Detroit Mayoral Race Loses a Front-Runner
June 13, 2013 10:22 AM   Subscribe

The race for one of the worst jobs in America took a sharp turn this week as Mike Duggan was removed from the ballot for the Detroit mayoral election.

Duggan, who resigned as CEO of the Detroit Medical Center and moved his residence into Detroit on April 16th, 2012, to launch his campaign, was in a virtual tie in the polls with Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon (with 13 other contenders fighting to rise above 3 percent) before his ability to run was challenged in court. The judge's ruling is based on the Detroit City Charter (154-page PDF), which states "A person seeking elective office must be a citizen of the United States, a resident and a qualified and registered voter of the City of Detroit for one (1) year at the time of filing for office..." -- Duggan filed for the race on April 2nd of this year, which was two weeks shy of a year after registering to vote in Detroit, but was one month ahead of the May 14th filing deadline. He said on his campaign Facebook page that "Yesterday’s court ruling makes me the first candidate in history to be kept off a ballot for filing too early."

Duggan plans to appeal, but the deadline for printing absentee ballots is June 22nd.

Duggan and Napoleon are running to replace Dave Bing, the popular but currently virtually powerless mayor of the city after Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency financial manager to rescue the city from mounting debts and looming insolvency.

In 1973, Coleman Young faced a similar legal challenge before becoming the first African-American mayor of Detroit, which Duggan was not shy to point out. If elected, Duggan would be the first non-African-American mayor of the city since Young was elected.
posted by Etrigan (48 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
This seems mostly like an embarrassing mistake by Duggan's campaign.
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:27 AM on June 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Why wasn't he registered anyways? Was he just moving to the city to run for mayor?
posted by smackfu at 10:27 AM on June 13, 2013


Why wasn't he registered anyways? Was he just moving to the city to run for mayor?

Sorry that wasn't clear. Until he decided to run for mayor, he lived in Livonia, a suburb of Detroit (where I also live). Livonia is famous for being incredibly white (it's 92 percent Caucasian as of 2010, which is a significant drop from the 1970s, when it was hovering around 99 percent).
posted by Etrigan at 10:31 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


I'm in favor of knowing and understanding the relevant laws as a qualification for elective office.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:36 AM on June 13, 2013 [12 favorites]


What point is there in even running for mayor so long as the EFM remains in de-facto charge of Detroit? Or is there a chance that the EFM will be successfully challenged and removed?
posted by Thorzdad at 10:39 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


I'm in favor of knowing and understanding the relevant laws as a qualification for elective office.

It's linked in the FPP (The City Charter) and the relevant section is highlighted for you:

"!s a resident and a qualified and registered voter of the City of Detroit for one (1) year at the time of filing for office..."

It's a black and white (so to speak) statutory requirement which he failed to meet.
posted by three blind mice at 10:47 AM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm in favor of knowing and understanding the relevant laws as a qualification for elective office.

I certainly understand this position, but in general I think it'd benefit the democratic process to remove a lot of the ticky-tack rules surrounding elections. If voters want to elect a candidate who only lived in their city for 50 weeks prior to filing petitions, they should be allowed to do so.

Rules like this are one way that incumbents and political machines entrench themselves. Incumbents and machines develop expertise in the details of the election laws, and often use the law's complexity to disqualify challenger candidates.
posted by burden at 10:51 AM on June 13, 2013 [6 favorites]


The race for one of the worst jobs in America...

Yeah, well, at least it's a job.
posted by twoleftfeet at 10:51 AM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's a black and white (so to speak) statutory requirement which he failed to meet.

It's my understanding that was the point of Horace Rumpole's comment.
posted by dubold at 10:51 AM on June 13, 2013


Rules like this are one way that incumbents and political machines entrench themselves. Incumbents and machines develop expertise in the details of the election laws, and often use the law's complexity to disqualify challenger candidates.

I dunno, if you're running for mayor, I'd like you to have a good idea of what the laws are. Moreover, don't these laws also protect the city from Mr. Popular moving in a day before the registration deadline and snapping up the election based on name recognition despite a lack of connection with the city? I'm not convinced requiring a residency term is a ticky-tack requirement.
posted by craven_morhead at 10:54 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


Duggan is a classic carpetbagger.

