Mayor seeks climate job instead of 3rd term, blames Trump

<p>Mayor of Hoboken Dawn Zimmer has endorsed Councilman-at-Large Ravi Bhalla to succeed her.</p>

News 12 Staff

Jun 20, 2017, 3:57 PM

Updated 2,507 days ago

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The mayor of Hoboken says that she will focus on climate change rather than running for a third term in office because of President Donald Trump.
Mayor Dawn Zimmer says reading a book about climate change is one of the reasons she ran for office in 2008. As mayor, she lived through Superstorm Sandy, getting Hoboken through what is considered to be one of the worst disasters in the city's history.
She has been in the national spotlight, spoke out on climate change and says that issue, and the current political climate, helped her decision.
“With President Trump having pulled our country out of the Paris Accord, demonstrating a lack of commitment to addressing this critical issue at the federal level, I have decided it's the right time for me to take on a new role working more directly on this important issue,” she said at an event Tuesday.
Zimmer also announced that she will support Hoboken Councilman-At-Large Ravi Bhalla for mayor. Bhalla announced Tuesday at the event that he will run for office.
Bhalla was the first Sikh-American elected to a municipal body in New Jersey. He would be Hoboken’s first Sikh-American mayor if he is elected to that office.
Zimmer meanwhile says that she will seek a new platform, but that climate change will be her focus. She says that the president’s decisions have put the United States on the wrong path.
“We are stepping away from a leadership role in the country, in the world,” Zimmer said. “It's unbelievable to me that this decision has been made because we are really literally walking away from the United States taking a leadership role.”
The mayor says that she will take about six months to decide on what her next step will be.


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