Authentically Detroit
Authentically Detroit is the leading podcast in the city for candid conversations, exchanging progressive ideas, and centering resident perspectives on current events.
Hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Orlando P. Bailey.
Produced by Sarah Johnson and Engineered by Griffin Hutchings.
Check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @AuthenticallyDetroit!
Authentically Detroit
Black Detroit Democracy Podcast: The Future of Detroit’s Leadership
The Authentically Detroit Podcast Network in collaboration with Detroit One Million presents: The Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Sam Robinson!
Together, Donna and Sam illuminate the complexities of Detroit’s unique political landscape and give residents a resource for navigating civic engagement and election season.
On this episode they discuss the upcoming 2025 election and how it's bound to change the landscape of Detroit. They take a look at the mayoral, Congressional District 13, and city council races and how identity politics intersects with substantive policy positions. Overall, the question remains which candidates will represent neighborhood interests, serve as effective checks on executive power, and govern with integrity.
For more episodes of the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast, click here.
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Speaker 3:The Black Detroit Democracy podcast starts right after. These messages are for studio space and production staff. To help get your idea off of the ground, just visit authenticallydetcom and send a request through the contact page. Wake up Detroit. Welcome to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. Every week, we open this podcast with a reading of the preamble to the Detroit City Charter, read by the one and only Bryce Detroit. The city charter is our constitution, which defines our rights and the way government should work. I'm Donna Gibbons-Davidson, president and CEO of Eastside Community Network.
Speaker 4:I'm Sam Robinson, founder of Detroit. One Million.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening in and supporting our expanded effort to build another platform of authentic voices of real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. The purpose of this podcast is to encourage Detroit citizens to stay vigilant in the fight for justice and equality. With a special call to action for Black Detroit, we seek to build awareness of our history as a gateway to freedom, a beacon for justice and a laboratory of liberation. Today, sam and I are breaking down the polls and how the local races are taking shape. Welcome back to the Black Detroit Democracy Podcast. How are you doing today, sam? Oh, I'm doing great.
Speaker 4:It's another good day out here. The weather's warming up, we're getting close to Movement Weekend and all the venues in Detroit are releasing their Movement Weekend lineups with all the various local DJs and DJs from across the world. Artists from across the pond are coming here. I see Paramita and El Club have some artists that I'm a fan of Aneesia, kim Mike, navy Blue. Shout out to them, I will be there and I'll probably be at the festival for a little bit. They usually let me in as media.
Speaker 3:All right, I'll go tweet about it for a while. Well listen, maybe I can go in and say we're going to podcast on it.
Speaker 4:We can, yeah, we should.
Speaker 3:Listen, it's an expensive festival. I've never been to Movement. I protest it because we used to have I think it was a techno fest or something like that downtown and it was free, and this one is really expensive and it feels like the audience is a little bit different.
Speaker 4:Oh, it is. Yeah, I mean it's got all kinds of people from, you know, not just across the state, but you know the United States Midwest and you know you meet all kinds of people there from every country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know and I know people. You know, I grew up with many of the people who originated Detroit techno right and have gone across the pond and became very famous in other parts of the world, including one who had his reputation, but we won't talk about him.
Speaker 4:Probably a few of those.
Speaker 3:No, this one really stands out Again, I'm not going to talk about it. My friend's husband started the Music Institute which is on Broadway, and that's where all of the Detroit techno artists used to play in the 1980s, and so it was a place. He was 19 when he opened it up. He just fixed the place up and no alcohol in there, so we used to drink 40s in the car in the parking lot next door and I shouldn't tell you all that, but that's what we did back in the day Anyway. And I shouldn't tell you all that, but that's what we did back in the day. Anyway, I sort of had my allegiance to them. And then some friends of mine sponsored the Sharavari Festival, and Sharavari was an alternative festival which started off free on Belle Isle and then moved to the park that is now being redone as the Ralph Wilson Park. But anyway, I hope you have fun at that festival. I think you know this is something that ages me or dates me or something, because I just refuse to pay $100 a day.
Speaker 4:You know, I don't know, I don't know, you know it is expensive. If I wasn't getting in there for free, I don't know if I would go. I would definitely go to the sort of auxiliary after party, pre-party, the stuff that's going on in addition to the actual downtown Heart Plaza Festival. You have a lot of fun, you meet a lot of different kinds of people.
Speaker 3:What I might do is ride my bike on the Riverwalk and just listen, just catch some of it. People spend so much money on concert tickets. I suppose if you're really into that it makes a lot of sense. It's just not my thing. So enjoy, take pictures and tweet about it and let us read about it on Detroit One Million? Yes, you probably will.
Speaker 4:You know what else is coming up is our citywide elections. There's ballots going to be sent out on June 22nd. That's, you know, almost that's a month away now. So we think about it. It's oh so far away. It's in November, but no, you know, primary election that kicks off early voting and absentee voting on June 22nd. You know what does that mean for these candidates and the campaigns advising them. It means you know the pedals to the metal. The campaigns have started and it definitely seems like they have right. You're seeing more stuff. You're seeing material out in the stores when you go out. You're seeing people's flyers, maybe on your car window when you come back from events.
