# 2025 Allentown mayoral election

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Government :
vte :
The 2025 Allentown mayoral election will be held on November 4, 2025. Incumbent mayor, Matthew Tuerk, is running for a second term as mayor.

## Background

Matthew Tuerk, the eventual winner, faced three challengers in the 2021 Democratic primary; council members Ce-Ce Gerlach and Julio Guridy and incumbent Mayor Ray O’Connell. Tuerk would win the highly competitive primary by just 121 votes barely beating O’Connell. He would go on to win the mayoral election, by 64.13% in 2021, against Timothy Ramos. Tuerk announced his re-election campaign, in November 2024. Tuerk is the first Hispanic mayor of Allentown, a city with a Hispanic population over 125,000.

## Candidates
### Democratic primary
#### Declared

* Cynthia Mota, city councilwoman
* Matthew Tuerk, incumbent mayor
* Ed Zucal, city councilman

### Republican primary
#### Potential

* Tim Ramos, former mayoral candidate
* Solomon Tembo, Zimbabwean born businessman, ran as independent in 2021.

## Campaign
### Democratic primary

Tuerk has touted FBI statistics that showed a drop in crime in Allentown during his first term. He also announced a plan to improve traffic signals, pedestrian walkways and roadways near schools with an aim of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2030. Tuerk also promised to continue to grow tourism in the city, and improve the city's A2 bond rating.
Tuerk is seeing a concerted primary challenge by city councilmen Ed Zucal a retired Allentown police sergeant elected as a Democrat in 2017. Zucal has been highly critical of Tuerk’s tenure at the city’s helm claiming that the quality of life has significantly dropped since he took over as mayor. Zucal also challenged the FBI statistics of not accurately portraying the continuing issue of crime, as well as opposing Tuerk's fiscal management.
The NAACP raised allegations that Tuerk has fostered city employees that have used racial slurs, mocking of sexual preferences and identities, verbal attacks and denials of promotions. Zucal has pressed this issue, initiating a vote of no confidence against Tuerk that passed the city council 4-3. In April 2024 the city council approved a $300,000 outside investigation of the allegations and on June 26, council voted 6-1 in favor of allocating $20,000 to sue Tuerk and city finance director Bina Patel due to Tuerk going over the city council's head and hiring their own external investigation. However, in December the council voted 4-3 to suspend the lawsuit.