Quote:
Originally Posted by Cleveland Brown
Let's be honest, Mike Duggan will be the next mayor of Detroit. He was well ahead of the other in laying the ground for his campaign and he has already gained the support of several business and community leaders - both black and white. However, whatever power the office of mayor may have under an emergency manager will be unknown. Outside of Napolean and Duggan the other candidates don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of making it out of the primary. Although the two top candidates are both Wayne County Machine insiders, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing.
Bing came into office as a complete political novice -- and it shows. Mayor Bing has been unable to parlay his business experience to identify and fix the problems with Detroit's dysfunctional bureaucracy. And he has proven inept in either co-opting his political rivals or making them powerless, if anything his dilatory approach to governing has empowered them. Frankly, he has shown to be a nice guy who doesn't know how to govern in the much that is Detroit politics. Hopefully the machine candidates will use their political skills for the greater good of the city without the tendency to reward incompetent friends with government money (e.g. Kwame Kilpatrick).
On a side note, I would actually like to see Mr. "let Detroit go bankrupt" run for mayor. Despite disliking him for national office, and even personally, he probably would be a great mayor who could use his connections and national spotlight to fix Detroit's core problems -- crime, the lack of private sector jobs, and a decimated tax base.
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Mitt Romney for EM is such an improbability, and such a horrible, terrible, no-good idea, I wouldn't even begin to know where to start, so I won't.
Yeah, it seems pretty obvious to me that barring some scandal, Mike's going to win this thing. Benny started out of the gate wrong, and I think he's lost touch with just how much politics in the city have chaged post-Kilpatrick. The whole "I'm black, I live here, you know me, you voted for me before" politics expecting a win without having do do crap is over. Minus the race issue, they tried the same thing against Bing (a suburban carpetbagger if there ever was one) in his two elections, and it didn't work. Detroiters simply don't care, anymore. The poorest kept secret in all of Detroit in 2009 was that Bing didn't actually live in the city. Even after he rented out his place in Shoreline East, he was still driving home to Franklin, most nights, until he moved into the Manoogian near the end of 2010.
But, as you said, what exactly are you winning? I'm not even convinced the new EM is even going to keep the mayor's office and city council, particularly if the deposed city government takes him or her to court, which seems likely. And, I'm almost not even sure if there will be much to discuss after November, as it seems more likely than not that Detroit will be put into some type of structured recievership before all is said and done.