A Democrat to watch — Allentown, Pennsylvania's first Latino mayor, Matt Tuerk
LEHIGH VALLEY, Pennsylvania
Few politicians I've encountered in three decades of journalism inhabit the intersection of government and economic development as effectively as Matt Tuerk, the first Latino mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, an iconic American city and one of the bedrocks of the thriving Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania.
I talked a good deal this past week with Tuerk who leads a city of 130,000, one that is now majority-minority with a 54 percent Latino population. Allentown is the third-largest city in the state.
"We look a lot different and we are embracing new leadership that looks a lot more like our population," Tuerk said said in an interview. "It's an exciting time to be here."
Tuerk was elected in November 2021. A big issue: repair trust in local government, showing that city government would listen to its residents — and can do it now in English and Spanish.
"This is a region that has embraced innovation, it's embraced adaptation and it has changed a lot over time," Tuerk said. "I think that is most significantly seen in downtown Allentown, which 50 years ago was 98.2 percent white."
Tuerk, whose grandmother emigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1946, spoke at an economic-development forum in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on Wednesday. The event was part of U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna's economic listening tour throughout wide swaths of Pennsylvania and Ohio this week. Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in California, and is a native of Pennsylvania, is working on jobs and business growth across the nation as part of what he calls A New Economic Patriotism.
Tuerk played a pivotal role with regional development for the Lehigh Valley — an area of 700,000 people in Pennsylvania, 60 minutes north of Philadelphia, a catalyzing economic spot where one third of the United States population is within a day's drive.
"I think he's extraordinary," Khanna said of Tuerk in an interview. "He's someone who is Cuban American, Latino, who understands the new energy of communities, the value of immigration to economic development in factory towns and rural America. One of these things we see in Pennsylvania is this new generation of leadership.”
Born in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania in 1975, Tuerk spent time in Boulder, Colorado, and then earned a bachelor's degree in business from the College of Charleston and an MBA from the University of South Carolina.
"Embrace the culture that will embrace you," Tuerk said. "I always talk about meeting people where they stand, particularly where I am talking about refugees coming into Allentown, but I would also counsel that the refugees or immigrants can meet their new community where its stands as well."
Before running for office Tuerk worked in regional economic development. With the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, Tuerk led on research and innovation and sees data as essential in government and business. He's moving the city toward making decisions on cold facts, not gut calls, which have characterized and defined Allentown, good and bad, for generations.
"I think that cities are just exciting places to be," he said. "We come together. I'm a a believer in cities as machines. A city is a place to transform your life. Particularly in a city like Allentown and a region like the Lehigh Valley, I think about our place as the place where you can launch your second act. You might have had that first act, you did your previous thing, and then you have intermission.”
And then, Tuerk said, you can come to Allentown.
Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please consider reading some of our other writers.
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is also proud to ally with Iowa Capital Dispatch.
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