Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan won't run for 4th term, keeps plans for future secret

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who navigated the city through its post-bankruptcy years, announced Wednesday that he would not seek reelection next year, convening city employees, who filled the Erma L. Henderson Auditorium at Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, to thank them for their work and assure them Detroit is in good hands.

His speech was met with a roaring applause from employees, and one cut him off to humorously suggest he run for president after his term. But Duggan, expected by many to run for Michigan governor in 2026, did not say what he plans to do after leaving City Hall at the conclusion of his third term. He told the Free Press in an interview Tuesday he would say more "in a matter of weeks."

He said his announcement provides other candidates a chance to campaign next year and familiarize themselves with voters by publicly sharing his intentions. Candidates who have filed committees for the mayoral post so far include City Council President Mary Sheffield, former Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins, Councilman Fred Durhal III and businessman Joel Haashiim, nearly all of whom have approached Duggan for advice, he told the Free Press in an interview Tuesday.

"I think the point at which the Census Bureau finally announced that our population was growing, I felt like I did what I set out to do, and I think it's a good time for the next mayor to build and keep the recovery going," Duggan said, who had staked his success on whether he could grow the city's population.

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Detroit has significantly lost population since the 1960s. The latest decennial census results reported a 10.5% decline from 2010, but his administration waged a successful legal battle to add uncounted residents. Duggan's administration tracked down mailing addresses and utility bills to prove to the federal government that Detroit’s population was undercounted.

As of last year, Detroit gained about 1,800 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates.

What's next for Duggan?

Despite speculation bordering on assumption that Duggan will seek another office, he declined to outline his thinking.

"I'm going to talk about the future at another point, but 12 years was the natural endpoint for what I've done. I felt like I've accomplished what I've done and I felt like there's a lot of good talent here that will take it even further," Duggan said, adding that he'll share more on his future in a "matter of weeks."

Duggan has been mayor for the 10 years immediately following the city’s municipal bankruptcy filing. His term will end Jan. 1, 2026. He was confronted with restoring Detroit’s losses, driving revenue and businesses to invest in the city, and balancing the budget. The city’s budget fluctuated over the years during his tenure and dipped during the pandemic. However, he pointed to online gaming taxes and growing income taxes as revenue streams that helped offset those losses.

"I was born here, and most of my life, I've watched things be taken away," Duggan said. "The first four years, it was grinding out, getting the ambulances fixed and getting them on the road, get the streetlights on, get the grass cut in the park. We just had to have people have confidence in your everyday services. Second four years was a lot more fun. We were landing the Stellantis Plant and Factory Zero, and getting Huntington headquarters built ... and this last four years has just been about getting people employed and building beauty."

The mayor held a long list of priorities for the city during his tenure, some of which he wants to see completed by the time he leaves. When he took office, the Detroit had about 47,000 abandoned houses, which is now down to 3,000, and he anticipates reaching 1,000 before he leaves. Duggan also had hoped he would be mayor to see the University of Michigan Center for Innovation open, "but it'll get there" later, he said.

"There are projects that are on the way. The Joe Louis Greenway, that will be something that gets completed after my term. But I feel like they are projects that are well on their way to completion, and there's a lot of talent in the city. I'm sure we're going to end up with a very good mayor who will continue to move the city forward," Duggan said.

Why he ran for mayor

Duggan's father was in political circles with the likes of former Gov. William Milliken and served as a federal judge. His mother was a deputy mayor in Livonia, raising the mayor in the political sphere. He came to prominence as deputy to longtime Democratic power broker and Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara before serving as Wayne County prosecutor.

"I didn't necessarily see myself as a candidate, but at some point, you realize that you can make the most impact if you're the elected official," Duggan said.

While Duggan was CEO of the Detroit Medical Center, which had 14,000 employees, he noticed they were operating in a city without basic services, such as functioning streetlights in front of the hospital. He often heard complaints from medics and police about the city lacking basic services.

"You could see the blight, and I felt like I could do something about it. The thing that angered me the most was the more the city slid into decline, the more the mayor and the council fought with each other, the more Detroit fought with the suburbs, the more the mayor fought with the unions. The us-versus-them politics was speeding Detroit's decline," Duggan said. "But I just had a feeling that if we could stop the us-versus-them politics and get everybody working together, that Detroit's recovery wasn't as far away as it looked."

Then he kicked off his campaign.

