Duggan in Detroit

Author

Kay W.
May 05, 2025

More than 150 Michigan pastors endorsed Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on Monday in his bid to become the state's next governor, calling him a leader who has the capacity "to bring people together."

Duggan, who is running as an independent, shared the sanctuary space with more than two dozen pastors at Straight Gate International Church, 10100 Grand River Avenue in northwest Detroit. A spokeswoman for Duggan's campaign said a "vast majority" of the endorsements are from African American clergy.

Many clergy at Monday's event praised the three-term mayor of Michigan's largest city for tackling such issues as eliminating neighborhood blight, reducing crime and increasing jobs.

He has an extremely pragmatic agenda - 1, 2, and 3.

  1. Keep young people in Michigan

  2. improve public education

  3. make housing affordable


I currently reside and vote in Ohio although we’ve owned property in Michigan for 30 years and plan a residency move to Michigan this summer, so I’ll be voting for Michigan governor next cycle. I’m a Democrat - I actually hold a Democratic leadership post at the county level in Ohio so it is highly unlikely I would vote for Duggan in a three way D, R and I race, but I see the appeal of an Independent bid in the current political climate and think we may be seeing a lot more of this nationally.

There are a lot of Right leaning Democrats in the Great Lakes states - not “Reagan Democrats” or whatever bullshit punditry category media use, but actual voting members of the Democratic Party who are Right leaning. I don’t think one can break this down by race, either. I think there are Right leaning Black Democrats in the Great Lakes states along with Right leaning whites and to a certain extent they feel excluded by college educated liberal Democrats - they see progressive Democrats as joyless scolds who focus on “correct” language rather than results for working people.

As a progressive Democrat on the Left side of the Party I work with these people every day - they make up the majority of the local Democrats in rural Ohio. I do just fine working with them and recognize that my brand of progressive Democrat is probably only 25% of the Party nationwide so I need them if I want to win, and I want to win.

I think you’ll see Right leaning Democrats (or Independents like Duggan) deliberately distance themselves from progressive Democrats not on “issues” - Duggan has been extremely pro immigrant - but on language, like Duggan is doing on immigration:

Tlaib was joined by several immigrant rights activists and Detroit City Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero in Patton Park, which sits on Vernor Highway, a commercial strip in southwest Detroit packed with small businesses, many of them run by immigrants. The news conference was held on the same day that several immigrant, Latino, Asian American and Black groups released a statement criticizing Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan for using the word "illegal" last week to describe some immigrants. In a statement to the Free Press, Duggan said the attacks on him are a type of "political correctness" and he refused to apologize.

Duggan fired back, saying that in Detroit "we support the success of immigrants. But when Detroit police make a criminal arrest and (the Detroit Police Department) gets federal notification that the person in custody is in the country illegally, we should not and do not shield you from federal enforcement."

Duggan added: "Groups who oppose this position are criticizing me today over the political correctness of my statements, but I do not apologize for providing a clear explanation of Detroit’s position. It is a position we have followed consistently through the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations."

What Duggan said is true - Detroit is (deliberately) not a “sanctuary city” but is instead a “welcoming city” so Detroit has always turned over undocumented people who are charged with a crime and in custody to ICE. Duggan is a three term mayor so actually has consistently applied this policy through Obama, Trump and Biden.

This will be central to his message, I think. The two political parties focus on language - demonizing immigrants on the Right and policing language around immigrants on the Left while he, as a pragmatic centrist, welcomes law abiding immigrants while still prosecuting criminals. This message will be very appealing to Right leaning Democrats of all races and ethnicities, I think. It’s more than “messaging” too. The facts are that both Obama and Biden deported plenty of people - I expect Duggan could truthfully run in a kind of centrist “Obama Lane” on immigration. The Democratic language on immigration is a lot more progressive than the actions of elected Democrats. Progressives have to face that reality.

*Disclosure - Mike Duggan belongs to a large extended family in Michigan who are prominent in legal circles in the state. Duggan’s father was a federal judge. My husband also belongs to this (extended) family on his mother’s side. They all came out of Connecticut originally - a lot of Great Lakes families started in New England and then moved westward.

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