Former Gov. Pat Quinn won’t run for mayor, will keep pursuing term limits

Former Gov. Pat Quinn responded to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s bombshell announcement Tuesday that the mayor won’t seek a third term by saying he’ll continue to pursue term limits for that office but won’t seek it himself.

“I haven’t given any thought to that,” Quinn said when asked if he wanted the job for himself, then, asked to clarify, said he definitively would not run.

Quinn said he will keep fighting to get a binding referendum on the November ballot to limit Chicago’s mayor to two consecutive terms, saying the effort never was aimed at Emanuel.

“Every other big city in America has a two-term limit on the mayor — New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston,” Quinn said.

The initiative got a boost Thursday when the Chicago Board of Elections found that Quinn and volunteers working with him had collected a sufficient number of valid petitions, despite challenges to many of them.

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