Seattle’s mayor denies claims of sex with teens decades ago
SEATTLE Ed Murray led a long campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington state, toiled for nearly two decades as a state lawmaker and won his biggest personal political victory in 2013 when he unseated Seattle’s incumbent mayor by promising the ultra-liberal city to raise the minimum wage to $15.
Just as he took on a role as a high-profile critic of President Donald Trump and prepared to launch al re-election campaign, Murray was hit Thursday with a political bombshell — accusations from three men that Murray sexually abused them in the 1980s.
On Friday, Murray held a brief news conference to deny the allegations, saying “they were very painful for me. It was painful for my husband.”
He said he will not step down and is sticking to re-election campaign plans but refused to answer reporters’ questions, saying the case “is now a legal matter that is in the courts.”
Murray’s spokesman, Jeff Reading, previously suggested unnamed Murray enemies were behind the claims
“It is not a coincidence that this shakedown effort comes within weeks of the campaign filing deadline,” Reading said.
Calls to City Councilmembers earlier for Friday for comment about the mayor and what impact the allegations could mean for his political future went unreturned.
Murray, 61, grew up in working class neighbourhoods in and around Seattle as one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family and became one of the state’s most prominent political figures.
“Things have never come easily to me in life, but I have never backed down and I will not back down now,” Murray told reporters Friday.
As a young man, he considered joining the priesthood and spent a year at a seminary in 1976 before studying sociology at the University of Portland, a private Catholic institution.
Murray ended up working a paralegal with public defender lawyers in Portland before returning to Seattle and joining the vanguard of the gay rights movement in the 1980s, serving as campaign manager for Cal Anderson, a Seattle state senator who was the state’s first openly gay member.