The metro area of Detroit is extremely segregated by race and class. The city proper consists of mostly lower-class black folks, one reason why the city is in such dire financial straits. For the most part, white people live in a ring of different suburbs surrounding the city, each of which is also largely stratified by race and social class.

Duggan moved into Detroit from Livonia (a upper-middle class white suburb). Most sane people would not do that because the city is in such dire straits, so it's reasonable to conclude he did it only to run for office. But apparently he or his staff can't read the laws properly, so he filed too early. I have a hard time feeling sorry for the guy.
posted by zug at 11:08 AM on June 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


Also, I don't think basic residence requirements are really that strenuous. Living in a place for one year is a pretty low hurdle to clear to run for office.
posted by zug at 11:09 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


I don't think I'd favor any prior residency requirement since it seems to me that if voters want to elect Mr. Popular who recently moved into the city, they ought to be able to do that without the prior interference of incumbent legislators. But this prior residency requirement seems particularly unreasonable since it is pegged to the date of the candidate's filing rather than to election day or inauguration day. It allows candidates to screw up by filing too early, as Mr. Duggan seems to have done, as well as by moving into the city too late.

I agree that candidates have a responsibility to follow the election laws, and I have no sympathy for Mr. Duggan in particular. I certainly don't think he should be included on the ballot if he did run afoul of the existing laws. Frankly, he probably should have hired a better lawyer. But that doesn't mean that the existing election laws are wise or necessary, or that citizens interested in breaking up machines and electing new faces shouldn't try to lower the barriers to entry.
posted by burden at 11:14 AM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Confused. Shouldn't the office have rejected his first application immediately, and then he could have re-filed two weeks later?
posted by miyabo at 11:18 AM on June 13, 2013 [10 favorites]


I dunno burden, I'd be pretty pissed if somebody who just moved into my city and can't even name the neighborhoods, let alone know what their perceptions or needs are, successfully ran for office because she was a washed up actor or something.

Local politics are inherently local, and you need to be physically present to grok them.
posted by zug at 11:19 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


What point is there in even running for mayor so long as the EFM remains in de-facto charge of Detroit? Or is there a chance that the EFM will be successfully challenged and removed?

The mayorship is for four years. The EFM may or may not last that long, and then the newly re-empowered mayor gets to be in charge of a city that basically just got hammered into place by the EFM.

Shouldn't the office have rejected his first application immediately, and then he could have re-filed two weeks later?

That will be a big part of Duggan's appeal -- the error could have easily been corrected at the time, but the challengers (probably) intentionally waited until after the filing deadline to raise the issue.
posted by Etrigan at 11:21 AM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


A rich white person from the burbs running for mayor of the city of Detroit is also concerning in that they are an outsider who likely believes that they know better than the (poor, black) locals how to run the city and can 'fix' the city without their full input or consensus.

Think of Detroit like Johannesburg, and you're getting close to the kind of racial relations the area has to contend with, IMO.
posted by zug at 11:24 AM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


Doesn't the assumption that this guy carries some sort of racial malevolence just because he's white and lives in the suburbs just propagate this same racism?

And he obviously thinks he knows how to run the city better than the other candidates, that's why he's running. What's the point otherwise?
posted by kiltedtaco at 11:28 AM on June 13, 2013 [5 favorites]


I want to amend that to say I have no knowledge of this guy and for all I know he could be 100% in favor of destroying the city of detroit for fun and profit, but if that's the case then one should actually show evidence of that rather than just saying he lives in Livonia, therefore ....

And anyways, he still has to win the votes of the people of Detroit, and it seemed like that wasn't an entirely unlikely outcome. It might not be "consensus", but it seems like a reasonably valid way to assess what the citizens of Detroit want. Sure beats anything the state government in Lansing tries to do.
posted by kiltedtaco at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2013


killedtaco, just to be clear, I'm not arguing malevolence. I'm saying that if he's going out of his way to move into the city to run, it's because he thinks he knows better than the locals how to run the city. That's pretty standard logic.