Speaker 3:This is the first competitive race since 2013, when you only had two main candidates. Duggan and Benny Napoleon were in the race together. We have not had a competitive race for mayor since then. District five has been occupied by one person for almost that entire time, and now we're seeing that position open up and again we have District 7, a couple at-large races.
Speaker 3:We know, regardless of who wins, that Detroit city government is going to be different next year than it is this year, and that alone is exciting in some ways and perhaps to some people, a little scary, but I'm looking forward to the change. I think it's time that we did have a person with more ties to our community representing our community as mayor, and it looks like the top contenders at least most of them, have some relationship to our community. That's a little bit different than a person who has been sometimes referred to as Livonia Mike and, whether that's fair or not, he does not have roots in our community. If you don't have grandparents here, cousins, uncles or people who you just connect to with on a social level in this community, what you do doesn't have the same impact as when you are connected to the people here. Do you agree with that, sam?
Speaker 4:You know he is from here, right? I mean, he grew up here.
Speaker 3:No, he did not.
Speaker 4:That's what he says.
Speaker 3:He grew up in the suburbs of Detroit.
Speaker 4:I think he grew up in the city of Detroit.
Speaker 3:I don't believe he did. He certainly says that. Okay, well, maybe he did. But you know what I'm going to talk about Detroit when I was young, because it's important to have that conversation. Mike Duggan is a couple years older than me and when I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, detroit was an extremely segregated city. You had schools like Osborne and Demby, where there were race rights literally in the city of Detroit, schools like Cooley and Redford where absolute race rights existed.
Speaker 3:My first job was working at Baskin Robbins, just outside of Rosedale Park on Grand River, and I went to a high school with majority white high school in the suburbs Mercy High School and my white classmates could not acknowledge knowing me. When they came in to buy ice cream, if they lived in that neighborhood, they treated me like they didn't know me. I'd say, hey, mary Beth, how are you? Do I know you? Oh, yes, I'm down. I sit next to you in geometry, oh, I don't remember. And then we get to school the next Monday and they remember me.
Speaker 3:So that's how racially polarized the city was. Another aspect of that was that I had a boyfriend who lived in the neighborhood and he picked my cousin and me up because he had a cousin and we dated each other. I mean, we dated cousins my cousin, I dated cousins and we both worked there. And on our way home one time we were chased out of the neighborhood by people throwing bottles at us and somebody pulled out a gun and we had to lay on the floor of the car. Get out of here, n-word. Get out of here N-word. So my middle school, we went to a majority white middle school and in my class in the city of Detroit there were students who would say and in my class in the city of Detroit there were students who would say go back to Africa, go back to Africa N-word. And my grandmother trained us to say go back to the caves in Europe, you know, but there was a lot of tension.
Speaker 3:So I had neighbors who lived across the street from me, who were not allowed to play with me because I was black, and so you could grow up in Detroit and not have an affinity for the people who are still here. Most of the people who are like Mike Duggan moved out, so if he grew up here, he was living in the far east side possibly, or the far west side possibly. He was not living in neighborhoods and going to schools. I don't believe.
Speaker 4:He grew up on a home on Stansbury Street in the city's west side In the west, yes, far west side. He graduated from Detroit Catholic Central High School.
Speaker 3:Yes, at Catholic Central and Catholic Central. Again, catholic Central was at that time a majority white school. My brother-in-law graduated from Catholic Central, eric Sabree graduated from Catholic Central and at Catholic Central they were the vast minority of students there and so it was where the old Renaissance high school is. It was the white high school. The black kids and other white kids from the community went to U of D high school. If they went to Catholic schools and if not they went to neighborhood schools. Some of them went to East Catholic and I can't even think of it, benedictine. But I say that to say you can grow up in the city of Detroit and not have a relationship with the black people here. And if he grew up in Detroit, I didn't know he grew up here, I just assumed he was outside of here, because I don't see those relationships. The people who are running for mayor now have current relationships with the black people in Detroit, which is a 76, 77% black community still.
Speaker 4:You know it's interesting no white candidates, no white person stepped up and said I want to run for mayor.
Speaker 3:Didn't one try Roger Landon or something like that? Rogeria Landon, yeah.
Speaker 4:He's not white.
Speaker 3:Oh, what is he?
Speaker 4:He's Hispanic.
Speaker 3:Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 4:We got Jonathan Barlow, we got James Craig, fred Durhall, joel Hashim, santeel Jenkins, solomon Kinloch, todd Perkins, mary Sheffield and Donetta Simpson are our candidates who you're going to see in that primary. I mean, I don't think.
Speaker 3:I think that there's again. I think this was an anomaly. He is an excellent politician. I'm not surprised that white candidates didn't step up. We've had some actually wonderful white leaders in our community. So I don't want to make this into a situation where I'm saying white people can't lead.
