Jerusalem minister Elkin said considering run for capital’s mayor

Jerusalem Minister Ze’ev Elkin and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat were reportedly seeking to swap roles, with the former said weighing a mayoral run, and Barkat expected to announce he won’t seek reelection and that he will instead run for the Knesset on the Likud party ticket.

Hadashot news reported on Sunday that Likud Minister Elkin was considering throwing his hat in the ring in the October 2018 local elections.

A confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Elkin has served in the Knesset since 2006, formerly in the Kadima party, and since 2009 in the governing Likud.

Meanwhile, Barkat is expected to announce this week that he will run in the Likud party primaries, in the hopes of being elected into parliament in the 2019 general elections.

Barkat has dropped numerous hints at a possible Knesset run since joining the ruling party in 2015.

On Tuesday, the municipality addressed rumors of the mayor’s political aspirations, saying in a statement that Barkat would “announce his decision” after the municipal budget is passed Thursday.

The statement went on to say that Barkat on Thursday “intends to pass Jerusalem’s largest-ever budget, thanks to the support of government ministries.”

Barkat has been embroiled in an increasingly public feud with Finance Minister Moshe Kahon over the city’s budget for several months.

Barkat claims that the Finance Ministry has been withholding hundreds of millions of shekels from the municipality in an effort by Kahlon to settle a score with the mayor, who supported Netanyahu in the last elections instead of him.

Kahlon, a former minister in Netanyahu’s Likud party, established the Kulanu party as a socially conscious version of Likud, winning 10 seats in the 2015 elections.

Barkat has retained relatively high popularity in a city comprising religious, ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews, as well as Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.

A major in the IDF reserves who earned a fortune at the start of the Israeli high-tech boom in the 1990s, Barkat entered politics in a failed bid for Jerusalem mayor against ultra-Orthodox candidate Uri Lupoliansky in 2003.

After serving as head of the opposition during Lupoliansky’s term, Barkat again ran as the secular candidate in the 2008 municipal elections, beating out ultra-Orthodox candidate Meir Porush. He was reelected in 2013.