The problem is that once you add the racial politics of Detroit into the mix, e.g segregation, white flight, and the long history of white folks fiddling while Rome burned, his actions begin to look a lot more problematic and I think it's worth noting. The implications of a white person running for office in a majority black area looks very different when you're comparing, say, Miami to Johannesburg. I'm arguing that Detroit is far more like South Africa than Florida in this regard.
posted by zug at 11:43 AM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Duggan was already violating the spirit of the law by waiting until the last possible moment to move to the city he claims to want to govern.* The easiest way for him to avoid being kicked off the ballot is to move to the city he wants to stand for high office in a bit earlier — five years earlier, ten maybe. The alternative method, for people who are for whatever reason unable to follow the spirit of the law, is to follow the letter. This is what Duggan tried and failed to do.

I am completely fine with a candidate who fails to follow either the spirit of the law ("run in the place you live in") or the letter ("well, okay, if you want to run somewhere else, you have to move there in advance and file the appropriate paperwork at the appropriate time in the appropriate places") being kicked off the ballot. His counterargument ("Wow this is the first time anyone's been kicked off the ballot for filing early") would be a fair one for a long-term Detroit resident to make, but made by a guy who tried his damnedest to get as little Detroit on him as possible before running? No.

Frankly, I see both sides of his action — waiting until the last minute to move, and then not paying enough attention to detail to get away with it — as a sign of a lazy contempt for the city and its laws. Screw him.

*: This is complicated, of course, by how Detroit is subject to rule by an unelected manager appointed by the governor of a state that hates Detroit so much.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2013 [4 favorites]


Detroit city government has been one of the most corrupt entities in the country for quite a long time, since Young's administration, anyway, and Kwame's reign didn't do the city any favors. Aside from the nepotism, bribery, sex scandals, and blatant disregard for the city's financial state, it's been very very difficult for Bing (and even Archer, before Kilpatrick), to get anything done simply because they're not part of the old boy network.

The financial manager is a good start - but I really think the government of Detroit should be dissolved completely and the city given a fresh start. If that happens to be carpetbaggers, that's great.

Of course the (poor, black) constituents in Detroit, having lived with such corruption for so long, wouldn't have tolerated a (rich, white) outsider at all. Benny Napoleon (one of Kilpatrick's cronies and no stranger to scandal himself), probably has the best chance of winning, simply because he's got the OBN all wrapped up.

I don't know anything about Barrow or the other candidates. What I do know is that if this kind of electioneering is what we can expect from the mayoral race, Detroit will be just as screwed under the new mayor as it has been under the old.
posted by disclaimer at 11:52 AM on June 13, 2013


The EFM has a set appointment that lasts 18 months, so the new mayor will have to coexist with him for about a year.
posted by wikipedia brown boy detective at 11:53 AM on June 13, 2013


It's my understanding that was the point of Horace Rumpole's comment.

Yes, exactly, although I do feel some sympathy for Burden's position that this is a pretty ticky-tack foul, it's an awfully slippery slope to say "Sure, the law says 52 weeks, but 50 is basically just as good."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 12:15 PM on June 13, 2013


disclaimer: You have a baffling faith in the willingness of rest-of-Michigan to do anything to actually help the city of detroit. And by "city of detroit," I'm not talking about the geographical expanse the city covers, or the buildings in the city. I'm talking about the people.

Yes, the city government is corrupt. But I am absolutely certain that moving farther away from democracy isn't going to fix that. I have a small amount of hope that the new method of electing city council members will eventually lead to at least slightly better governance, since the old method tended to elect everyone on the ballot with a recognizable name, and no one else.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:17 PM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


So, if you're voting in Detroit you get to choose between the county sherriff or a rich health care exec.

Scum vs. Scum
posted by ennui.bz at 12:49 PM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


YCTAB, I have no faith, at all, in the good people of Michigan's willingness to do anything about Detroit's problems, especially those people who live around it.

I think dissolving the city's government is just about the only option that's left (aside from your very valid point about the new election policies regarding the council - but I think those changes are just a stopgap - it's not really going to change very much - the names of the players will change, the old boy network will not). Burn the government to the ground and start over. It wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure, and it's also totally unrealistic - it would never happen.

