Incumbent challenged by state senator in Detroit mayor race

Detroit mayoral candidate Mike Duggan, 2013. (Photo By Barbara Barefield from Detroit, USA – Duggan5.22.13_0304, CC BY 2.0)

DETROIT — Incumbent Mike Duggan is being challenged by state Sen. Coleman Young II for Detroit mayor in an election in which fewer than a fifth of the city’s 470,000 registered voters are expected at the polls.

Only 13 to 18 per cent voter turnout is expected for Tuesday’s general election, according to city elections officials.

Mike Duggan, who was first elected months after a state-appointed manager filed for Detroit’s historic bankruptcy, is seeking a second four-year term against Young whose iconic father, Coleman A. Young, was Detroit’s first black mayor.

In the nonpartisan August primary, Duggan got more than 67 per cent of the vote to Young’s nearly 27 per cent. Duggan received endorsements from prominent labour groups and clergy, and even the influential Black Slate that helped get Coleman A. Young elected in 1973.

Duggan, a former chief of the Detroit Medical Center, was first elected in 2013 and became the first white mayor in the city since 1973. Detroit is more than 80 per cent black.

Earlier in 2013, a state-appointed manager filed for Detroit’s bankruptcy. Duggan had limited power over city finances and other operations in his first year in office, but he and the City Council eventually regained control after Detroit’s December 2014 bankruptcy exit.

The bankruptcy allowed Detroit to restructure or shed billions of dollars in debt.

Under an aggressive blight removal plan and using primarily federal funds, more than 10,000 vacant houses have been torn down over the past four years. Duggan also has worked with banks and foundations on home-buying and renovation programs to improve Detroit neighbourhoods.

But Coleman Young II has criticized Duggan, saying some of Detroit’s poorest neighbourhoods have yet to get better.

Young, who had been a state representative, was elected to the Michigan Senate in 2010. He ran unsuccessfully in a 2009 special mayoral primary to complete the second term of convicted ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick served as mayor from 2002 to 2008. He resigned in disgrace as part of a plea deal in separate perjury and assault cases.

Coleman A. Young, who first took office in 1974, served 20 years as mayor. He decided not to seek re-election after 1993. He died in 1997.