Why elect Chicken Cherelle, when we could have reformer Oh?

I’ve got a new recipe for you, although not for your oven.

It’s called Chicken Cherelle, and it’s for your political pot.

Cherelle Parker can’t hear calls for more debates. (Photo: CBS News)
The dish is named for Cherelle Parker, the entitled and privileged Democratic candidate for mayor, and while I normally shun words like “entitled” and “privileged,” in this case she has earned them. She owns them.

Because she has the privilege of a 7-1 registration edge, she feels entitled to the Mayor’s throne chair in Room 215, City Hall.

The last thing we need is another egomaniac as mayor. We see how the current one worked out.

We also don’t need someone who plays the race card, as Parker did during the primary campaign. She basically called Jeff Brown a racist, when the owner of ShopRite has been lauded for hiring minorities and ex-cons. 

The 51-year-old Parker, in effect, declared herself the mayoral winner, and refused to debate the Republican candidate, David Oh, 62, who stands ready to debate any time, and anywhere. She finally got shamed into one lousy radio debate on KYW NewsRadio. That will be Oct. 26, very late in a campaign that will end on Nov. 7. 

Her refusal to meet Oh on a TV stage is wrong in so many ways — especially since she took part in debates during the primary, because she wasn’t the front-runner then. She needed the exposure. Her hypocrisy simply reeks.

Even the Inquirer  — which will endorse her unless I am very mistaken — has editorialized that Philadelphia voters are entitled to hear the candidates’ ideas side by side. Parker waves that off.

As previously reported, she already has begun a policy of castrating the press.

Her hubris mimics sh**heel Mayor Jim Kenney, who refused to debate Republican Billy Ciancaglini on the trumped-up charge that Billy C  was connected to the Proud Boys. Proof? A photo taken during a street demonstration had Ciancaglini and some Proud Boys in the same frame. 

The smear was deliberate and it was BS, and the Democrat-complacent Philadelphia media let him skate, rather than campaigning to shame Kenney into debates.

The vaunted Inquirer did print an op-ed (from a conservative journalist ) criticizing Kenney, but took no editorial position that I could find.

Is Parker that afraid of a 5-6 bespectacled Asian? How can we trust her to make the tough decisions as a mayor when Chicken Cherelle is too cowardly to face an under-funded opponent?

David Oh causes fear in his opponent? (Photo: CBS News)
With a 7-1 edge, how afraid can she be? How badly could she screw up a debate to actually lose the election?

I don’t know, maybe she’s afraid Oh will bring up her drunk driving conviction, which she tried to lie her way out of, and then lost on appeal.

Or maybe why she is backing the 76ers arena when the Chinatown neighbors are against it? Is she that much in the pocket of the unions? I am 110% pro-union, but that does not mean everything they want is justified. (She has not said a definitely “yes,” but her fudging leads me to conclude that’s where she is.) A former Councilman and a lawyer, Oh opposes the current plan. He has a reputation as a defender of many minority communities.

She also ducks the question of school vouchers, even though a majority of Black parents — and the school district is majority Black — prefer charter schools.

Or maybe she’s afraid she will be challenged on her “pro-cop” stance. On June 8, 2020, she was one of a group of Council members who sent a letter to Kenney saying “many of our most vulnerable citizens feel less safe, not more so, in the presence of police” and therefore wanted Kenney to cut planned increases to the police budget.

Oh opposes Parker’s ideas about “stop and frisk,” he complains that D.A. Larry Krasner does not enforce the law, and would restore cooperation with ICE to remove foreign felons.

While Parker has the reputation of being a control freak, she actually told NBC 10’s Lauren Mayk she did not want to discuss what she would do if elected.

What?

I guess she never heard of the “vision thing.” Oh will talk your arm off about his plans. You can see them at DavidOh.com

I give Parker credit for defeating Helen Gym in the primary, as I regarded Gym as the greatest threat to normalcy in Philadelphia since Larry Krasner, Jim Kenney and Carson Wentz.

I endorsed Parker in the primary as the most likely person to stop the Gym progressive steamroller in its tracks.

I did so even after Parker ignored several invitations from me to sit for an interview, as other candidates had done.

I ignored her disrespect then, when I endorsed her, as I ignore it now when I endorse David Oh, who is more of a reformer than a Republican.

After the election, Kenney said he had voted for Parker, not Gym. I don’t believe him because he and Gym are progressive soulmates. During the campaign, Kenney endorsed no candidate, and my sources say none of them wanted an endorsement from Mr. Damaged Goods. He is Midas in reverse — everything he touches turns to crap.

Some of the Leftist la-de-das are burbling that Philadelphia’s 100th mayor will be historic because she will be a Black female.

A male Asian would also be historic.

Gym would have been a catastrophe — and she was the Democrat that Oh could have beaten because Gym was so loathed by moderate Democrats.

Parker is posing as a moderate Democrat. A vote for her is a vote for the Democratic machine.

Democrats have controlled City Hall since 1952. After a burst of reform energy, the wheels began to fall off. We are now in a world of hurt — high crime, high poverty, low educational attainment, high drug deaths.

Even liberal (sane) Democrats admit one-party rule is bad for democracy.

It’s time for a change.