Tampa City Council member Mary Mulhern is dropping out of the race for the Hillsborough County Commission District 7 seat because of health concerns.
Mulhern has been living with multiple sclerosis for over two decades. She says she's always been able to live with the ailment, but the demands of working on council, running for a countywide seat and being a mom to a teenage son has proved to be too demanding.
Speaking to CL on Thursday afternoon, the 55-year-old local lawmaker said she made the decision after several months of consideration with her doctors and her husband, Cam Dilley. She says it's nothing serious, but the issue that has always plagued her with MS has been fatigue, and that's been compounded by her increased duties of late.
"I'm good with a full-time job and parenting, but trying to run a countywide campaign is just too demanding," she says.
[jump]Her decision is a blow to the Hillsborough County Democratic Party, which a year ago was enjoying a rare moment of having two strong candidates in the race to succeed a term-limited Mark Sharpe on the Commission. School board member April Griffin had also entered the District 7 Democratic primary, but dropped out last year.
That leaves Republican Al Higginbotham sitting pretty at this point. The District 4 Commissioner is dominating the financial race for the District 7 seat, having raised $154,791 so far (Mulhern had raised $40,385).
She expresses regret about leaving the race now, and says if she wasn't serving on City Council she could probably commit to a full-fledged run for Commission. But doing both simply isn't an option, she says.
A native of the Midwest, Mulhern worked for over a decade as an administrator for the Art Institute of Chicago, before becoming the owner of a fine arts management company. After moving to Tampa she served as visual art critic with CL (then called Weekly Planet).
Her first run for office was for County Commission in 2006, a race she lost to Rose Ferlita. Her narrow victory over incumbent Shawn Harrison for City Council in 2007 was considered a major political upset at the time, considering Harrison's advantages in fundraising and name recognition. Since that time she has been a major voice for progressive causes on the Council, sometimes the only council member to speak critically of measures like surveillance cameras and cracking down on the homeless.
Mulhern is term-limited out of Council a year from now. She says she's not certain what she'll do at that time, but says running for office again next year or in 2016 is definitely a possibility. She also says she could return to the private sector. But for now, "I have to take care of myself and my family."
