Big wins, signs of tension

In her second year in office, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker racked up successes as cracks began to show in City Hall.

Mayor Parker delivers an end-of-year speech at Temple University on Dec. 19, 2025.
Mayor Parker delivers an end-of-year speech at Temple University on Dec. 19, 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
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The year got off to a rocky start for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker when the 76ers in January embarrassed her and other officials by abandoning the team’s divisive proposal to build an arena in Center City — weeks after she pushed it through City Council at great political cost.

Three months later, Parker unveiled her Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., initiative, which she hopes will be a transformative policy but has prompted the most heated dispute with Council in her tenure.

In July, she faced off in a bitter and public showdown against the largest union for city workers during Philadelphia’s first major municipal strike since the 1980s.

And this year, Parker let go of three top city officials amid ordeals fraught with internal drama for the administration.

Despite those tribulations, the big-picture news for the city has been positive, and the mayor can credibly say she has made progress on her oft-repeated campaign slogan of making Philadelphia “the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation with access to economic opportunity for all.”

Homicides have plummeted to lows not seen since the 1960s; the city budget recorded its largest-ever fund balance, or surplus; and the mayor has even won praise for starting to address the drug crisis in Kensington, once thought of as an intractable problem.

"We are doing the best we can with what we have," Parker said in an interview Friday. “Nobody’s resting. We’re not having a party and celebrating because we know we have a lot more work to do.”

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The year encapsulated Philadelphia’s reality under Parker’s administration: big wins on major goals despite signs of tension in City Hall.

“She’s getting some pushback, but statistically, in terms of the crime rate, the city is doing better,” said David Dunphy, a Pennsylvania Democratic political consultant and lobbyist. “In terms of the biggest issues that voters had in the last election, it’s inarguable there’s been vast improvement.”

Parker, he said, has “a reservoir of good will” among voters because she is more publicly energetic than her predecessor Jim Kenney was at the end of his administration.

“There’s a general sense Philadelphia is coming back and making a rebound [following the pandemic], and she gets a lot of good will from the sense she enjoys being mayor,” Dunphy said.

Here are six takeaways from Parker’s second year in office.

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  • Big wins, with caveats

    Parker made public safety the central theme of her 2023 mayoral campaign. And two years in, the news could hardly be better.

    The Police Department as of last week had recorded 212 homicides in 2025, and is on pace to close the year with the lowest level since 1966.

    But it’s not just the reduction in violence.

    Philadelphia’s poverty rate has dipped below 20%, and it no longer has the highest rate among the 10 largest U.S. cities. The city’s finances are in the best shape they have been in since the early 1990s fiscal crisis. Perhaps most shockingly, there even appears to be progress in Kensington, where Parker has pledged to end the neighborhood’s notorious open-air drug market.

    One drug dealer told The Inquirer the city’s crackdown has cut his weekly revenue from about $1,500 to $400. And the city is expanding its Riverview Wellness Village, a first-of-its-kind initiative from Parker’s administration to house and provide treatment for people in recovery.

    There are plenty of caveats to all of those headline accomplishments. The decline in homicides began shortly before Parker took office. Philadelphia still has the lowest median income of the 10 biggest cities in the country. The city’s finances, buoyed by a growing economy, have been growing more stable for decades. And the Kensington drug market isn’t disappearing anytime soon.

    Workers from Philadelphia’s Community Life Improvement Program clean the intersection of Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street on Jan. 22, 2025.
    Workers from Philadelphia’s Community Life Improvement Program clean the intersection of Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street on Jan. 22, 2025.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

    But mayors are judged by how the city changes during their tenures. And so far, Parker is likely pleased with her progress on the most important measuring sticks.

    “She communicated during the campaign and throughout the beginning of her term a set of priorities that everybody can repeat: the safe, clean, green, inclusive growth or opportunity for all,” said Pedro A. Ramos, a former city managing director who now leads the Philadelphia Foundation, a major philanthropy. “Two years in, I think any fair scorecard has got to give her pretty good grades.”

    Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

  • Strike highlighted Parker’s strengths and weaknesses

    During the first major city worker strike in 40 years, the mayor stood atop the Philadelphia Art Museum steps in sweltering heat as what were unofficially dubbed “Parker piles” of uncollected trash mounted around the city.

    “I will not put the fiscal stability of the city of Philadelphia in jeopardy for no one,” Parker said, explaining her refusal to meet demands for bigger wage increases for the union representing trash collectors, 911 dispatchers, water treatment plant employees, and other blue-collar workers. “If that means I’m a one-term mayor, then so be it.”

    The news conference was a defining moment in Parker’s tenure and emblematic of her never-blink-first approach to negotiations.

    Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker discusses the AFSCME DC 33 municipal workers strike at a news conference at the Philadelphia Art Museum on Thursday, July 3, 2025.
    Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker discusses the AFSCME DC 33 municipal workers strike at a news conference at the Philadelphia Art Museum on Thursday, July 3, 2025.Kaiden J. Yu / Staff Photographer

    Parker “won” the strike in the sense that the 9,000-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 33, which represents the lowest-paid city workers, called off its work stoppage after eight days and accepted a contract largely in line with her administration’s final offer before the strike began.

