Michael Nutter decisively won the Democratic Party's mayoral nomination on May 15, beating out four other candidates in a hotly contested four month-long election.
And because Philadelphia hasn't elected a Republican mayor in nearly 60 years, his win against Republican Al Taubenberger in November is seen by many as a foregone conclusion.
However, two questions remain: How did Nutter catapult his campaign into a decisive victory from the near-last place he occupied at the beginning of the race, and what will a Nutter administration look like?
Nutter began the campaign polling fourth out of five candidates with poll numbers in the low teens. However he won with almost 37 percent of the vote - 13 percentage points above second-place Tom Knox.
Political analysts say that a concerted and targeted advertising campaign by Nutter delivered precisely the message that voters wanted to hear: The city needed a change in leadership, and Nutter's long track record as a city councilman proved that he could deliver.
According to Terry Madonna, a professor at Franklin and Marshall College who conducted a poll with the Philadelphia Daily News on the election, this explained Nutter's high favorable ratings of 52 percent going into Election Day, which Madonna called "virtually unprecedented."
Nutter is a "guy who was very critical of the way the city ran" as evidenced by his criticism of Mayor John Street, especially for what he calls Street's failure to address a rising murder rate.
In fact, Madonna pointed to Nutter's controversial stop-and-frisk plan that would empower police officers to search pedestrians for illegal weapons as an example of the new ideas voters perceived Nutter was bringing to the table.
While his opponents characterized the policy as one that would lead to racial profiling, Madonna's poll found that around 60 percent of Philadelphia voters support the plan, which helped Nutter, especially because 73 percent of those polled said crime was the most pressing problem facing the city.
Nutter "has more ideas . than any of the other candidates," Madonna said, who added that unlike Knox, who also ran on an anti-corruption and pro-reform platform, Nutter had a decisive record of passing and supporting ethics reform in Council to point to.
Democratic political consultant Maurice Floyd agreed with this assessment, saying that Nutter's message really resonated with voters.
He pointed to the fall of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) from his early first-place status to third-place finish as evidence of this.
And both Madonna and Floyd said this race was notable for its lack of racial polarization - Nutter, who is black, received around 35 percent of the white vote, and both blacks and whites of all socio-economic levels agreed that crime was the most pressing problem facing the city.
"The people wanted change. It wasn't about race," Floyd said.
And while Madonna said this new turn away from race-based politics was laudable, he wasn't sure whether this would continue into other election cycles.
However, he added that a Nutter administration should be able to draw on a wide base of talent to fill important governmental positions.
He has received support from groups across the city - especially from the business community and urban professionals - but they would have to move past concerns that Nutter can be stand-offish.
Floyd added that he should be able to turn voters' desire for change into political capital to push through his reform agenda in Council, a body that he knows well after serving on it for 15 years.
