Many city leaders across the nation lacked the will to go on after a year like no other.

By Lisa Kashinsky @ Politico.com,  06/16/2021

Jenny Durkan survived death threats as a federal prosecutor before becoming the first woman in nearly a century to lead the city of Seattle. Two-plus years into her first term as mayor, Durkan — the daughter of one of Washington state’s most powerful political players — was laying the groundwork for a reelection bid and thinking about her political future.

Then Covid-19 arrived.

Washington state was hit first and hit hard. There was no playbook and little help from the feds. Running a city, already a marathon in the best of times, suddenly felt to Durkan like running an Ironman — at a sprint. Ten months, several pandemic surges and an unexpected summer of protests over police brutality later, Durkan decided not to seek a second term after all.

“When you’re in the cauldron, making those tough decisions, it becomes much more clear,” Durkan said. “I could either do the job they elected me to do or run to keep the job. But I couldn’t do both.” [....]

In an interview, Lance Bottoms said the last year had drained her and left her wanting to move on to something else. What, exactly, she does not yet know.

The days after Floyd’s death, in particular, were a ”perfect storm of disappointment,” as people took to the streets of Atlanta and some demonstrations turned violent, Lance Bottoms said. “It was exhaustion, it was sadness, it was fatigue. I mean there’s so many words that I could use, none of them probably strong enough to really capture the last 18 months. But it was, I can say personally, it felt like a very low point.”

Michelle De La Isla, the Democratic mayor of Topeka, Kan., felt those emotions twice over — as her city’s leader and as a congressional candidate running a campaign she began pre-Covid. “It was ugly,” De La Isla said. “It was very ugly.”[....]