Speaker 3:Mary Ann Mahaffey was one of the most beloved city council people. She was a white woman and there were others on city council who served with her on a progressive agenda, but what they did was hire people from within our community. In fact, I believe our own, angela Brown Wilson, interned with Mary Ann Mahaffey back in the day. So many people did. I believe Santil Jenkins interned with Mary Ann Mahaffey back in the day, and so you had these people who had common cause with the average Detroiter in the neighborhoods that have been so neglected or even ignored by this mayor.
Speaker 3:And the reason I bring up his identity is not to say that white people cannot be effective leaders in black communities. It is to say that when people don't love people in this community and we don't feel loved many of us then they make decisions that sacrifice the needs of people in this community. The fact that people have said for years there are two Detroits and he's pushed back on that and said it was divisive. Do you know who else calls race talk about racism divisive? Donald Trump, you can't talk about racism unless you're talking about Afrikaners, but if you talk about what's happening in the city of Detroit, you have to have a race neutral conversation under this mayor and I'm looking forward to something different. But, yes, let's keep this conversation going and talk about more about the race. There are some polls that came out.
Speaker 4:Yes, there is. They're getting a lot of talk. I mean, a lot of people are upset about what Ed had to say. Target Insight is a Lansing-based poll firm company and they released this past few weeks this was last week A poll showing Mary Sheffield continues to be in the lead. Solomon Kinloch gained 20 percentage points on the last time anyone was polled on Detroit mayor's race. That last poll was done by Michigan's legislative black caucus chair, keith Williams. We know that Keith is endorsing Mary Sheffield and I did see some of the language on that poll. One could argue that it was bias toward Sheffield and certainly friendly toward James Craig. A lot of people are being friendly toward James Craig.
Speaker 4:After this poll came out, dennis Archer Jr told me at a book signing event with Jocelyn Benson she's running for governor as a Democrat in Michigan. Um, she's our secretary of state. Dennis Archer was there moderating a conversation. After the conversation I said Dennis, what do you make of the mayor's race? He said well, you know, don't count out Chief Craig. I said why do you say that? Where are his supporters? Who is supporting him? What are the coalitions he's building? He stopped me. He said well, you got to ask the candidate, you got to ask James Craig and I will. But these candidate forums that Malachi Barrett on Twitter today was kind of talking about, the conversations surrounding the candidate forums they're not very substantive. We're not getting a whole lot, we're not learning anything from these candidates, from a lot of these forums.
Speaker 3:Well, we're not asking the right questions that's no. I'm looking for our forum here on june 21st because you know, when we have interviewed candidates and anybody who's not listened to authentically detroit we just interviewed. We've interviewed five so far and we're asking substantive questions and challenging them.
Speaker 4:Um, I I think too not on the, not on the, you know to bash some of these organizations that have been hosting these. Some of the candidates are just. They're repeating the same things over and over again.
Speaker 3:I guess what I'm saying is that we had conversations about questions and there's a journalistic framework right when you ask questions and they're open-ended and you let people fill in the blanks.
Speaker 3:And then there's questions like do you believe that the city should continue investing or that the downtown development authority should be altered? And when people push back, pushing back against them and keeping on asking those questions until you require an answer. That's a different kind of question and some people believe that that is too specific and leading and we want to give people the opportunity to define who they are. But what I find is that people have talking points and you want to get people off of their talking points and into yours. I have talking points and so you're going to hear my talking points in my question and I really want you to respond, and we did that with other debates that we've had here. I think it makes a difference. I think it's just journalistic rules versus the podcasting rules, and certainly the rules we have of engagement in our community are going to be somewhat different.
Speaker 4:So I'm looking forward to our forum. Me too, I'll be there. I'll be at a forum next week hosted by Charlie LaDuff and James Dixon of the Betsy DeVos NewsHour. I'm kind of surprised that all the candidates agreed to sign up to that, knowing what they're subjecting themselves to, rather, which I really don't know, but I could see that perhaps going off the rails. If it doesn't, maybe we'll get some interesting answers.
Speaker 3:I don't want to go off the rails.
Speaker 4:No, I'm saying in this upcoming one with Charlie LaDuff Charlie.
Speaker 3:LaDuff doesn't really have rails, he's just all over the place. So it depends on how much he's been drinking that day, but I think that it would be interesting. I think it'll be interesting. He does have certainly a different viewpoint than many others and I'm interested in hearing some of those questions In this poll.
Speaker 4:James Craig we were just talking about, where are his supporters? A lot of the people that I asked this to say well, the people that are going to vote for him, aren't showing up to a candidate forum. They're certainly not showing up to a candidate forum hosted by the super majority and the. You know whatever organization Al Williams is president of. I'm forgetting what the black leadership council is, what the organization is called. Thank you, brain, for not letting me forget Al Williams' organization there. You know they're not showing up to these labor union halls candidate forums.
