likelihood that they're going to come to Chinatown and they're going to purchase things? Are they going to disrupt? Will it be better or worse? Is it going to increase crime or decrease crime? Will the arena bring people in here to revitalize or destroy Chinatown?

David Oh believes that data is the key. “We need to look at the data to make a judgment. You would need to look at the data. Has anybody provided data? The answer is no. So, when people ask me about the Sixers arena, my thing is, until I see a study, I don't even know if it's real.”

Controversies

In 2015, Parker was fined $1,000, served three days in prison, and lost her driver's license for a year after she was arrested for driving the wrong way on a one-way street while under the influence of alcohol in 2011.

During his 2015 reelection campaign to City Council, Oh received an illegal $20,000 donation from a donor and, using his legal knowledge, advised them on how to circumvent campaign finance laws. 

During the same 2015 reelection campaign, three former Councilman's employees were fined for working on Oh’s reelection campaign on city time, mostly on organizing fundraising events. Oh was cleared of any wrongdoing himself. 

During OH’s first three campaigns for City Council, he lied about being a Green Beret in the U.S. Army Special Forces.

We have provided you with a comparison of the two Philadelphia mayoral candidates: Cherelle Parker and David Oh, in terms of their family backgrounds, education, early careers, political experiences and achievements, policy agendas, and their positions in the 76ers basketball stadium. We hope this has given you a deeper understanding of these two candidates.

We would like to remind you that November 7, 2023, is election day, so please cherish and cast your vote carefully because your vote is the future of Philadelphia.

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