Mike Duggan

Mike Duggan
75th Mayor of Detroit
Incumbent
Assumed office January 1, 2014
Preceded by	Dave Bing
Prosecutor of Wayne County
In office July 11, 2001 – July 16, 2004
Preceded by	John O'Hair
Succeeded by	Kym Worthy
Personal details
Born	Michael Edward Duggan (1958-07-15) July 15, 1958 (age 63) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Lori Maher (div. 2019)
Children	4
Father	Patrick Duggan
Education	University of Michigan (BA, JD)
Website	Campaign website

Michael Edward Duggan (born July 15, 1958) is an American businessman and politician of the Democratic Party, currently serving as the 75th mayor of Detroit, Michigan. When first elected in 2013 he received national attention, in part for being the first white mayor of the majority-black city since Roman Gribbs in the early 1970s, when Detroit's population still had a white majority.^[1][2] Duggan won a second term in the 2017 election. Prior to becoming mayor he held a number of other political offices, including from 1987 to 2001 as deputy County Executive of Wayne County in which Detroit is located. He has received an approval rating of over 68%, the highest rating of any mayor of Detroit.^[3]

Early life and education[]

Duggan was born in Detroit on July 15, 1958, to Patrick J. Duggan and Joan Colosimo.^[4] His paternal grandfather was from County Kilkenny, Ireland moving to Detroit at the age of 18, and his paternal grandmother was the child of Irish and German immigrants.^[5] Duggan spent his first six years at a home on Stansbury Street on the city's west side before moving to nearby Livonia in 1963.^[6] He graduated from Detroit Catholic Central High School, and then received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan in 1980, followed by a Juris Doctor degree from its law school in 1983.

Early career[]

As a Democrat, Duggan has served as an appointed and an elected official in Wayne County, Michigan, beginning in 1986 as Wayne County's assistant corporation counsel. He was deputy County Executive from 1987 to 2001 under Edward H. McNamara, and was elected prosecutor in 2000.^[7]

Beginning in 2004, Duggan was president and CEO of the Detroit Medical Center (DMC). He was in this position when the formerly nonprofit DMC was sold to publicly traded Vanguard Health Systems in 2010.^[8]

Mayor of Detroit[]

2013 election campaign[]

In 2012, Duggan resigned his position at the DMC and moved from the suburb of Livonia to the city of Detroit, intending to run for the office of mayor the following year.^[9] However, he failed to qualify for the ballot because he filed less than a year after establishing residency in the city; if he had waited two more weeks to file—which still would have met the filing deadline—he would have qualified.^[10]

Instead, he mounted a write-in campaign, and received 52% of the vote in the August primary election.^[11] Under Detroit's two-round system, the two highest vote-getters run against one another in the general election, which meant that Duggan ran against second-place finisher Benny Napoleon, who had won 29% of the vote.^[12] Duggan ran with the campaign slogan, "Every neighborhood has a future", on a platform of financial turnaround, crime reduction, and economic development.^[13] He received 55% of the vote in the general election in November, becoming the first white mayor of the now-majority-black city since Roman Gribbs, who served from 1970 to 1974.^[2]

First term[]

Duggan focused, during his first term, on improvements to emergency services response times and bus services.^[14] He also saw a demolition program that was ambitious, but controversial.^[15]

Duggan also focused on relighting the city's streetlights, a task in which he saw significant success and built upon efforts initiated by his mayor predecessor Dave Bing.^[14][15]

Duggan had pledged to create a municipally-owned insurance company, dubbed "D Insurance".^[15] He advocated hard in 2015 for a bill that would create such a program, but it failed to pass in the Michigan Legislature.^[15]

Duggan drastically increased the number of parks that receive regular maintenance, which increased from 25 parks in 2013 to 275 by 2017 per reporting by the mayor's office.^[15]

Detroit's unemployment rate by 2017 shrunk down to 7.5%, the lowest it had been since 2000.^[15] Duggan worked to create Detroit at Work, an online portal launched in 2017 which connects job seekers with employers and with job training.^[15] Duggan also created the "Grow Detroit’s Young Talent" program, a youth summer employment program that employed thousands of youth.^[15]

In 2017, the city began issuing Detroit ID, a municipal identification card, which helps enable residents without a social security number to access city services and some banks.^[15]

Despite his pledge to quickly reverse the trend, Detroit had continued to see overall depopulation.^[15] During his first term, Duggan developed a reputation as a capable technocrat.^[15] During his first term, the municipal government's authority was limited by state oversight, with emergency manager Kevyn Orr overseeing the city's bankruptcy and finances.^[14]

Second term[]

In the 2017 Detroit mayoral election, Duggan was re-elected in a landslide, taking 72% of the vote to challenger Coleman Young II's 27%.

In the spring of 2018, the city of Detroit was released from state oversight, giving its municipal government full control over its operations for the first time in four decades.^[14]

Duggan encountered a controversy after, in December 2019, the Detroit Office of the Inspector found that three top municipal officials, including his chief of staff Alexis Wiley, had ordered public employees to erase emails having to do with to the nonprofit organization Make Your Date. Michigan Secretary of State Dana Nessel launched an investigation into this. In September 2020, Investigative Reporters and Editors awarded Duggan and the city the dubious honor of the "Golden Padlock Award", recognizing them as the most secretive United States agency or individual.^[16]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Duggan was credited with having implemented efforts such as mass testing.^[17] In March 2021, Duggan declined to order 6,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, saying that he believed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were better options.^[18][19][20] After backlash, Duggan declared he would no longer decline the vaccine.^[21]

Duggan is running for a third term in the 2021 Detroit mayoral election.

Personal life[]

Duggan was married to Mary Loretto "Lori" Maher. In May 2019, Duggan and Maher released a joint statement confirming that they planned to end their marriage.^[22][23] The divorce was finalized on September 17, 2019.^[24] On June 29, 2021, Duggan announced his engagement to Dr. Sonia Hassan.^[25] Duggan and Hassan had been publicly linked prior to his divorce from Maher, and their relationship was the subject of public scrutiny and whether Duggan and the city gave preferential treatment to a program that Hassan led at Wayne State University.^[25]

See also[]

• List of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the United States

References[]

External links[]

• Duggan for Detroit campaign site
• About Mayor Duggan
• Appearances on C-SPAN