Former U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan plans to announce this week that she will run for Seattle mayor, according to an adviser and close friend. Durkan would likely become an immediate front runner in the now congested mayor’s race.
Durkan is the scion of a political family, her father was a prominent Washington state politician. His daughter, a married gay woman, attended a private Catholic girls school and the University of Notre Dame before moving to an Inuit fishing village on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska, where she taught English and coached a girls basketball team. She also worked as a baggage handler for Wein Air Alaska, was a dues paying Teamster before returning to Seattle to earned her law degree from the University of Washington School of Law.
In addition to being a federal prosecutor under President Obama, Jennifer Durkan has been seen as a major, if sometime quiet force, in Democratic politics. She would immediately bring great national clout to the office of mayor.