Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan speaks ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in Detroit on the first day of early in-person voting on Oct. 19, 2024. (Photo: Anna Liz Nichols)
Surrounded by city employees at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announced Wednesday that he will not be seeking reelection for mayor of the city next year.
Duggan, 66, is expected by many to throw his hat in the ring for governor in 2026 alongside fellow Democrats Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited.
An announcement about his political future will come in the coming weeks, Duggan said, but on Wednesday he wanted to thank all the people who have helped him along the way, offering a verbal love letter to the city of Detroit.
“For 11 years, the people in the city have been kind and supportive. Every neighborhood I’m in, every church I’m in, every store I’m in, it has been truly remarkable,” Duggan said.
Recalling his initial 2013 run for mayor amid Detroit declaring bankruptcy, Duggan said he was hopeful that he could come in and make a difference in the city he grew up in, going house to house in the evenings, ready to talk to groups of people in living rooms about abandoned buildings and repairing streetlights.
“Most nights I was the only white face in the room and I talked to people across generations, and they didn’t want to talk so much about the city. They wanted to tell me their story,” Duggan said.
Seniors in Detroit shared the experiences of growing up in the Jim Crow South, the indignation of separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, and the hope they had coming up North to Detroit for a better life, Duggan said. But they were met with the same discrimination, unable to find jobs and dealing with racism from law enforcement.
“And as this generation built this city and built their homes, they watched it be taken away from them with the financial and economic collapse of the city of Detroit,” Duggan said. “Mostly what they wanted to talk about was, ‘Could somebody who looked like me, really understand their pain and their history, and really support their aspirations?’ They were the most powerful meetings I’ve ever been in.”
Detroit was in economic ruin with around $18 billion worth of debt and tens of thousands of abandoned homes when Duggan decided to make his run in 2013. And for filing his signatures two weeks before he had reestablished Detroit residency for a full year, Duggan was kicked off the 2013 ballot, running an improbable write-in campaign that eventually put him in office.
Duggan became the first white mayor of Detroit in 40 years.
And slowly, through working with statewide government and federal partners, the people of Detroit have been revitalizing the city, Duggan said, leading to a first in 60 years population growth in Detroit from 2022 to 2023, when the city gained nearly 2,000 residents.
And the next mayor is charged with doing even more to strengthen the city, Duggan said. Instead of 47,000 abandoned houses, the next mayor will only be responsible for 3,000 at the most. Through investments in public transportation and state employees, Detroiters are more empowered than ever to reap the benefits of years of hard work to build into the city.
Duggan said he doesn’t have a favorite mayoral candidate that he’s putting his support behind yet. He looks forward to listening to what candidates say that will build bridges within the community.
City Council President Mary Sheffield, Councilman Fred Durhal III, former Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins and businessman Joel Haashiim have filed committees to run for mayor next year, the Detroit Free Press reports.
President-elect Donald Trump’s presidency poses challenges to Detroiters, Duggan said, calling President Joe Biden as “the best friend Detroit ever had in the White House,” as his administration invested millions of dollars into projects to build the city’s economy.
Trump made significant efforts to win over fringe voters in the Democrat dominated Detroit area, successfully increasing his support from Detroit voters by about 7,000 votes compared to his 2020 run.
“But Donald Trump promised that when he became president, crime was going to go down in Detroit and economic development was going to increase, and so we’re going to see whether that was serious, and I’m going to start by looking for common ground, and we will go from there,” Duggan said. We are going to continue to do what we’re really focused on right now, which is bringing in the companies and the jobs for the young people. We’ve got to be the city that keeps our talent.”
Being mayor has been “the honor of a lifetime,” Duggan said to a standing ovation, as he thanked the people who opened their homes to his campaign in 2013 and city employees in the room that stuck through the hard fight of fixing Detroit.
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