Seven Democrats running for Allentown City Council’s four open seats
Council will have at least one new member in 2026
Seven Democratic candidates are running in the May 20 primary for four seats on Allentown City Council. There are no Republican candidates, meaning that the council will likely remain entirely Democratic in 2026.
Three incumbents are seeking reelection – council President Daryl L. Hendricks, Vice President Cynthia Mota and Natalie Santos, who in 2021 became the youngest person ever elected to the position. A fourth incumbent, Ed Zucal, is running for mayor and is not seeking reelection, which means council will have at least one new member next year.
Also running are Jeremy Binder, Cristian Pungo, Ben Stemrich and Patrick Palmer. Luis Acevedo – removed from the ballot after losing a petition challenge – is running a write-in campaign. Council members serve four-year terms.
The race is being held as council and Tuerk have clashed over allegations of racial discrimination and harassment at City Hall raised in a July 2023 letter from the Allentown branch of the NAACP. Council members also have been unhappy with Tuerk’s unrelated decision to terminate three employees in the Human Resources department.
Tuerk wanted to do an internal investigation related to the letter; council wanted to hire an outsider. The impasse and HR terminations led to a vote of no confidence in Tuerk in December 2023. Council later hired former FBI agent Scott Curtis and Tuerk voided his contract. In response, council voted to sue Tuerk and finance director Bina Patel for not paying Curtis.
The lawsuit is on hold as both sides in January agreed to hire Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris to conduct an investigation and write personnel policies. Hendricks was on the panel that recommended Curtis, and he along with Mota and Santos supported the board majority on votes on the issue, including in the vote of no confidence. Santos differed on the vote to end Curtis’ contract and hire Duane Morris.
In February, the council unanimously passed a Welcoming City ordinance that among its measures bars city officials or employees from providing information to immigration enforcement officials unless required by federal or state law or a judicial warrant. It also suggests the city work toward adopting the principles and achieving a three-star rating from the nonprofit Welcoming America.
At the time of passage, Tuerk said the city already does not ask about immigration status, but cannot “prohibit ICE or any other federal agency from conducting operations in the city of Allentown.”
The following is a look at the seven candidates on the ballot. Information was obtained from email interviews, campaign websites, news media and other sources.
Jeremy Binder
Binder is an Allentown native who owns Concentric Solutions, a security consulting company. He graduated from Full Sail University in Florida and previously served on the board for the YMCA in Allentown and on a technology committee for Valley Youth House.
His priorities are addressing concerns about safe and clean neighborhoods, quality of life, jobs and taxes. Binder said allegations of discrimination and harassment should always be taken seriously and investigated properly. He said he would leverage his background in technology to develop legislation on public safety.
Binder said Allentown already had practices in place that made it a welcoming city, and said Allentown cannot control or legislate federal immigration law. Binder supports efforts to make it easier to build housing and said the city should have a good system to keep housing stock up to code.
Daryl Hendricks – incumbent
Hendricks is running for his fourth term on council. The Allentown native earned an associates degree in criminal justice administration from Lehigh Carbon Community College. He retired as a captain of the Allentown Police Department after 38 years. He is married and has two sons.
“I believe that the citizens of Allentown respect my stance on many issues and I will continue to serve in an open, honest and transparent manner,” he said in an email.
His priorities are affordable housing, public safety and continued economic development. Hendricks said he supports the police department researching a community policing model.
Hendricks said the arrest of a city employee on charges of allegedly making false reports and fabricating evidence about a noose “reflects poorly on those making various accusations” against the city. The employee, LaTarsha Brown, has denied the charges, according to Lehigh Valley News.
Hendricks said the recent hiring of former council member Martin Velazquez as the city’s human services director is a positive step for the city.
He supported the Welcoming City ordinance after it was amended to say the city should work toward, not be required, to earn a rating. He worried about legal repercussions if the city failed to achieve a rating from the group.
Cynthia Mota – incumbent
Mota has served on the Allentown City Council since 2012. She said she wants to “continue to be a voice for the many unheard.” She was council president for two terms and is now vice president.
Mota is the CEO of Centro Multiservices, which assists with immigration and officiates weddings, according to her council bio. She briefly considered making a bid for mayor this year.
Mota said poverty is the city’s biggest issue and that all other problems stem from it. She said the city “desperately needs more affordable housing.”
Addressing the differences over the direction of investigations, Moto said, “Council and the mayor should have overcome their differences and acted faster to deal with issues of discrimination and harassment.”