The problems in Detroit are generational. The government there has been bad for going on thirty (or forty) years, and I don't expect change to come in my generation, either. It's going to take a radical rethink to get anything done, and I just don't see that with the rotating cast of characters that keep cycling through, year after year, election after election. Most of those problems are council-based, I think, but it's going to take a strong, well positioned mayor to do anything about them. And I just don't see real change happening because I can't see that old boy network going away.
posted by disclaimer at 12:52 PM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


I see the appeal of the "burn the government to the ground and start over" metaphor, but I'm not sure that on a non-metaphorical level it's even a coherent idea, much less a good one.

And of all the ways I can think of to start over, "occupation by a representative of a hostile government" seems like, well, the worst possible...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:14 PM on June 13, 2013


I find these "well, the rules are the rules" arguments very disingenuous. This shit happens all the time in New York, and it is extremely undemocratic, basically a way to keep out reform candidates. Yes, the campaign made a clerical error, but do we want our elections to follow this authoritarian and corrupt script?

Ps I know zero about any of the candidates here, but I can smell shit a continent away.
posted by Steakfrites at 1:29 PM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


When I read the FPP I briefly confused Mike Duggan with Mike Haggar, and thought that someone had snuck him onto the ballot as a super-awesome joke. Reality set in shortly thereafter.

I hate you, reality.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 1:42 PM on June 13, 2013


It's not a coherent idea - it's a malformed one! I'm the first to admit that it's completely unrealistic and yeah, pretty much incoherent. The only way it could possibly work is for the state government to take over the city - completely - like THAT could ever happen, and then a call for open elections to city posts, to be filled by people that had never, ever held an elected office in the city.

It's totally unrealistic, probably unintelligent, and it still sounds right, on some base level in my brain. Not sure what that says about me, but hey, there you go.
posted by disclaimer at 1:42 PM on June 13, 2013


Duggan moved into Detroit from Livonia (a upper-middle class white suburb).

on average, just middle class - upper middle class would be farmington hills, novi, birmingham, bloomfield hills, west bloomfield area

still, it's straight-up carpetbagging

i'd like to see a national proposal that municipalities in an urban area who want federal matching funds for anything would have to consolidate to get them

of course that will happen when hell freezes over - but with few exceptions, our system of large urban governance is a national tragedy, with detroit being one of the most glaring examples
posted by pyramid termite at 1:46 PM on June 13, 2013


I find these "well, the rules are the rules" arguments very disingenuous. This shit happens all the time in New York, and it is extremely undemocratic, basically a way to keep out reform candidates. Yes, the campaign made a clerical error, but do we want our elections to follow this authoritarian and corrupt script?

How is it disingenuous to require candidates to follow election laws? Would you rather they are allowed to ignore election laws at-will? Or perhaps just the ones you consider nit-picky?
posted by craven_morhead at 1:47 PM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


How is it disingenuous to require candidates to follow election laws? Would you rather they are allowed to ignore election laws at-will? Or perhaps just the ones you consider nit-picky?

I would argue (not that I was the person you were responding to) that in this case, Duggan was clearly capable of filing both after satisfying the residency requirement and before the filing deadline. Had the issue been pointed out when he filed, I have little doubt that he would have said, "Oh, you're right" and gone back two weeks later. The fact that one of his opponents (well, technically -- dude doesn't stand a chance even if Napoleon drops dead) apparently made the complaint on the day of the filing deadline, clearly to get Duggan dropped from the ballot without enough time to correct the mistake, makes me more sympathetic to Duggan. Who is still a carpetbagger, but if Detroit doesn't like that, there are plenty of places in Michigan alone that have longer residency requirements.
posted by Etrigan at 2:06 PM on June 13, 2013


Mike Duggan's salary at his last job was about 2.5 million. Carpetbagger my ass. He will get this overturned by appeal and win by a landslide. I have no doubt he will make the City spit nickels.
posted by JohnR at 2:23 PM on June 13, 2013


If he is short two weeks, he is short two weeks. My dad failed the bar exam by one half of one point and he didn't file a lawsuit or throw a temper tantrum. He had the choice to retake it. Mr. Duggan can run later when he meets the qualifications.

Them's the rules.
posted by michellenoel at 3:13 PM on June 13, 2013


I'm glad that so many of you people who don't live here have this all figured out. However, I'd like to point out a few problems with your snap assessment of the situation.

