The Lowell Sun is reporting that School Committee member John Leahy will not seek reelection this fall but instead will run for the Lowell City Council. (Gerry Nutter is attributing the same news and the news that Leahy’s School Committee colleague, Dave Conway, who was rumored to be considering a run for the city council, will run for reelection to the school committee).

Leahy, whose father (Dan) was elected to a term on the council in 1997, was elected to the school committee in 2001 and has been reelected every two years. Four years ago, I believe he contemplated running for city council, but his cousin Mike Lenzi was also in the race which may have influenced his decision to stick with the school committee at that time.

School committee members have had mixed luck making the jump to the city council. Without doing a thorough job of researching the topic, I know that Gerry Durkin, Kathy Kelley, Gus Coutu and Victor Forsley were all successful; Joe Mendonca was eventually successful; and Dave Allen and Bob Hoey were not. I have a feeling there were others, but I can’t remember them so any help from readers via the comment feature would be helpful.