Speaker 4:So I guess when I say I'm not seeing a lot of his support when I hear him talk about, well, it's a good thing that I left Detroit, and then everyone kind of jeers and say you know, why would you say that? And Santil will butt in and say I came here, I'm from here and I never left At these forums. He said that At the IBEW forum two weeks ago. He said a lot of the experience that I got out west in Portland and California. I couldn't have got in Michigan. He said thank God I left and everyone kind of gasped and was like, oh you know, geez, a lot of these folks at the candidate forums do not like James Craig because he's a Republican. There hasn't been anybody that has stood up and protested him, but at times it has gotten sort of uncomfortable for a guy that looks very comfortable when he's sitting in that chair.
Speaker 3:He looks very comfortable when he's sitting at the bar at Sinbats too, so I want to give him credit for his public comfort. Here's what I want to say about James Craig. My issue is not his political label. It's not even my issue with Duggan. To be honest, I think that people sometimes think that we're beholden to a political party when we reject people.
Speaker 3:In 2020, there was a vote and people went to Huntington Place whatever they call Cobo Hall now to count the vote, orlando Bailey, my co-host, being one of them, and I knew other people who were down there one of them and I knew other people who were down there. The people counting the votes were attacked by a mob of people who threatened them, who banged on the windows, who stood over them, made all kinds of unfounded accusations and the police. Orlando called me and said where are the police? And when they asked you know Craig about it, he said well, they have the right to free speech. So okay, now, maybe a couple months before then, when the KKK was marching through Detroit, he and his police force accompanied them on their march. And then, in 20, no, I guess it was in 20.
Speaker 3:I'm getting my years wrong, but I want to say, in 2020, in earlier 2020, prior to these people being able to literally threaten people who were counting votes, doing their civic duty, there were people who were arrested for breaking status laws, for protesting Black Lives Matter, and the same police chief who thought that Republicans, threatening poll workers, had the right to free speech, was conducting military maneuvers down Gratiot and arresting people, zip tying their hands and forcing them to drop whatever is in their hands so that he could arrest them for breaking a status offense Okay, because he said they were out too late.
Speaker 3:And then the next day, hollywood Craig had the news cameras out to the place of their arrest and said look at them, all of this litter. If you have your hands zip-tied, then everything that you were holding gets left behind. You are not littering, you are unable to retrieve things that were in your possession. It's that kind of game playing. It's his belief in stop and frisk, it is his lack of respect for the rule of law and when it comes to policing that I have an issue with. And so, if he becomes mayor of the city of Detroit, we have a mayor who will invite hostility towards the residents of the city of Detroit in the name of free speech while squelching expressions by residents of the city of Detroit in the name of law and order.
Speaker 4:We will also have someone with a direct connection to the White House. I don't know how much that benefits Detroit. That's something that he's going to say is you know he'll tout as a reason why people should vote for him is that you is that we're certainly not going to have an adversarial relationship with the Republican White House, even if we did. Say Chief Craig becomes Mayor Craig at one of the forums that kept referring to him as Deputy Mayor Craig, he was once Deputy Mayor. Would that benefit? I mean, I guess what can you bring?
Speaker 4:what kind of resources is the white house going to send to detroit?
Speaker 3:well, he'll send more police, more ice. He'll send more people to round up black people protesting, because remember, we're thugs, remember the threats against free speech, remember all of the deportation of people who have expressed their views. But he also will welcome the Proud Boys, afrikaners, who are somehow being treated as though they are an oppressed group of people. You have to understand that the agenda is to make America white again, or at least to make white power powerful again, and he is an agent of that kind of change. There's no vision that Trump has for economic parity, there's no vision for addressing some of the longstanding historic issues in our community. So I don't necessarily want somebody to lay out a welcome mat and say you know what, we're tied to you, because I don't like what the White House is bringing.
Speaker 4:I think you're not alone in that. You know who else doesn't like what the White House is doing right now is our congressman, sri Tanidar. I want to talk about him a little bit. He's been in the news and the national news more than he ever has been, even in the background of a photo of Joe Biden in the House of Representatives. You know, remember when he was doing that early, early on, when he would always be in the background of the shot.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3:Standing on tippy toes.
Speaker 4:Was it intentional or was it coincidental?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean you have to stand on tippy toes to be seen when you are of a certain stature and you're trying to be seen. There's other ways to be seen. You can be doing things in the community, you can show up here, you can have office hours and you can help address the needs of people. So you're right, he does want to be seen and he was there, but he's getting more attention.
Speaker 4:Yes, he is. He's getting more attention because he's trying to impeach Trump. Trump's already been impeached twice. The first time he was president for various wrongdoings. Today, house Democratic leadership is going to vote to table Sheree's impeachment push. He called me on the phone yesterday evening and said you know, the Speaker's going to have to put this up for a vote. He was confident that Hakeem Jeffries wouldn't stop him when I talked to him last night on the phone. Today it seems, you know, obvious now that Hakeem Jeffries is going to stop him at any moment. Now All kinds of legislative maneuvers that can somehow get one person's demand in front of the entire. That is not how the state legislature works. I really did not know that was possible until this week, but now somehow Hakeem Jeffries is going to stop him.
