Sen. David Burkette, D-Montgomery, resigned his seat Tuesday.

Burkette, a first-term senator and former member of Montgomery City Council, sent a resignation letter to Gov. Kay Ivey and Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston late Tuesday afternoon. In a phone interview Tuesday evening, Burkette declined to say why he resigned.

“God has been watching over me through my entire political career,” he said.  “I know that God would never leave or forsake and he’s not through with me yet.”

Burkette referred legal questions to his attorney, Al Agricola. A woman who answered the phone at Agricola’s office Wednesday morning said he was not taking questions from the media “at this time.”

The Alabama Ethics Commission sent a complaint against Burkette to prosecutors in Oct. 2019. The nature of the complaint was not clear. Agricola said at the time that the senator had “not committed any crime or intentionally violated the law.”

“Governor Ivey is disappointed, but firmly supports the rule of law, and particularly in this situation where there has been a clear misuse of public trust,” Gina Maiola, a spokeswoman for Gov. Ivey, said in a statement Tuesday evening.

An educator who worked as assistant principal at Bellingrath Middle School, Burkette served on the Montgomery City Council from 2007 to 2018. He announced his run for the Alabama Senate in 2017, after Sen. Quinton Ross, D-Montgomery, stepped down to assume the presidency of Alabama State University. Burkette went through six different elections in the course of 11 months before he won his Senate seat. His major opponent in those races was former Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery.

“I’m still working in the community,” Burkette said Tuesday. “I’m out of the seat for now. But I’m still acting and working for them because they are the people who put me there. They are 32,000 strong, and I would never turn my back on them.”

A special election will be scheduled to fill Burkette’s seat.