CHARLOTTE — The occasion was an open-to-the-public reception to introduce Charlotte’s new city manager. But everyone in the lobby of the government center was talking about the decision by Mayor Anthony Foxx not to run for the third term he certainly would have won handily, and the reports – not confirmed – that he may take a spot as U.S. Secretary of Transportation as Ray LaHood steps down.
Only that would satisfy Sandra Clory, a retired school system dance instructor who has worked with the Mayor’s Mentoring Alliance. “It’s the only way I won’t be angry with him” for leaving the mayor’s office, she said at the Tuesday event, crowded with the neighborhood, nonprofit and business leaders who make Charlotte run. Just then, Foxx walked by; Clory took his arm and asked him if he was going to Washington to work with President Obama. “I don’t know nothing,” he jokingly replied.
It mirrored what Foxx, 41, said in a more serious conversation this week. “I don’t have any comment on that,” Foxx told me. “As I’ve said before, I’ve got plenty of things to focus on in the short and medium term, and that’s what I’m focused on.”
