12 Years after bankruptcy, a changed Detroit is picking a mayor

By Mitch Smith

The last time Detroit voters chose a new mayor, the local government was largely controlled by the state, the population was in free-fall and the city was careening through the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

A dozen years later, Detroit is functional again. Local control of City Hall was long ago restored, the city’s bond rating is on the upswing and the streetlights are back on. And after decades of hemorrhaging residents, the city has seen slight upticks in population in the past two years, according to Census Bureau estimates.

Now, with Mayor Mike Duggan not running for a fourth term, a large field of candidates wants to lead a changed Detroit, population 645,000. The candidates and their supporters broadly agree that Detroit is better off than it was, and that the city’s downtown and midtown were transformed in the Duggan years. At stake now, residents say, is Detroit’s next chapter, and whether the renaissance in parts of the city will spread to still-struggling neighborhoods.

“I think a lot of people are concerned that, as our current mayor leaves, do we have someone in place that can sustain what is in place,” said Mary Sheffield, the City Council president and leading candidate in preelection polling. She said Duggan had “made some tremendous progress in helping Detroit move forward” and has emphasized her collaboration with him on the Council.

Other candidates, while acknowledging some of Duggan’s successes, have described Detroit as a “tale of two cities” and promised to prioritize people and places that they said had been overlooked.

“The divide that is happening in the city, that continues to happen in this city, is epic,” said Todd Perkins, a lawyer who is among the candidates competing for a spot in the November general election. “We’ve got the No. 1 riverfront in the country, we have a bustling downtown. And then you go 2, 3 miles outside of there, and you see despair.”

Voters will have their pick of nine candidates who qualified for the ballot when they go to the polls Tuesday. The top two finishers will face off in a November election.

Sheffield, who would be the first woman to lead Detroit, has consistently led in polling, but the race for second is far less clear. Contenders include James Craig, a former police chief; Fred Durhal III, a city council member; Saunteel Jenkins, a former City Council president; Solomon Kinloch Jr., the pastor of a large church; and Perkins. Craig is a Republican, and the other leading candidates are Democrats, though the election is officially nonpartisan.

Residents and candidates alike describe Detroit, where nearly one-third of people live in poverty, as a work in progress. Those who stayed through the worst days of state-appointed emergency management and bankruptcy voiced pride about Detroit’s improved reputation, as well as relief that city government was now providing the basics again. Ambulances come when you call. The grass in parks is being mowed.

Many, though, described an uneven recovery that had not fully taken root in corners of the vast city, which covers 139 square miles. Sections of vacant, overgrown land stretch along blocks where houses and shops stood decades ago, when Detroit had nearly 1.85 million residents. Jenkins, one of the candidates, said “the overwhelming majority of neighborhoods in the city of Detroit have not been turned around.”

Duggan, who is Detroit’s first white mayor in decades, won reelection by overwhelming margins in each of the past two cycles and retains high approval ratings in Detroit, where around 75% of residents are Black.

This election is poised to return a Black leader to City Hall, with many of the front-runners coming from Detroit’s churches and political establishment. The discussion on the campaign trail has focused less explicitly on race than on the disparities between thriving business districts that have attracted newcomers and struggling neighborhoods where those who remain have deep ties.

In interviews, Detroiters said there were not enough grocery stores, that buses do not run often enough and that safety remains a concern even as homicides have dropped.

“I think he’s done, I want to say, a decent job,” Glenda McGadney, a retired federal worker, said of Duggan, whom she did not vote for in prior elections. “What I don’t like about him that is that he had an opportunity, I think, to do more in the neighborhoods, and he did not do that.”

Jinnie Andrews, who lives in a senior apartment building that Sheffield visited recently, said she was a fan of Duggan and was looking for someone who would build on his work. But Andrews, like others, said she wanted to see more growth in her part of Detroit, and pressed Sheffield on how she would fill vacant buildings that once housed CVS and Rite Aid drug stores.

Some candidates have been quick to praise Duggan. Durhal said that “I honestly think Mayor Duggan has done an amazing job” and pledged to work on “continuing to eliminate the narrative that there is a tale of two cities.”

A longtime Democrat, Duggan recently left the party and decided to run for governor of Michigan as an independent. He said he broadly agreed with the mayoral candidates’ focus on developing neighborhoods, though he noted that property values in many parts of Detroit had doubled or tripled during his tenure.

“Some neighborhoods, when I came in, had 10% abandoned homes and some had 80% abandoned homes,” Duggan said. “The ones with 10, 20, 30, 40% abandoned homes came back faster, and the others took more work. And if I were running for reelection again, I would be talking about reaching those other neighborhoods.”

The mayoral election comes a year after Michigan, a closely divided swing state, played a crucial role in returning President Donald Trump to the White House. Detroit, the state’s largest city, is heavily Democratic and most of its voters selected Kamala Harris, but Trump performed better in the city than in previous elections. He also offended some residents when he said that “our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president.”

“I would love to see a mayor from this city really go toe-to-toe with him and reclaim our reputation,” said Janice Gates, who works for a nonprofit.

Others were looking for a different approach. Andrews said she was no fan of Trump, but would like the next mayor to try to work with the president if possible. Craig, a former police chief in Detroit and Cincinnati and the only prominent Republican running for mayor, has pitched his relationship with the president as a selling point.

“I say, ‘Look, don’t judge me because of the relationship,’” Craig said. “Whether you like him or not, he’s the sitting president, and we will need federal help.”