If Duggan was so clearly wrong about the city charter, why did the city's corporation counsel and city clerk both vote to put him on the ballot when the first objection was raised, making the vote 2-1? Because the city's top lawyer and clerk both interpret it as one year before the filing deadline. Now one judge has interpreted it differently; she may be right or wrong, but I don't think this is settled yet.

And who filed the objection? Another candidate and convicted tax evader (which is still being appealed, admittedly) who has no chance (he's repeatedly run for mayor since 1985 and lost) along with a "labor activist" currently under Federal indictment who repeatedly attempts to block everyone else's attempts to address many problems in SE Michigan. Don't you think that these two have a vested interest in their interpretation of the law?

Stop jumping to conclusions.
posted by pmurray63 at 6:16 PM on June 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


I really wouldn't care a bit if he were following either the letter or the spirit of the law, honestly. Either one would work.

If, to indulge in a bizarre hypothetical, a Kilpatrick or whatever decided they wanted to run in Livonia (a place with its own corruption issues), and if they screwed up hypothetical filing documents because they were dead set on waiting until the last possible minute to move out into that big empty nightmare (understandable; it's a city that covers nearly as much land area as San Francisco, but which has absolutely nothing of note within that area), well, I'd be sort of on the side of the people keeping that candidate off the ballot in that case, too.

Basically I'm okay with people trying to get one over on the system by rules lawyering (ha hah! I will move to Detroit at the last minute!), but it's unbefitting of a potential democratic leader to suddenly swerve back from rules lawyering to "well but what I meant to do was x let's just pretend I did that." The underlying problem isn't the misfiled paperwork, it's that he's, well, not a Detroiter. If he cares so much about Detroit, he try again in a few years... if he can stick it out and not go running back to the Livonian void...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:33 PM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm glad that so many of you people who don't live here have this all figured out.

Throttle back on the hostility, neighbor. Detroit doesn't have its own unique legal language and fundamentally non-comparable system of governance.

If Duggan was so clearly wrong about the city charter, why did the city's corporation counsel and city clerk both vote to put him on the ballot when the first objection was raised, making the vote 2-1? Because the city's top lawyer and clerk both interpret it as one year before the filing deadline. Now one judge has interpreted it differently; she may be right or wrong, but I don't think this is settled yet.

Because there's not really any room for "interpretation" of that part of the city charter: "one (1) year at the time of filing for office". Not "before the filing deadline." The counsel and clerk were pretty clearly "interpreting" the obvious fact that, if the person at the clerk's office who was reviewing the application had noticed, Duggan would have shrugged and come back two weeks later, when he was eligible. The judge (whose job is to judge things, after all) is more required to enforce the letter of the law, which Duggan did not adhere to.

And who filed the objection?

Ernesto Miranda was undoubtedly, unquestionably guilty of the crime that established the right of an arrested person to be advised of his or her rights to silence and counsel. And yet, the Miranda decision stands, because the law is the law. Complaining about the assholes who brought it up is the very definition of an ad hominem argument.
posted by Etrigan at 6:42 PM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


"Detroit city government has been one of the most corrupt entities in the country for quite a long time, since Young's administration, anyway, and Kwame's reign didn't do the city any favors. "

The reason Coleman got in, in the first place was that in 1972, the corrupt Detroit Police Department was killing black people left and right. Young actually cleaned up the place, having been a civil rights hero since he called out HUAC in the '50s. That, by his death, it had returned to a wildly corrupt crony system is one of America's great tragedies.
posted by klangklangston at 7:58 PM on June 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


The reason Coleman got in, in the first place was that in 1972, the corrupt Detroit Police Department was killing black people left and right. Young actually cleaned up the place, having been a civil rights hero since he called out HUAC in the '50s. That, by his death, it had returned to a wildly corrupt crony system is one of America's great tragedies.

Young cleaned up the killing-citizens-for-looking-at-cops-funny part of the city government, but the garden-variety corruption remained firmly in place -- his police chief and deputy police chief, who he hand-picked and who served for most of his tenure, stole millions from the department and each ended up in prison.
posted by Etrigan at 8:35 PM on June 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


there's not really any room for "interpretation" of that part of the city charter

You may be right. Or you may not be right. I don't believe it's settled yet ... which was one of my points. Tom Barrow doesn't seem to think it's final either, given that he's asking the state Supreme Court for an expedited opinion.

