Another candidate has entered the race for mayor in financially teetering Harrisburg, Pa.
Air Force veteran Nate Curtis, 25, will run as an independent against Democratic nominee Eric Papenfuse and fellow independent Nevin Mindlin.
City Controller Dan Miller, who lost to Papenfuse in the Democratic primary, secured enough votes to run in November as a Republican, and has until Aug. 10 to decide whether to run on the GOP slate.
Papenfuse defeated incumbent Linda Thompson in the Democratic primary.
Curtis returned from Afghanistan in April. “I returned from war to find Harrisburg at war with itself,” Curtis said in his kickoff announcement at the Pennsylvania State Museum last week, where he stood beneath a towering statue of William Penn.
His brother, Dax, was shot to death on Woodbine Street in 2007. His father is a retired Harrisburg police detective.
Curtis, a graduate of Penn State Harrisburg, said the city won’t recover financially as long as investors consider the city dangerous. Harrisburg is staring at roughly $350 million of debt that it cannot pay and is under state receivership.
