Outcome of key local races in Pennsylvania could offer lessons for 2024 election

Local elections in Democratic strongholds at both ends of Pennsylvania next month could show how voters feel about progressive candidates and issues such as abortion and crime ahead of the 2024 election.

Philadelphia will get a new mayor, and Allegheny County — where Pittsburgh is the county seat — will see a new executive. Voters there will also decide whether to reelect the district attorney with backing of another party, after his long career as a Democrat.

The Nov. 7 results in Pennsylvania’s two biggest population centers will set the electoral stage for 2024, when the state will be a prime presidential battleground, with candidates taking lessons about how Democrats see crime into the next election cycle and the strength of progressives in local races.

PHILADELPHIA MAYOR

In Philadelphia, Democrat Cherelle Parker, a former state legislator who has had a long political career in the state, will face Republican David Oh, a former City Council member. Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney, in office for eight years, is term limited.

Parker, a moderate, emerged from a crowded field vying for her party’s nomination in the heavily Democratic city.

Oh, 63, ran unopposed in the Republican primary. He acknowledges getting elected mayor is a tough battle in a city that — in his words — hates Republicans. But he said he has often butted heads with the party and has created a coalition of Democrats and independents who supported him during his time on the council.

“Where people are today, it might take an outsider to buck the system,” he said. “There are people who are Democrats who are kind of like outsiders in rhetoric but they’re not. They’ve not really fought any of the systems.”

Parker, 51, said her long experience — working in government since she was 17, serving as a state lawmaker and on the City Council —…