Speaker 4:Democrats do not want this to happen. You might be wondering why don't Democrats want to vote to impeach Trump? Hasn't he broken the law? You know a thousand times already. Shree on the phone tells me Sam, go look at the 29 pages, my articles of impeachment, and tell me where in any of those that I'm wrong. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to let the Republicans do that. But the Democrats look up and they say Shri, this is not helpful because we have to win an election in 2026 and if you do this, knowing that it's going to avail, obviously Democrats are in the minority. In Congress Republicans, there's 435 members of Congress. Guys, he told me on the phone yesterday, I don't care if I stand alone, it'll be one person voting to impeach Trump. If nobody else joins me, I don't know who else will join me. So it really sounds like he is supported by no other members in this, and you were, before we started recording, said well, that's a shame.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's not a shame that he's not supportive. So let me be clear what I'm saying. Right, I think that the whole thing is performative and I think that when you have somebody who has not really stood on the side of justice in a vocal way on most issues to, you know, promote something, that's a losing proposition. Where was he when Joe Biden was president around some of the issues that people care about? He's been largely, you know, mia in our community and I don't know if he has a great attendance record. You'd have a better understanding than I do of that.
Speaker 4:Oh, he's there, he votes with leadership.
Speaker 3:Okay, he votes with leadership. But I think the other issue is there's two issues I have. One is it's performative. I'm not upset about a performative vote. Sometimes you want to stand together and act on something, and it's really shocking to me that the Democrats are trying to play nice.
Speaker 3:I think this idea and I keep hearing it as well if we do this while Republicans are in power, then if we get in power, they can do that to us, and Republicans have shown a willingness to do anything and everything they feel like doing. And so being polite, being politically correct, is not going to return you to power, and I would love to see the calculus be something other than let's figure out how not to antagonize Trump's base. I would love to see the calculus being let's figure out how to energize our base. We saw that during the last presidential election. This idea hey guys, it's okay if Republicans come to be Democrats because you're welcome here and that welcome mat was not reciprocated with any type of party disloyalty. People stayed on the side of Republicans, but a lot of people on the progressive wing of the party and others who are not even belonging to the party felt alienated by that messaging and felt like why aren't you talking directly to us?
Speaker 3:What is Hakeem Jeffries? What is the Democrats' message for 2026? How will they govern differently? How will they address the unmet needs of people who sat out the 2024 elections because they felt like nobody was acting on their behalf and they didn't trust government? That's my issue. My issue is that let him put his silly thing forward. It's not going to go anywhere. He'll lose the vote and let's move on, as opposed to trying to exercise party discipline because you don't want to antagonize people.
Speaker 4:Several lawmakers told my former Axios colleague, andrew Salender, yesterday yesterday that they believe Shree's impeachment efforts are tied to his attempts to win over some support Galvin. I support for him next year in the primary, which is going to be contested. We got Adam Ollier. We got Donovan McKinney. He's backed by Justice Dems. They're going to give him a few hundred thousand of dollars. We'll see how much money Adam Olie is able to raise. People are kind of looking at that and saying is Donovan going to get the amount of money that is sort of being thought of or seen. We're sort of feeling like the momentum is on Donovan's side. Adam certainly doesn't feel like that. They feel like one of the others is going to drop out. Both of them feel like the other one is going to drop out.
Speaker 3:You know you can't buy love and you can't buy votes. What you can do is buy visibility. You can't buy votes. Really, it's going to be up to Donovan McKinney and Adam Ollier to make the case to voters and to understand that their voting bloc does not just live in the city of Detroit. How do you make the case to voters who live downriver and in the eastern suburbs of Detroit that are part of the district? What I've seen has been this old school Detroit politics attempt to win District 13 elections and it's just not going to work. So I hope that Donovan McKinney has already run in a district that was a little bit more diverse than Adam Ollier has, so he's demonstrated his ability to cross over.
Speaker 3:And he has progressive ties and I think those progressive ties will play very well in the parts of District 13 that are outside of Detroit, because if you are a white person living in Downriver and you're a Democrat, you're probably more progressive than you are going to be moderate Because the politics that play out in those areas are different. You probably are going to be moderate because you know the politics that play out in those areas are different. You probably are going to have some concerns about environmental issues and about issues that never get brought up by conservatives, because Detroit's politics are relatively conservative, if you're being honest.
Speaker 4:Wayne, romulus, taylor, lincoln Park, southgate, Melvin Dale are all part of the 13th Congressional District that stretches all the way past Highland Park and the gross points. That's right, adam is going to have that name recognition that Donovan's going to have to sort of buy. Adam has knocked doors for a couple cycles.
Speaker 3:Where has he knocked those doors? Because I think that the votes he's gotten outside of Detroit. He didn't get many votes outside of Detroit, so I don't know if he's knocked those doors.