If you are right, this will be at least the second example of the new charter being poorly written. We do keep finding new ways to shoot ourselves in the foot in this city.

Complaining about the assholes who brought it up is the very definition of an ad hominem argument.

Another would be the "he's a rich white suburban carpetbagger" sentiments other people have expressed about the side making the opposing argument.
posted by pmurray63 at 9:15 PM on June 13, 2013


If he is short two weeks, he is short two weeks. My dad failed the bar exam by one half of one point and he didn't file a lawsuit or throw a temper tantrum. He had the choice to retake it. Mr. Duggan can run later when he meets the qualifications.

While the letter of the law says "at the time of filing the paperwork", it seems like he is in line with the spirit of the law. If he had waited two weeks, he'd be in the clear. He has nobody to blame but himself, but on the other hand, it seems awfully undemocratic to deny the voters a chance to make their choice based solely on a paperwork violation. Especially when it is a completely meaningless violation. It's not like he fudged the numbers or filed late to eek in ahead of the deadline. He did what was required- he moved into the city a year before filing for election, and the only reason he is being punished is having the audacity to file his application early.
posted by gjc at 3:11 AM on June 14, 2013


Complaining about the assholes who brought it up is the very definition of an ad hominem argument.

Another would be the "he's a rich white suburban carpetbagger" sentiments other people have expressed about the side making the opposing argument.


The first argument says, "This bad person pointed out that Duggan broke the law, therefore it shouldn't matter." The fact that they are a bad person had no relevance to whether or not Duggan broke the law. That's what makes it an ad hominem.

The second argument is "People from the suburbs of Detroit have historically not had the city's best interests at heart. Duggan moved to the city so that he could live there long enough to legally run for mayor. He is not part of the social fabric of the city, and only wants to live there to run for mayor. Therefore I don't trust his motives." This may or may not be a good argument, its premises may or may not even be true, but the fact that he is a carpetbagger from the suburbs is at least somewhat related to the argument, assuming the other premises. This is not an ad hominem argument. Any comment critical of a person is not an ad hominem.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:20 AM on June 14, 2013 [2 favorites]


pmurray63, I think we may be talking past each other a little here. I agree that the effect of the rule is still up for interpretation -- that is, that while the charter pretty clearly says "when you file," the elections commission took the stand that, had the rule been applied at the time he filed, Duggan would be on the ballot, because he could have withdrawn his non-eligible filing and re-filed before the deadline. The judge took a narrower view and said that, regardless of what probably would have happened, his filing was incorrect. The questions that will be focused on at the appellate levels will likely be of effect (as above) and remedy (is it appropriate to remove him from the ballot entirely) rather than the wording of the rule.
posted by Etrigan at 6:23 AM on June 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


"He is not part of the social fabric of the city" He has worked there for 32 years: County admin. , Prosecutor, then Hospital admin. Do these thoughts just pop into your head?
posted by JohnR at 6:52 AM on June 14, 2013


"He is not part of the social fabric of the city" He has worked there for 32 years: County admin. , Prosecutor, then Hospital admin.

Being part of the "social fabric" is more than just where you work. Hence the requirement to actually live in the city.

Seriously, dial back the hostility.
posted by Etrigan at 7:08 AM on June 14, 2013 [2 favorites]


So like at least half of the job of being a mayor of a major city is managing a team of people to get shit like this right. If his campaign office can screw up something this important1, that in itself is a sign that he's not qualified for the job.2

1: Don't give me that "residency requirements aren't important" song and dance; where you live seriously matters in and around Detroit. If it didn't, the Grosse Pointes never would have closed their "public" beaches to non-residents, for example.
2: Moreover, I really do have trouble understanding the "well what the city charter says doesn't matter" routine as anything but contempt for the laws of the city of Detroit. "I mean like if they were real laws it'd matter but it's only the charter of the city of *chuckle* Detroit, so we can ignore it."a
a: Side note: Something else to keep in mind is that Detroit isn't the only hotbed of corruption in Michigan; I really don't trust Lansing or Livonia to fix anything, much less something as challenging as Detroit.

posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 8:44 AM on June 14, 2013 [1 favorite]


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