    But the strike was also the most divisive moment in Parker’s tenure, fueling tensions within organized labor and leading to accusations that Parker didn’t care about the workers’ plight.

    Parker, a Democrat who received significant union support in her 2023 victory, survived the strike in part by tapping outside contractors to do DC 33 members’ work, and she leaned heavily on city employees outside the union, stoking divisions in the municipal workforce.

    Teamsters Local 107 president Bill Hamilton said the mayor encouraged workers to cross picket lines and “should be ashamed of her actions and her words during this strike.”

    “She doesn’t have any friends on my side of labor, I can tell you that,” he said.

    Parker said that being at odds with labor was “abnormal” for her and that she was disappointed the strike led some people to believe she was not a strong supporter of organized labor.

    ”Was I disappointed? Yes, because it wasn’t reflective of my career and everything I had done," Parker said in the interview. “But I also respect the union.”

    Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer

  • Parker’s don’t-poke-the-bear strategy with Trump

    In August, the U.S. Department of Justice sent so-called sanctuary cities a letter threatening to cut off federal funding if they did not get in line with the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

    Like many other Democratic leaders, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu excoriated the Trump administration and published a scathing response to the DOJ.

    But Parker said nothing. Her administration refused to release Philadelphia’s response to the DOJ letter and is still fighting an Inquirer request for the document under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law.

    Since President Donald Trump took office in January, Parker has rarely if ever uttered the president’s name in public. Supporters say her don’t-poke-the-bear approach has saved Philadelphia from Trump’s wrath and kept National Guard troops out of the city while they were deployed to other major U.S. cities. Critics say it shows an unwillingness to stand tall during a dangerous moment in American history.

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    Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has avoided overtly criticizing Trump, even as the president has sought to deploy troops to other American cities against the will of their Democratic mayors.

    “We are living in actual fascism,” said City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, of the progressive Working Families Party. “It’s clear the mayor is being calculating. That is not the tactic I would take. I think we need to be more pronounced.”

    Parker said her goal was to focus on delivering on her campaign promises without letting politics get in the way.

    “If there were ever a time that the citizens of Philadelphia needed a mayor to stay laser-focused on doing everything we can with the scarce resources that we have … that time is now,” Parker said. “Some people won’t like it. That’s very unfortunate, but I have to lead in a way that’s authentic to me.”

    Kaiden J. Yu / Staff Photographer

  • A remarkable level of control over Philly’s political arena

    In one meeting in June, Council approved the initial legislation for the H.O.M.E. initiative, a $6.8 billion city budget, and a 13-year plan to gradually cut the business tax — all while making minimal changes to Parker’s proposals.

    For a moment, it appeared Council President Kenyatta Johnson had gotten rolled by Parker. But Johnson, standing next to Parker at a celebratory news conference, revealed they had been working together all along, even before Parker unveiled her budget and tax plans three months earlier.

    “Folks want to see us fight,” Johnson said. “A while ago … we had the John Street-Ed Rendell partnership when the city thrived. We haven’t seen it since then, quite frankly.”

    City Council President Kenyatta Johnson and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker at City Hall on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024.
    City Council President Kenyatta Johnson and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker at City Hall on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

    It’s difficult to overstate the significance of the comparison. In the 1990s, Mayor Ed Rendell and Council President John F. Street formed an unlikely partnership that was credited with saving the city from the brink of bankruptcy. No mayor and Council president have worked together as closely since.

    The moment highlighted how Parker has amassed a remarkable level of control over institutions in Philadelphia government and politics that have tripped up past mayors’ agendas.

    In City Hall, Parker’s alliance with Johnson has seen her agenda largely sail through the legislature. City Controller Christy Brady, whose office has historically been a thorn in the sides of mayors, ran for reelection this year on a platform of working with, and not against, the Parker administration.

    And the unions for city workers, which have inflicted lasting wounds on past mayors including Rendell and Michael A. Nutter, are all locked in multi-year contracts after Parker’s successful stand against DC 33’s strike.

    Politically, the centrist Democratic mayor has a seemingly unbreakable bond with some of the most influential labor organizations in the city — the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, the Carpenters union, and the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ — and she is usually in lockstep with Democratic City Committee Chair Bob Brady.

    Additionally, potential threats from both the right and the left have not materialized, with the Philly GOP in the political wilderness and the local progressive movement appearing to have lost some momentum.

    Parker said the support she has built in Philadelphia politics is not a strategy but the product of her career in public service, which began when she was a teenager interning for former Councilmember Marian Tasco.

    “These are organic relationships. These are not like forced marriages,” Parker said. “I’ve been working with all of these people my whole life.”

