Jeff Hornstein remembers what it feels like to lose an election — he lost a political bid for City Council running against incumbent Councilmember Mark Squilla more than a decade ago.
Hornstein is the executive director for the Economy League of Philadelphia and a careful watcher of the political scene as a labor union advocate turned business professional.
He said that Parker’s political opponents “fundamentally misunderstood the job they were vying for.”
“The mayor is to be the city strategist-in-chief,” Hornstein said the morning after Election Day on a Zoom call. “Mayor-elect [Parker] has proven over and over again that she knows how to build coalitions across lines of difference and get hard things done. And that’s what we really need right now. Philly’s in a good place in a lot of ways right now despite what voters think, the fundamentals here are pretty strong but we do have to break out of this tyranny of low expectations. We need someone who is going to push us hard. That’s exactly why I’m so excited about her.”
His biggest wish? That the Parker administration continues to support and even expands a city supplier diversity program to spread out institutional spending to more Black- and brown-owned businesses.
“We don’t need to go in a very new direction, the public safety stuff is going to resolve itself as we focus more on equity and inclusion. I’m optimistic that she is going to work with organizations like mine, like The Enterprise Center, like the diverse chambers [of commerce], to work hard to make sure that city contracting is fair and inclusive and equitable,” he said. “To make sure that all the infrastructure dollars that come in from Washington [D.C.] are used responsibly. I know she’s gonna…
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