Speaker 4:I haven't looked at Adam's election map in a while, but I just know that Adam's been there and Adam's done that. I really don't see either of them dropping out, and I really see it. If that doesn't happen, guys, please figure it out. It's interesting there's a pre-primary before the actual primary itself, with Adam and Donovan having to decide. If we do this together, we're definitely going to split the vote and Shree's going to win.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's true.
Speaker 4:I think that's it If they both appear on the ballot with Shree Tanandar. Shree Tanandar, sri Tanandar will be your congressman.
Speaker 3:I will guarantee anyone money if anyone wants to bet me on that I will bet you on that, because here's the thing I'm going to say the idea that only one black person can win and if two black people are on the ballot the vote is split is kind of reductive to me. People vote on issues as much as they vote on race and I think that what do they stand for? I was at a Kamala Harris event in Romulus and Sri Thanadar was there and it's in Romulus and when other people you had Debbie Dingell there, you had many other people there and they got a lot of applause. He got almost none. So I don't know that he is that popular. I don't know that if there's somebody running the division.
Speaker 4:I don't know that. I would conflate the attendees of that event and voters.
Speaker 3:Well, but they were Democrats. They were Democrats, right.
Speaker 4:Sure, I just think you're underestimating Sheree's ability to brand himself and to become aware to voters, and we've seen his ability to do that in two elections. Now I don't Because he has remained. The popularity of him has not grown.
Speaker 3:I just think that we have a different assessment. We had a 13th congressional district debate here and everybody came except for Shree. We asked pointed questions. We had an audience of about 100 people. At the end of that, the people there were like I don't still know who to vote for. Nobody stood out, Nobody was talking about environmental justice, Nobody was talking about even affordable housing in a real way. If you have somebody running for Congress, they've got to run on issues. The idea that I'm going to run this old school campaign which is do you know who my father is, or I worked for Obama, or I worked in the state house, and you don't have a single idea that differentiates you from the other people on the ballot, means that the vote can be split. But if you have somebody running with a vision for what they're trying to do, they can win over people to their side. I believe that and I think that it's cynical to believe that the only way a black person can win is if no other black person wins.
Speaker 4:I don't think anyone can beat Sheree because he's going to I mean, you see, right now he's currently campaigning by putting the billboards up to say I'm impeaching Trump. He's going to be able to say I'm the only person that had the gall and nerve in Congress to impeach Trump.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I understand that and you think that that's going to be a winning proposition. I don't think it's as popular as you think it is.
Speaker 4:I think that people are really oh, I don't think it's that popular. If it was, we would have support from House Democratic members of Congress popular.
Speaker 3:If it was, we would have support from House Democratic members of Congress, and that's my point. My point is that until we do polling and until we really spend some time trying to understand why people vote the way they vote, to assume that two black men will automatically be beat out by somebody who's not black because they'll cancel each other out.
Speaker 4:It's because he's won two elections already.
Speaker 3:But you can lose, and there's been people who have lost office, incumbents who've lost office. You know who's a very popular politician in that area who lost, whose district got split, is oh my goodness, Rashida Tlaib. Rashida Tlaib wins overwhelmingly in District 12. But when she was in District 13, she won overwhelmingly then too. She's endorsed Donovan McKinney and her recommendation is going to carry a lot of weight with some people. So I think it's a competitive race. I think that whoever is running has to plan on running a competitive race, and when you run a race for the people who are supposed to be voting for you, I think that you have equal odds of winning. So that's my assumption. Now, if you run a typical campaign, Sheree will win If you have both of them running on name recognition and we're going to do the same things, but the reality is there's a long time before 2026.
Speaker 4:I can tell you that both of the campaigns of Donovan McKinney and Adam Oley, they're not looking at each other. They're looking at Sheree Tanadar's campaign.
Speaker 3:Yes, they should be looking at the voters. Don't look at each other, don't look to knock another person out. That happened. We had the debate here. We had one candidate whose sole ire was turned on another candidate. It didn't make sense. Sherry Gay, daniego is just attacking Portia Roberson. Sherry, what are your views? What are you going to do? Well, I'm not going to do. That's silly to me. Run on behalf of the voter. I strongly believe that and I you know. One of the reasons I even want to do the work that I do is because I think that we take voters for granted and we also underestimate their ability to make good decisions. In a lot of instances, there just aren't good decisions. A lot of people felt like there weren't good decisions. Shreve was new. He had this cool little campaign thing that some people liked. He spent a whole lot of money. But I also don't think people were knocking on doors outside the city of Detroit when they were Detroiters. I think they took for granted that Detroit could carry this vote and it can't because of the redistricting.
Speaker 4:The organization that helped spend money for Mary Waters to lose on those mailers saying that she was a criminal. Apac, connected groups, apac. I'm told by sources close to APAC that they're supporting Sheree Tanadar.
Speaker 3:They're not going to give to Adam? Of course not, and they probably won't give to Donovan, because he's been endorsed by Rashida. But you know again, once again, mary Waters was not compelling before then. It's not like Mary Waters is—.