She is glad that Duane Morris has been tasked with developing personnel policies for city employees and pleased with Velazquez becoming the HR director.
Mota said she is establishing a special committee to look into and develop community policing. Voting for the Welcoming City ordinance was personal for Mota, who was born in the Dominican Republic.
“My children have nightmares [that] they can be mistakenly grabbed from school,” she said, and noted that Allentown should do everything it can to decrease that fear.
Patrick Palmer
Palmer is making a second bid for council, having run unsuccessfully in Democratic primary in 2021. Palmer sought to run for district magistrate in 2023, but missed the cutoff to submit nomination petitions by minutes.
Palmer was a regional field director for the Harris for President campaign. He works as field director for Turn PA Blue, according to his LinkedIn profile. He served as an appointed Allentown School Board member from 2022-23.
He views homelessness and housing as the city’s top issues. He criticized Tuerk’s affordable housing plan for not saying anything “different than what we have been screaming from the rooftops.”
Palmer said he doesn’t believe “funds have been spent adequately” on the racial discrimination and harassment investigations. He said he would “make sure we have a solid investigation that the mayor cannot shoot down.”
Palmer supports community policing and “help not handcuffs” initiatives. Palmer said the city should make sure ICE has judicial warrants to detain undocumented immigrants. He said the city should not share information that is not required by law.
Cristian Pungo
Pungo is a first-generation Latino-American who was born and grew up in Allentown. The 2020 Temple University graduate works in construction management at Alvin H. Butz Inc. He has served as an emerging leader cabinet member for the United Way of Greater Lehigh Valley and as a board member of the William Allen Art Alliance.
In running for council, he said he’s “lived the experience of so many of our residents” including renting and buying a home, navigating city services and building a career.” He said his job has taught him how to “solve problems, manage large budgets, and bring projects from concept to completion.” He said the current council has spent too much time on personal conflicts and not enough on issues that matter to residents.
Pungo supports “efforts to update the police headquarters and fire station renovations.” He believes solving the roots of poverty will improve public safety. Pungo supports the Welcoming City ordinance, calling it symbolic.
He is “concerned by how it’s been portrayed by some media outlets and misinformed residents – as though it were some defiant, sanctuary-style law.” He believes Allentown should comply with federal immigration laws.
Natalie Santos – Incumbent
Santos was elected to the council in 2021 as the youngest person to win. Now 25, she graduated from Kutztown University with a degree in psychology. She did not respond to a request for an interview.
She has described herself as “a consistent progressive voice” on the city council and said she was inspired to run by the Black Lives Matter movement. She is an insurance agent for ADP and is pursuing a master’s degree in substance abuse and addiction counseling, according to her LinkedIn. On her campaign website, Santos lists her priorities as “championing affordable housing, workers’ rights, LGBTQ+ and immigrant protections, and climate justice.”
Santos voted in favor of the no-confidence resolution against Tuerk and to hire the lawyer to sue the mayor. She voted against ending former FBI special agent Curtis’ investigation and hiring Duane Morris. In June 2023, Santos voted for an alternative first-response program that would have sent EMTs and mental health professionals to some 911 calls instead of police. That measure failed to pass in council, according to Lehigh Valley News.
Santos co-sponsored the original Welcoming City ordinance. The bill was amended before it was adopted from requiring the city to achieve Welcoming City status to suggesting the city attain it. Santos was one of two council members to vote for an Unsheltered Declaration of Rights, a symbolic measure that did not pass, according to Lehigh Valley News.
Ben Stemrich
Stemrich was born and grew up in Allentown. He has a degree in communications from Bloomsburg University. He is a self-employed journalist and part-time weather forecaster at Blue Ridge Communications.
He said he is running “because we need fresh, younger leadership that truly understands the struggles of everyday people, and is willing to address it in policy.” Stemrich said he agrees with parts of Tuerk’s housing plan, including creating a housing fund, exploring alternative construction methods, restructuring of zoning and expanding the Redevelopment Authority.
Stemrich said the plan relies too much on large-scale and profit-driven developers. He suggests letting community-minded organizations and developers take the lead. He said the city needs to find “consistent approaches to reducing crime” and needs to address root causes of violence by improving community health, the local economy and education.
Stemrich said he agrees with the Welcoming City ordinance and believes that “Allentown has a role in protecting its immigrant communities from ICE.” Stemrich criticized the hiring of Curtis and Duane Morris over the costs involved.