Quick Facts
Biography
Ron Huldai (Hebrew: רון חולדאי; born 26 August 1944) is the current Mayor of Tel Aviv, since 1998. Before he entered his role as Tel Aviv mayor, Huldai served as a fighter pilot and a commander in the Israeli Air Force. After leaving the army as a brigadier general, he entered the business world and was later headmaster of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv.
Biography
He was born in 1944 in Hulda (his surname is taken from the name of the kibbutz) to Polish parents from Łódź. He is a history graduate of Tel Aviv University, Auburn University at Montgomery, the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Advanced Management Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Military service and politics
In the course of his twenty-six years of military service in the Israeli Air Force (1963–1989), he served as a combat pilot and held several key senior command positions. As Brigadier General, he was in charge of the Air Force Pilots Training School. He also served as a coordinator of the government authorities and supervisor of civilian construction projects for the IAF.
Following his retirement from active duty in 1989, he entered the private sector. Three years later, he became headmaster of the prestigious Herzliya Hebrew High School and remained in office for six years.
A member of the Labor Party, Huldai was first elected mayor of Tel Aviv in 1998, was re-elected in 2003 with 62% of the vote, again in 2008 with 50.6%, and yet again in 2013 with 53%.
2008 Elections
Huldai ran for mayor in 2008 municipal elections as part of the One Tel Aviv list, a partnership between Labor and Kadima. He was supported by the Pensioners, the city council's largest faction.