Speaker 4:She got a good number of votes, didn't she?
Speaker 3:She got some votes. The person who came in second to Mary Waters I mean to Sri Thanadar was Adam Ollier and he led Detroit. Portia Roberson was third. I don't think Mary Waters—.
Speaker 4:I'm saying last in 2022.
Speaker 3:You know Mary Waters is not a compelling candidate. Let's just be honest. She got the anti-Sree vote but it's not as though she's lighting, even in city council. I mean, what is she trying to do? Make downtown gun-free? You know she's trying to rename Hart Plaza Martin Luther King Plaza because if it has the name Martin Luther King it'll probably bring peace. This is not a political, you know, brilliant person. This is a person who does not have the kind of vision that is really going to move or change the agenda. So I have confidence that a state legislator can, if he plays it right, beat Sheree Thanadar.
Speaker 4:I'm betting you and so I'm saying if both Adam and Donovan are on the same ballot.
Speaker 3:Adam is not pulling out, so let's just acknowledge that I know it's a primary.
Speaker 4:It'll be two candidates, though It'll be three In November.
Speaker 3:Yes, it'll be two candidates, but in the primary I believe there will be no. The primary is in August. It'll be one Democrat. Yes, is in August, it'll be one Democrat. And I believe Andrew's not going to pull out and I don't believe Donovan McKinney's going to pull out and I don't believe Shree's going to pull out. So, given that there might be other people entering the race, I don't think that the number of black people in the race was the issue.
Speaker 4:No, I don't either. In that Democratic primary, even in the, you know, all these black Democrats tanked us. I agree with you completely. It was the candidates themselves not separating each other from themselves. Excuse me, donovan and Adam, they have separated themselves, right? Donovan is, you know, being backed by Rashida.
Speaker 3:That's a statement with the Justice Dems group, and Adam has his own identity as well and he has a track record in the state house. Donovan McKinney's not an unknown. He has a political track record, he's got a voting record, he's got alliances, he's done some things. I actually support Donovan McKinney because of the work that he's been doing when he was in the Statehouse. So I think-.
Speaker 4:You're going to hear a lot of the same from Adam.
Speaker 3:I know what I did in the Statehouse. I follow politics and I'm going to tell you no-transcript what smart people really do. But when you run as the smartest person in the room sometimes it's hard to get the kind of allies that you think you can. I think in Adam's mind and many people's minds he looks the part and he kind of looks nice in a suit and a tie and he has a good pedigree, but I don't think that's what's going to move voters outside of a smaller circle of voters. I think he's going to have to run on issues and he can't stand behind because he's had too many wrong moves.
Speaker 4:Let's get into some of those issues. After the break we can talk about it.
Speaker 3:We can get into issues after the break. But I want to get to local races too.
Speaker 2:Detroit One Million is a journalism project started by Sam Robinson that centers a generation of Michiganders growing up in a state without a city with one million people. Support the only independent reporter covering the 2025 Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people. Good journalism costs. Visit DetroitOneMillioncom to support Black independent reporting. Interested in renting space for corporate events, meetings, conferences, social events or resource fairs? The Mass Detroit Small Business Hub is a 6,000 square feet space available for members, residents and businesses and organizations. To learn more about rental options at MassDetroit, contact Nicole Perry at nperry at ecn-detroitorg or 313-331-3485.
Speaker 3:And we're back talking about local politics. We've talked a lot about the 13th congressional district vote next year, but let's come back to the mayoral vote this year. We talked about Craig, but Mary Sheffield tops the ticket, and then Solomon Kinloch is number two, and then Craig. Now, the way that some people are describing it. I've heard a couple of things. One is well, the reason that Craig is not higher in the polls is because he came in too late. But Craig has the highest negative polling. Let's see what do they call that Negative reputation in his polling.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean there's a lot of people that hate him.
Speaker 3:A lot of people 37% of people polled said they didn't like him, and that number is up from a couple months ago. So the reality is he's not moving in the right direction and there's some people who will never support him, whereas Mary Sheffield and Solomon Kinloch don't have that same number of negatives, maybe about half of his negative. I think that there's more room for them to grow.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think so. And if you're Sontiel Jenkins talking about this poll done by Ed Sarpolis of Target Insight, he tells me Mary Sheffield definitely has a shot. If Craig or Suntil Jenkins don't get the money out there on the streets, then Kinloch definitely has a shot. Suntil can get the vote because it could be 60% female.
Speaker 4:You know, I don't think that is a one of one. You know, just because 60% of the voters are female, the female candidates are going to do well. Don't think you can necessarily say that, but I do see some teal sort of rising in a way that perhaps Fred isn't.
