Four figures on the Israeli left are believed to be interested in running for the position of mayor of Tel Aviv. One former Knesset member has begun a search for a non-left candidate to balance the field. At the moment, asides from the incumbent mayor Ron Huldai, who has held the position for 14 years, no one has officially announced their candidacy for the municipality elections, which are set to be held on October 22.

Ir Lekulanu demonstration in front of Tel-Aviv Municipality. Second from the right: Tel-Aviv-Jaffa councilman and member of the Communist Party of Israel Central Committee, Yoav Goldring (Photo: Ir Lekulanu)

Social activist Dafni Leef is the latest to express interest in running for the post. Leef wrote on Facebook followers that residents of the city had asked her to run. “I’m not going to lie – I’m seriously considering it,” she wrote. Ron Huldai of the Labor party, the current mayor, is expected to run for re-election. MK Dov Khenin (Hadash), head of the Ir Lekulanu (City for All) movement, formerly ran against Huldai and lost, with 34% of the vote to Huldai’s 51%; his name has been raised as a potential candidate in the 2013 mayoral race. Another name that has come up is that of MK Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz. Leef was one of the organizers of the massive social justice protests in the summer of 2011 and again in 2012.

Extreme-right and racist former MK Michael Ben-Ari, who was born and raised in south Tel Aviv, called on the political right to provide a candidate of its own. “Will Tel Aviv drown in anti-Zionist leftism?” he asked on Facebook. “The left versus the left versus Meretz versus Hadash, the party of [MK] Mohammed Barakeh.”

On Ir Lekulanu: :     http://city4all.org.il/english