Note to readers • This story was updated with information about Mendenhall’s pending divorce.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall confirmed Wednesday that she “is seriously considering” running for a third term, but said she’s not ready yet to announce a final decision.

The two-term mayor also didn’t offer a timeline for when she would decide on whether to try for another four years. The city’s top office comes up again for election next year.

“I realize how fortunate I am to be able to lead the city at this moment in our history,” Mendenhall said in an interview, adding that “it’s an undeniably exciting time in Salt Lake City. There’s a lot of incredible growth and evolution that’s happening here.”

Mendenhall, the former City Council member for Ballpark-centered District 5 and Breathe Utah executive director before that, said she also was “not afraid to say that this is a decision that takes a lot of consideration.”

The mayor and council members are not subject to term limits. Candidate filing in the mayoral race is scheduled to happen in summer 2027.

Among the top factors Mendenhall said she is currently weighing: “I always am considering what’s best for my family and what’s best for the city, and those are the biggest weights on the scale as I balance out a decision.”

“I’m a mom before I’m a mayor every day,” Mendenhall said, “and so you know, I’ve been unsure about running for a third term.”

She added: “I’m glad, frankly, that I’ve been willing to feel it out instead of just resolve from the beginning that I would certainly do three terms. I don’t think that would have been fair to myself or my family or the city, and so that’s why there’s a lot of consideration around this.”

Less than a week after she made those comments, the online news site Axios reported that the mayor and her husband, former council member Kyle La Malfa, were seeking a divorce.

Public records show La Malfa filed for divorce on May 13 and that the matter is still pending.

The couple married nearly a decade ago. A spokesperson for the mayor said she was asking for privacy “while navigating this difficult situation.”

Only two prior Salt Lake City mayors have pulled off winning three consecutive terms: J. Bracken Lee through the 1960s and one of Mendenhall’s political mentors, Ted Wilson, who left office part of the way through his third term, in 1985.

Ralph Becker sought a third term in 2015 but lost at the polls to Jackie Biskupski.

After serving six years on the council, Mendenhall first got elected as mayor in fall 2019, defeating fellow Democrat Luz Escamilla in a race for the seat left open by Biskupski, who cited family reasons in her decision not to seek another term.

Mendenhall, now 46, assumed the mayor’s office in Utah’s largest city just two months before the COVID-19 pandemic upended the U.S., followed in the Beehive State by a major earthquake in May and a devastating Labor Day windstorm that same year.

Those crises, in many ways, shaped her first term.

“You can’t predict what’s going to happen over that course of your term or terms,” she said Wednesday of her decision-making process now. “But there’s no doubt that we’ve been through a lot, and we’ve become even stronger.”

Mendenhall won a second term in 2023, defeating two opponents, former mayor Rocky Anderson and Michael Valentine.

Today, there are clearly additional factors influencing whether Mendenhall seeks another go-round at City Hall, some of which would appear to be tilting her in that direction.

“I love this work,” the mayor said. “I love working at the city and for these people. I want to go to work every day, and you can’t make yourself feel that way at a job.”

Mendenhall offered high praise for those currently serving in her administration — “the most fantastic team of public servants” — and for “a great City Council to work with” as additional attractions of the job.

Earlier Wednesday, the mayor spoke to a gathering of downtown enthusiasts about the city’s work on creating green civic campus and social gathering spot between City Hall’s Washington Square and Library Square to the east — one of several massive capital projects the administration has pushed under her tenure.

The mayor later nodded to an interest in seeing major projects and policy initiatives through with another four years.

“There is a lot of momentum on many fronts” in the city’s growth and development, she said — and that, Mendenhall added, has led to people encouraging her to run again “to keep us going in this direction.”

“I hear from people who are neighbors in the city who don’t pay attention to politics or necessarily what municipal government is doing,” she said, “and yet they feel really proud of their city and grateful for the direction that we are going and the way we’re working with the community.”

“It’s those kind of conversations that are important to me,” Mendenhall said. “I’m getting a lot of that kind of feedback, which is encouraging.”