Jenny Anne Durkan (born May 19, 1958) is an American attorney, former federal prosecutor, and politician who served as the 56th mayor of Seattle, Washington. She is the daughter of Martin Durkan. Durkan is a member of the Democratic Party. After earning her Juris Doctor from University of Washington School of Law in 1985, Durkan began practicing law as a criminal defense lawyer and civil litigator. In October 2009, President Barack Obama appointed her United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. She held that position until September 2014.Jerry Markon and Juliet Eilperin (September 25, 2014). "Attorney General Eric Holder to Step Down," Washington Post
Durkan was elected the 56th mayor of Seattle in 2017, becoming the city's first female mayor since the 1920s, its second openly LGBT elected mayor, and first elected mayor born in Seattle. She took first place in the nonpartisan August primary and defeated urban planner and political activist Cary Moon in the November general election. She and her partner, Dana Garvey, have two sons.
Durkan was criticized for her response to the George Floyd protests in Seattle and her handling of protesters and law enforcement in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. In December 2020, she announced that she would not seek reelection after the end of her mayoral term.
Early life and education Jenny Durkan was born in Seattle on May 19, 1958. She was raised in a large Irish Catholic family of eight siblings. The family lived on Mercer Island in the mid-1950s and Bellevue in the early 1960s, before settling in rural Issaquah during a time "when there [wasn't] any development." Her father, Martin Durkan, was a prominent Seattle-area lawyer, Democratic legislator, and lobbyist whose career included 16 years in the state Senate and two unsuccessful runs for governor. Her mother was primarily a homemaker who supported her husband's career, though she eventually became an executive editor of the Ballard News-Tribune and wrote editorials.
Durkan attended Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, a private Catholic girls' school in Washington State. She spent part of her junior year of high school as an exchange student in London and said that "the best part of the experience was traveling through England to Scotland, France, Austria, Switzerland and Germany." A high-school classmate of Durkan's remembers her as "super independent, and rough-and-tumble…strong-willed and adventurous."
Durkan earned her B.A. degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1980. At Notre Dame, she tried out for the basketball team before being cut and ending up as the team's statistician.
After graduating, Durkan spent two years in Alaska, teaching high-school English and coaching a girls' basketball team in the Yup'ik community through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. After a summer working as a baggage handler for Wien Air Alaska in St. Mary's, Alaska, as a dues-paying Teamster, Durkan enrolled in the University of Washington School of Law, earning her J.D. degree in 1985.Callaghan, Peter. "Obama names Jenny Durkan U.S. Attorney for Western District", The News Tribune, May 15, 2009. "I wanted to be a lawyer since I was 5 years old," she told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1992. "When I graduated from law school, my mother said, "Finally someone is going to pay you to argue."'
Private practice While in law school, Durkan participated in a pilot criminal defense clinic, working with the public defender's office to represent individuals charged in Seattle municipal court. She continued the work on a pro bono basis, until she moved to Washington, D.C. to practice law with the firm of Williams & Connolly.
In 1991, Durkan returned to Seattle to join the law firm of Schroeter Goldmark & Bender, and she established a successful practice focusing on criminal defense and work on behalf of plaintiffs, including the family of Lt. Walter Kilgore, who died in the Pang warehouse fire, the case of Stan Stevenson (a retired firefighter who was stabbed leaving a Mariners game) and the case of Kate Fleming, who died in a flash flood in her Madison Valley basement during the Hanukkah Eve windstorm of 2006.
In 1994 Durkan became the executive council and political director to Governor Mike Lowry, making her Lowry's chief lawyer. Lowry had been a campaign manager to and protege of her father in 1972, and Durkan worked for then congressman Lowry in the 1980s. After initially recommending that an independent investigator represent Lowry, Durkan resigned in February 1995 after deputy press secretary Susanne Albright accused him of sexual harassment.
Among Durkan's most prominent cases in private practice was the 2005 recount lawsuit that attempted to undo Governor Chris Gregoire's election in 2004. The Democratic Party turned to Durkan with Gregoire's election "facing an unprecedented trial and Republicans trying to remove her from office." Gregoire's victory was upheld.
In January 2017, Durkan worked with families and other attorneys at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to obtain a federal court order, the day President Donald Trump's first travel ban executive order went into effect, blocking the deportation of people who had arrived at the airport from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
After serving as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Durkan joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to head a new Seattle law office specializing in internet and online security issues. At Quinn Emanuel, she also represented FIFA as one of the lawyers conducting an independent internal investigation of issues related to a global corruption case brought by Swiss authorities and the U.S. Justice Department. The investigation and related actions by FIFA's Ethics Committee led to the ousting of longtime FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his key deputy Jerome Valcke, as well as a restructuring of the FIFA Executive Committee and World Cup processes.
