Thomas said he received pushback after the bill only included elected officials, and not other city workers.
“I think what we tried to do is instead of getting rid of resign to run, which is what we’ve seen in the past, we tried to do it in phases,” he said. “So we said, ‘OK, well, let’s just start with the elected officials, and because there was some reluctance about city employees.’”
Thomas pointed to the importance of the mid-term congressional elections, adding that he did not want to create any problems with what had become a controversial move to end resign-to-run, even for city elected officials.
He is not ruling out bringing back an end to resign-to-run at a future date.
City Council has tried and failed to change the resign-to-run rules on three separate occasions in recent years. It was voted down by the public in 2007 and 2014. In 2020, the bill was never approved by City Council.