Philadelphia candidate for mayor, Helen Gym, arrived bright and early at 7 a.m. this morning to cast her ballot at Moore College Art and Design.
CBS Philadephia reports she holds a slight lead in the mayor’s race in a crowded Democratic field. No Republican has won a race for mayor in this city since 1948. Former city councilman David Oh is running unopposed in that race and is considered the first serious candidate for mayor in the Republican field in quite a while.
Gym also resigned from the City Council which she had served in 2016 to run for mayor. She has called for a “green new deal” in schools and also for a state of emergency on gun violence.
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On Sunday, she rallied with Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep Alexandria Orcasio-Cortez She said her green new deal would provide clean new streets, affordable housing and reliable public transit.
“Throughout this campaign, so many people who always felt like they had the right to run this city called our ideas too radical, too complicated, and our dreams too big,” Gym said, reported WHYY. “And what I know is their ideas were far too small. They played it safe all their lives, sitting in elected office and sitting in austerity politics and bureaucracies or making money hand over fist while we went out there and fought and built. And this is our time and this is our moment.”
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This is the most expensive mayoral election in Philadelphia history. Ocasio-Cortez accused the other candidates of trying to buy an election.
“They’ve got money, but we’ve got the people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I always say to my team back home, progressives win in a street fight, and that’s what we’ve got here in Philly today, a street fight. We need to be knocking on every door, texting all our friends. We talk about youth organizing up, which means people need to call their tías, their tíos, their uncles, their cousins, todo, everybody.”
Gym could be the first woman to be elected mayor in the city and the first Asian American. Sanders urged all of Gym’s supporters to convince their friends who wouldn’t otherwise go to the polls to vote.
“If you do that, there is no doubt in my mind that Helen is the next mayor of Philadelphia,” he said.
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