Heather Bell
RADFORD – Radford Mayor David Horton has announced he will not be running for reelection this November.
Horton made the announcement on May 1.
“May 1st is the day eight years ago that you elected me to be your mayor and I wanted to say thank you to all of the people who have supported me over all of these years. Many of you have reached out and have been so wonderful and so supportive and I want to say thank you for all of that,” Horton said. ”I’ve had a lot of people reach out over the last months and weeks and ask if I’m going to continue to serve as mayor, and have encouraged me to run again in the election this November and I wanted to let you know as much as I appreciate that, I think I’m going to take a break from elected office for the time being.”
Horton said he will finish out his term as mayor and is not ruling out serving in some capacity in the future.
“This is not a goodbye forever but it is a pause and my name won’t be on the ballot this November but I want you to know I am going to serve the rest of my term and work really hard for the city to continue some of the things that we’ve started and to move forward in positive ways for Radford,” he said.
“Serving Radford citizens as mayor has been a great honor,” Horton said via email Friday. “I’m not retiring but taking a break to do some other things that I have been putting off for the past eight years. I will always be a public servant and work to help our community and citizens achieve their goals and dreams.”
The city’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year was recently approved, and with that task taken care of, Horton said he will use his remaining time on city council helping to keep the city moving forward.
“I’ll have a lot more to say over the next seven months or so as we finish out this term and highlight the things that we’ve gotten accomplished and the things that are on the verge of happening to move us into a wonderful place,” he said. “You know, we’ve worked together to try to address the challenges here in our community, we’ve worked together to try to deal with problems, problems we didn’t even know we had in some cases, to make Radford an even better place to live and I’m thankful for [the community] for helping to do that.
“We have done our best for all of you during unprecedented times and will continue to do so.”
Radford Vice Mayor Seth Gillespie has announced his candidacy for the mayoral seat in the upcoming November 2026 election.
