Ed Murray resigns as Mayor of Seattle after fifth man steps forward alleging abuse

Ed Mur­ray has decid­ed to call it quits and resign as May­or of Seat­tle, effec­tive tomor­row evening at 5 PM, hav­ing evi­dent­ly con­clud­ed that attempt­ing to serve out the remain­der of his term is no longer remote­ly fea­si­ble now that a fifth man has stepped for­ward to allege that Mur­ray sex­u­al­ly abused him years ago.

Mur­ray’s fifth accuser is Joseph Dyer, an Air Force vet­er­an with no crim­i­nal record who is a younger cousin of Mur­ray’s. Dyer says he has not seen or spo­ken to Mur­ray since the peri­od of time the abuse alleged­ly took place decades ago.

Mur­ray — who denies the new alle­ga­tions as well as the pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed ones — has rebuffed calls to step down for months, includ­ing from Coun­cilmem­bers Kshama Sawant and Lore­na Gon­za­lez, argu­ing that his res­ig­na­tion would not be in the city’s best inter­est. But that posi­tion became unten­able imme­di­ate­ly after Dyer came for­ward in this sto­ry pub­lished around 11 AM by The Seat­tle Times.

Mur­ray was quot­ed in the orig­i­nal sto­ry as say­ing he still intend­ed to serve out the remain­der of his term. With­in just a cou­ple of hours, how­ev­er, Mur­ray and his inner cir­cle real­ized his remain­ing bas­tions of sup­port had van­ished — or were about to.

“While the alle­ga­tions against me are not true, it is impor­tant that my per­son­al issues do not affect the abil­i­ty of our City gov­ern­ment to con­duct the public’s busi­ness,” Mur­ray said in a press release. “[I]t has also become clear to me that in light of the lat­est news reports it is best for the city if I step aside. To the peo­ple of this spe­cial city and to my ded­i­cat­ed staff, I am sor­ry for this painful situation.”

“In the inter­est of an order­ly tran­si­tion of pow­er, Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Bruce Har­rell will become May­or upon my res­ig­na­tion, and will decide with­in the fol­low­ing five days whether he will fill out the remain­der of my term. Dur­ing this time, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions Fred Podes­ta has been tasked with lead­ing the transition.”

Sev­er­al of the men who say Mur­ray sex­u­al­ly abused them have told The Seat­tle Times and oth­er mass media out­lets they’re relieved he will no longer be in a posi­tion of pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty, but wish it had hap­pened sooner.

Mur­ray has tried unsuc­cess­ful­ly to sweep aside the alle­ga­tions by lash­ing out at his accusers and their legal coun­sel — behav­ior that led many staunch advo­cates of equal­i­ty and equi­ty to first sug­gest and then demand that Mur­ray resign.

As Dan­ni Ask­i­ni put it in an April guest post for Slog:

The mayor’s choice to pub­licly attack mul­ti­ple alleged survivors—whose sto­ries are spread out over 30 years and share mul­ti­ple sim­i­lar­i­ties— while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly avoid­ing answer­ing tough ques­tions him­self has been an ugly choice for a leader I once supported.

It is exact­ly these kinds of unpalat­able choic­es that lead me to believe May­or Mur­ray will only con­tin­ue to tar­nish his rep­u­ta­tion and the rep­u­ta­tion of our city if he con­tin­ues to mount his very pub­lic defense on city time.

Giv­en this, I believe it would be best — for the city, for the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, for the caus­es he cham­pi­ons, for sur­vivors, and May­or Mur­ray him­self — for the may­or to step down and address these alle­ga­tions as a pri­vate citizen.

And now, final­ly, that is what is happening.

As a con­se­quence of Mur­ray’s res­ig­na­tion, who­ev­er wins the Seat­tle may­oral con­test (almost cer­tain­ly either Jen­ny Durkan or Cary Moon) will become the city’s next leader as of the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Novem­ber 2017 gen­er­al elec­tion in late Novem­ber… a month pri­or to when Mur­ray’s term was set to end.

Mur­ray’s res­ig­na­tion as May­or of Seat­tle will also open up a spot on the Sound Tran­sit Board of Direc­tors, which will be filled by King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine as required by the Revised Code of Washington.