    Council took its most notable stand against Parker during a fight this fall over legislation related to the H.O.M.E. initiative. Johnson sided with lawmakers who wanted to prioritize funding for housing programs for the city’s lowest-income Philadelphians, defying Parker’s plan to spread the benefits more evenly across low- and middle-income households.

    But Council still supports the major tenets of H.O.M.E., and Johnson made clear earlier this month the episode did not damage his alliance with Parker. He even made an unsolicited early endorsement for her 2027 reelection campaign.

    “I’m pretty confident that our mayor will be reelected — that’s my personal opinion — and will have my support to get reelected,“ said Johnson, the only senior Democratic member of Council who did not endorse Parker in the 2023 mayor’s race.

    Despite facing little political opposition, Parker clearly still sees enemies in many corners.

    The mayor bristles at dissent even when she wins, and has recently has been handing out to journalists, administration officials, and others copies of a 98-page book titled Performative Outrage: How Manufactured Fury Undermines Local Government and Public Service.

    “It is truly our blueprint,” chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman said. “It reminds us that noise isn’t the same as progress. … We don’t chase the outrage of the moment. We chase the outcomes of a lifetime.”

    The city in August spent $423.80 to order copies for every cabinet member, according to records for the mayor’s office credit card.

    Parker signed a copy of the book, which was given to a reporter, writing: “Great read!”

    Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

  • Signs of discord within the administration

    Parker freely admits she is a tough boss. And the strains of working under her demanding leadership style started to show in her second year.

    In July, Parker fired her directors of the offices for LGBTQ+ affairs and diversity, equity and inclusion. In October, she let go of Hassan Freeman, Parker’s director of neighborhood and community engagement.

    Both sagas were steeped in palace intrigue.

    Inspector General Alex DeSantis said the administration terminated DEI director Brandee Anderson and LGBTQ+ affairs director Tyrell Brown because they had improperly handled an incident in which Chris Dailey, a top mayoral aide, had sent Brown a suggestive image on a cruising app.

    But Anderson, the former DEI director, pushed back on that account, and asserted that DeSantis’ investigation was a pretext for Parker to fire her because she had pushed for the administration to take a more aggressive stance against Trump’s DEI crackdown. Her comments took on new salience when The Inquirer revealed this fall that Parker had quietly ended the city’s longstanding policy of prioritizing city contracts for businesses owned by women, people of color, or disabled people due to legal threats from conservative groups.

    Parker said personnel issues come with the territory of running a city.

    “Things happen. You can’t have a government with 29,000 employees where stuff doesn’t just happen,” she said. “For me, it’s how does my administration navigate those challenges? … Do we get paralyzed into inaction? And the answer is no.”

    Ramos added that Parker will be judged by outcomes, not internal disputes.

    “At the end of the day, people only care about palace intrigue if they don’t see results,” Ramons said.

    Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

  • A ‘big mahoff’ emerges

    When she became mayor, Parker said she didn’t want one top aide to be the “big mahoff” in her administration. Instead she appointed a “big three” — a trio of senior advisers.

    Two years later, it looks like Parker ended up with a “big mahoff” after all.

    Thurman, the chief of staff, appears to have become the central figure in the administration, and her portfolio of responsibilities has continually grown over the last two years.

    The shift started in 2024, when Thurman took over the 76ers arena negotiations from then-Chief Deputy Mayor Aren Platt. And when Platt resigned in October of that year, Thurman took over the oversight of all the city’s planning and development projects. This year, her portfolio has grown to include the Neighborhood Community Action Centers, a Parker initiative to establish 10 “mini-City Halls” throughout the city, where residents can request services like graffiti removal and traffic-calming measures.

    Chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman takes questions from City Council on Nov. 12, 2024.
    Chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman takes questions from City Council on Nov. 12, 2024.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer

    Parker objected to the notion that her “big three” structure had gone by the wayside and emphasized that the two chief deputy mayors who make up the rest of the triumvirate continue to have “a hell of a lot” in their portfolios. Sinceré Harris, who was Parker’s 2023 campaign manager, oversees labor, legislative affairs, and intergovernmental relations. Vanessa Garrett-Harley leads on child welfare, early education, DEI, and other issues.

    To be sure, the dynamic is not the same as it was under the city’s most famous second-in-command: David L. Cohen, who as Rendell’s chief of staff coordinated the city’s handling of virtually every matter of import.

    Thurman could instead be seen as a first among equals, given that Harris and Garrett-Harley still report directly to the mayor.

    But at Friday’s event, Thurman introduced Parker with a flattering speech, and the mayor in turn made clear that Thurman has a central role in her administration.

    “Tiffany Thurman is not just my chief of staff. She is the chief air traffic controller” of the administration, Parker said Friday. “Nothing moves in this city without her. I don’t make a decision without her.”

    Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

Staff Contributors

  • Reporting: Sean Collins Walsh, Anna Orso, Jake Blumgart, Ellie Rushing, and Ryan Briggs
  • Editing: Oona Goodin-Smith, Ariella Cohen, and Addam Schwartz
  • Digital Editing: Patricia Madej

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Cherelle L. Parker