Philadelphia Republicans narrowly avoided extinction in city leadership on Tuesday, with one longtime GOP city councilman winning re-election in his northeast district.
However, two Republicans running for at-large seats reserved for minority-party representation are behind candidates from a far-left party trying to strengthen its foothold in the city.
Republican Brian O’Neill, who has served on the city council since 1980, won another re-election in Philadelphia’s tenth district on Tuesday, ensuring that the GOP will have at least one prominent voice remaining in city leadership. O’Neill captured 60 percent of the vote to defeat Gary Masino, a well-funded Democratic challenger.
“My pledge is the same as it has always been: I will put politics and partisanship aside to work for what’s right for the Far Northeast,” O’Neill said on Facebook. “Together, we will continue to help our families by working for good jobs, fiscal responsibility, and public safety.”
But in the race for at-large seats, one member of the far-left Working Families Party won one of the two seats set aside for minority parties on Tuesday, and a second Working Families candidate is leading the two Republicans in the race for the last of the at-large seats.
In the race for mayor, Democrat Cherelle Parker trounced Republican David Oh, winning about 70 percent of the vote and making her the first woman elected to lead the city. Republicans haven’t won a Philadelphia mayoral election since the 1940s.
Republican leaders and candidates in Philadelphia agreed that Tuesday’s election was an existential test for their party in the increasingly left-wing city. Philadelphia has 17 city council seats — ten district seats and seven at-large seats. According to the city’s charter, parties are only allowed to run five candidates for the at-large seats, meaning two of the seats are reserved to ensure minority-party representation in leadership.
Historically, Republicans have held the two minority-party seats on the council. But in 2019, Kendra Brooks, a candidate from the far-left Working Families Party won one of those seats. She was re-elected on Tuesday, and a second Working Families candidate, Nicolas O’Rourke, is leading Republicans Jim Hasher and Drew Murray by more than 4,000 votes for the last seat.
Republican leaders say the Working Families Party is barely a party at all — it’s more of a fringe Democratic splinter group. While there are more than 116,000 registered Republicans in Philadelphia, there are only about a dozen registered Working Families Party members. There are about 778,000 registered Democrats in the city, according to election records.
The moderate Republican candidates tried to paint the Working Families candidates as radicals on issues like defunding the police and supporting illicit-drug injection sites.
If O’Neill, Hasher, and Murray had all lost, it would have been the first time in modern history that Republicans had no voice on the city council.
In the mayoral race, David Oh, a Korean-American and a longtime city councilman who has often butted heads with his own party, tried to win an upset against Parker by assembling a diverse coalition from across the city. Oh believed that many of the city’s Democrats were looking for a change in leadership and would be open to voting for a Republican who was not a party insider.
But the Democratic advantage proved too much to overcome.
“This victory belongs to every single member of this coalition, every person who believed in me, and our united vision for a safer, cleaner, greener future,” Parker wrote on Twitter after securing her win on Tuesday.
In an interview with National Review last week, Oh, an attorney, described himself as “the most popular Republican in this city” and the only candidate “nutty enough to quit their job, and not have a second job, with four kids and a wife, and devote themselves to running for office without the support of the Republican Party.”