Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan will reportedly not seek a second term, according to KING 5. She told the news station Monday (December 7) her decision to not run for re-election.
“2020 has just been a brutal year. But we have some really tough months ahead of us, we still have to fight COVID we've got to deliver a vaccine," she said. "And we're gonna have a really hard job of rebuilding our economy, our downtown and continuing all the work on equity. I could have spent the whole year campaigning to keep the job, or I can focus all my energies on doing the job. And I think there's only one right choice for Seattle. And that's for me to do the job.”
Reports show Durkan filed paperwork with the city and state for a re-election campaign back in February 2020. She was elected in 2017, becoming "the first woman to be elected Seattle Mayor since Bertha Knight Landes in 1926, bringing credibility, and a resume that included being the first openly gay US Attorney in history," KING 5 wrote.
“Everything in Seattle and across America has changed since February,” she told reporters. “As we've seen, we have just been through the most unprecedented times in our city's history, a global pandemic that has wreaked havoc across our city and economic crisis that resulted so many small businesses and workers have lost their jobs, our downtown and so many businesses have closed up. Then we have so had a civil rights reckoning all of these challenges continue. It will be better, there's hope on the horizon with a vaccine. But we have so much work ahead of us. My job as mayor is to really do what's in the best interest of the city, I believe focusing my energies, on tackling those tough problems is my what I need to do for the city.”
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