Reed, dubbed "Mayor-for-Life," served seven terms as mayor of Harrisburg and was considered "Pennsylvania's most popular and successful mayor";[3][4] however, he faced mounting corruption and fraud accusations near the end of his term.[4]
The growing discontent and mounting legal issues around Reed, coupled with an overall nationwide growth in Black voters, resulted incity councilor Linda Thompson to upset him in the primary.[4] Harrisburg has a massive disparity in Republican and Democratic voters, highlighted by Republican candidate Nevin Mindlin winning the primary while having less votes than totalWrite-ins.[2] Due to this many local pundits believed that the Republicans had no chance to win the election, however, Thompson would base her campaign on attacking Reed and white Democrats as a whole for being the reason the city has stumbled financially in recent years.[5] This resulted in a lackluster Democratic showing for Thompson and even pushed many Democrats to vote for her Republican challenger. Thompson won the election, that had a 24.7% turnout, by only 842 individual votes with the party line being largely split down the city's ethnic line.[6]