Civic leader Durkan served on the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission from 1993 to 1996. She served as the first Citizen Observer on the Seattle Police Firearms Review Board from 1997 to 2000 and two Seattle mayors asked her to serve on Citizen Review Committees for the Seattle Police Department. She also played an advisory role on the establishment of the King County Drug Court and the Mental Health Court. She later helped create a specialized drug program in the federal courts in Western Washington."Seattle gets specialized federal drug court", Seattle Times, December 13, 2012.
In September 1994, Durkan left the Schroeter law firm to join the staff of then-Washington Governor Mike Lowry as his lawyer and political adviser. In February 1995, she resigned from Lowry's office and returned to Schroeter.
Durkan is a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers and maintains an from Martindale-Hubbell. She served a three-year term on the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors. She served on the Merit Selection Committee for the United States District Court, helping select the candidates for appointment to seven vacancies in the federal judiciary in the Western District of Washington.
Durkan served on the nonprofit board of the Center for Women and Democracy from 2000 to 2009, as a founding Board Member for the Seattle Police Foundation from 2002 to 2004, and as the Chair of the Washington State Attorney General's Task Force on Consumer Privacy, which resulted in legislation that became a national model for identity theft protections.
U.S. Attorney
In May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Durkan to be the U.S Attorney for the Western District of Washington, which covers 19 counties and is home to 4.6 million people (78% of the state's population)."Jenny Durkan confirmed as US attorney for W. Wash.", Seattle Times, September 29, 2009. She was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on September 29, 2009, and sworn in on October 1 by Chief U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik."Senate confirms Durkan as U.S. Attorney", Seattle Post Intelligencer, September 29, 2009.
While U.S. Attorney, Durkan created a Civil Rights Department in the office. It coordinates a variety of civil rights cases and outreach, including a number of cases on behalf of returning veterans."2012 Report to the Community", U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, February 5, 2013 She also helped push police reform efforts in the Seattle Police Department after a Department of Justice investigation found a pattern and practice of excessive use of force.
Upon taking office, Durkan was appointed to serve on the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, which advises the U.S. Attorney General on policy, management, and operational issues at the Department of Justice. She was chair of the Attorney General's Subcommittee on Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Enforcement. Durkan played a leading role in prosecuting cybercrimes, including hacking, skimming"Oh, the Irony: Identity Theft Prosecutor Is Hacked", Time (magazine), September 8, 2011. and identity theft."Computer Crime & Internet Fraud Press Releases" , U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, February 1, 2013. Durkan worked with the public schools to ensure internet safety tips for parents and kids were sent home with kids at the beginning of the school year. She also focused on terrorism and national security issues, including the prosecution of two men who plotted to blow up a military recruitment facility in Seattle."Plea deal reached in plot to attack Seattle military station", Seattle Times, December 6, 2012.
As U.S. Attorney, Durkan used the federal law against felons possessing firearms to crack down on career criminals in Western Washington. Cases referred for felons-with-guns charges increased 45% during her tenure. Durkan pushed "hot spot" initiatives in high-crime areas to address drug and gun sales. These investigations and law enforcement operations resulted in dozens of arrests and weapons confiscations.
In September 2014, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced his intention to step down, Durkan was widely discussed as a potential candidate to succeed him. The Obama administration nominated Loretta Lynch.
2011 medical marijuana legislation On April 14, 2011, Durkan and Michael C. Ormsby, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, responded to a request for guidance from Washington governor Christine Gregoire. They warned that a bill proposing to revise state-level medical marijuana laws could "authorize conduct contrary to federal law" and indicated that the Justice Department would continue to pursue criminal or civil actions for any violations of the federal government's Controlled Substances Act.
In November 2011, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided ten Seattle medical marijuana dispensaries. After the raids, marijuana activists criticized Durkan. The DEA's search warrants suggested the dispensaries were involved in illicit drug dealing and money laundering, and City Councilman Tim Burgess said the raided shops were "operating well outside the medical provisions". Durkan asserted that the dispensaries in question were believed to be concealing criminal activity behind the state's medical marijuana law and that authorities would not ignore flagrant violations.
2012 May Day vandalism response The 2012 May Day protests in Seattle included violent rioting, damage, and a proclamation of civil emergency by Mayor Mike McGinn. Durkan's office headed the prosecution that followed the vandalizing of Seattle's William Kenzo Nakamura U.S. Courthouse during the protests. In the months after the protests, at least five suspected rioters were criminally charged. Those arrests were part of a much wider FBI investigation that both preceded and followed the events of May 1, 2012.