Detroit elects its first female mayor

Detroit has been run by Mike Duggan for the past 12 years and his successor will be Mary Sheffield who has won the vote 78% to 22% beating out Reverend Solomon Kinloch Jr. She will be the first female mayor of Detroit, and a black woman at that.

As someone who has lived in this state almost all of their life, Detroit has been on a very good trajectory. Shops are opening up, downtown is way livelier, people are actually checking out the riverfront and visiting the sites. This is anecdotal but when I was a kid one of the reasons my family didn’t visit certain places is for fear of getting stuck with a needle left by junkies. Detroit was in a very bad place. It isn’t anymore, thank you Mike Duggan.

Is it perfect? No. Crime is still bad in a lot of areas, many children live in total poverty and the scars of red lining and racism can be seen all across the city. Detroit Public schools are an absolute mess. But it’s better.

Sheffield is definitely NOT a Mamdani. In fact she strikes me as a typical African American, socially traditional, centrist to center left on economic policy, and will take a community based approach on how she implements policy, always playing a balancing act.  She plans to open an Office of Gun Violence Prevention as well as focus on crime prevention and getting more investment in the city. She has to balance corporate, small business, and local interests. The strategy Detroit has taken to revival has been convincing the business community to invest in it and to get people from the suburbs to show up. It will take decades to get the city to the way it was before the auto companies left the city a smoking ruin.

I wish her all the luck in the world. Running Detroit is a difficult business but she won resoundingly because people have faith in her, her abilities, and her continuation of Mike Duggan’s policies.