Duggan previously lived in a Livonia but bought a house in Detroit's Palmer Woods in 2012. However, he was thrown off the primary ballot for filing his paperwork less than a year after he registered to vote in Detroit.

"I withdrew. I was going to have a hard time winning even when I was on the ballot. Benny Napolean was a great candidate. He was good friend of mine, but when I got thrown off the ballot for filing two weeks too early, I said, 'It wasn't meant to be,' and I left," Duggan said. But supporters rallied for him to run as a write-in candidate.

A man always on the move

"I actually had to call election law lawyers ... I didn't know how write-ins worked," Duggan said. "I decided to try it as a write-in, which seemed like a long shot. Everybody commented and said I wasn't going to win. And then they went and trotted out the barber, Mike Dugeon, with the same name, so that any misspelling, I wouldn't get the vote in. The people in the city just rallied around me, and that last four weeks before the primary, I could feel it. I could feel it was going to be a big win."

It's typical to see the mayor donning sneakers and a suit, often running from one meeting to the next, shaking hands with dignitaries and residents, and strolling the city on his own time to witness changes.

Duggan was tasked with exiting bankruptcy, eliminating blight, restoring lost city services and gaining the trust of Detroiters. He was constantly on the move.

"I didn't know starting out, when I went into these house parties where I was the only white person in the room night after night, how this was going to go. But the people in the city were so welcoming and kind to me from Day One, and they have been for 12 years," Duggan said during the interview Tuesday.

What Duggan feels badly and proud about

He said the most difficult part of the job, as he softened his voice, were the nights he got calls about police officers who were shot.

"That's the worst. Those were horrible days," Duggan said, pausing between words. "I got in the car, went to the hospital. When the officers died, I spent time with the family. Those were the worst calls of all, with the chief calling saying, 'Officer shot.' I'll say, 'Which hospital? I'll be there in 15 minutes' and hope for the best outcome."

Despite facing numerous challenges over the last decade, he said he has no regrets other than how he handled the first year of the city's demolition program to remove abandoned houses.

"I beat the hell out of those folks to get those houses down, because we had people whose quality of life was being destroyed, and I feel bad for the (Detroit) Land Bank (Authority) and the grief they took for that year, and the speed that they went," Duggan said. "We found that we made mistakes, going too fast. People of the city were behind me every step of the way. They understood the mistakes we made, we're trying to do too much. But I do feel bad for the Land Bank staff and the grief they took for the pressure I put on them."

His proudest moment was coordinating the NFL draft earlier this year, especially drawing a record-breaking crowd of 775,000 people without major incidents. He emphasized his confidence in the Detroit Police Department and various city departments for bringing the event together and ensuring safety.

"The NFL draft was special. We made a huge gamble to not hold it on Belle Isle and put it on the streets of Detroit, which Kansas City didn't do, Las Vegas didn't do. Green Bay is not, this year, going to do," Duggan said. "It was a really special success to see thousands of Detroiters mixing with thousands of people from across Michigan, and then people in uniforms from 31 other cities, they have three days of joy and no incidents. And to announce a pick with Barry Sanders, that was pretty good, too."

Beyond major public events, Duggan spends every Saturday or Sunday morning driving through neighborhoods to witness any changes in the city and talk with residents. But Duggan recognizes that "you'll always have critics, and that's OK. But the great majority of people have been nothing but supportive and kind to me."

"We've got areas of this city, neighborhoods that thought they'd been forgotten. And today, you see people up on ladders fixing up houses. Of course, we still have some abandoned houses, but a much smaller number. And I see people making those side lots into gardens and play areas, watching the neighborhoods transform. That weekly early morning drive just to see what's happening has been a great part of the job," Duggan said with a smile.

The next key issue for Duggan is keeping young talent in the city. Duggan met with high school students earlier this week and noticed 20% of the students were not aware of the Detroit Promise scholarship, which covers residents' tuition for an associate, bachelor's or technical certificate.

The job comes with a heavy list of tasks and dozens of departments to manage. Duggan paused to think about whether it's the hardest job in the state. To him, it never seemed hard, he said.

"I never thought I'd be the second longest serving mayor in Detroit history. When I was deputy county executive, I sat in this room where Coleman Young sat there," Duggan said, pointing at his seat in his 11th floor office at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. "Never in a million years did I think someday, I would be the mayor of Detroit. But sometimes, life takes you places you didn't expect."

Dana Afana is the Detroit city hall reporter for the Free Press. Contact: [email protected]. Follow her: @DanaAfana.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan won't seek reelection in 2025