Speaker 3:Maybe you know, I think here's the thing We've never had a woman mayor in Detroit and the voters have been primarily women all this time. We live in a very Christian community. It's very church-bound, and there's still a lot of people who don't want to see women in leadership roles. Now they don't say that. They say things like well, I just don't know that Mary Sheffield is qualified, or, you know, I just don't know if she's ready for it. It's the same kinds of things I say about people running for president when women run for president, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we heard that at this church that Mary had an event at Corletta Vaughn, william Murphy. They were literally praying away her enemies and rivals, the strategy of the opposition. It was quite the scene there talking about you know, don't get confused because of gender now, don't get confused because of these things. We heard similar calls at her launch. I forget who it was, but somebody else was like don't get distracted because these other men come into the fold. So their campaign certainly knows people close to Mary know that that narrative exists.
Speaker 3:It does exist. The reality is that I think that if I was not in the top three, I'd have to reconsider where I'm going, because here's what I think is going to happen, and I could be mistaken. I think people who are making donations have looked at those polls and decide where to put their money. I think a lot of corporations. The business community has sat back on its haunches and now the business community understands it's going to be one of those three and they're going to evaluate which of those three is going to be the most likely to be mayor and start putting their money behind that person.
Speaker 3:And the last thing the business community wants to do is have somebody become mayor and they sit on the sidelines. I think that this idea that they can't support anybody they're going to support somebody and the question is do they think that Mary Sheffield is a better bet? Do they think that Solomon Kinloch is a better bet, or do they believe it's James Craig? I happen to believe that the business community wants James Craig and that the people you're talking about, who are supporting James Craig, who don't come to those forums, are going to business community meetings that we're not invited to. I think he is a person who's seen as the successor to Mike Duggan. He was, under Mike Duggan, deputy mayor, and so it makes sense that they would trust that he would carry on his leadership.
Speaker 4:Yeah, ed the pollster told me the thing I'm hearing from business community, which, again, ed, who are these people? He didn't actually name one of these people. Malachi asked Mary about it the day that Ed named this person and she said that she's still there. She's supporting her campaign. So take this with how many grains of salt you want to take it. This is the first time in 30 years that I don't know who's going to be the mayor by May 1, ed tells me.
Speaker 4:I get the impression from the business community that one of the reasons why Duggan was interested in leaving is because business says there's no more money to give Detroit right now. With Trump in office, there's not going to be a lot of investment. There hasn't been that heat to get involved like there has been in the past. That comment when I published that, I initially got people telling me how dare Ed say this about our candidates, our mayoral candidates, some of these folks that are bashing they're working for campaigns, bashing the other candidates, but the idea that the business community isn't excited about any of these candidates. Cindy Paskey was at Mary's launch event and asked me where has she been? Have you seen her at any of the latest Mary Sheffield events. She's become invisible or she's disappeared. I said I don't think that or she's disappeared. I said, and I was like well, I don't think that means she's not supporting her anymore.
Speaker 3:They want to be in charge. You know, it's interesting to me that the business community actually believes it should have control over how Detroiters vote. The whole narrative around we don't know who's going to become mayor because we don't know who the business community supports. It's actually offensive to me in a nation that says that it's one man, one vote and it's a democracy. It's ridiculous to me. Why should I care what Cindy Paskey thinks, unless she has multiple votes, and she doesn't, so I'm bothered by it. I think that we need to have conversations that make more sense about what's going to happen. Business people are, if nothing else, pragmatic when it comes to their power and their money.
Speaker 4:And they're actually like it's a monolith too. I mean, the business community is supporting several different candidates, based on whatever business person you are. I mean to say business community, are you just saying Mike Illich or, excuse me, chris Illich and Dan Gilbert?
Speaker 3:They're saying white men for the most part and a couple of women in there, because the reality is there's quite a few black business owners in the city of Detroit and I had to clarify that one event. There's this mindset of calling it the business community. Now, do I believe that the business community that they're describing, the head honchos, the people who've been given favor this past 13 years, are concerned? Yeah, I think that they are concerned. I remember in 1999, in the year 2000, I went to work for Vanguard Community Development Corporation and I was actually reporting to at that time now Bishop Van, and he had a lot of relationships with the business community, and so the first thing he did was take me around to meet a whole lot of people so they could know he had an executive director for this nonprofit that he had founded and he wanted to talk about me and my pedigree and what we were going to do. And person after person said well, before we get to that, what are we going to do about Dennis? He's a disaster, you can't get anything done. Dennis, he's a disaster, you can't get anything done.
Speaker 3:And then, soon after that, shockingly, dennis Archer pulled out of the race and decided he was not going to run next time. They were trying to see if they could get a Republican, ed Brooks, to win and they were asking you know, bishop Vann, you know, do you think he'd win? They didn't call him Bishop Vann, by the way. They called him Edgar Edgar. Do you think we can get, you know, brooks to win? They didn't call him Bishop Van, by the way. They called him Edgar Edgar. Do you think we can get Brooks to win? I think he'd be better for the business community. Instead, they got Kwame Kilpatrick, and Kwame Kilpatrick was absolutely wonderful for the business community. He knew how to cut deals. He knew how to make things happen under the table and behind the scenes.
Speaker 4:I think we forget too. Gil Hill was the city council president. Oh, he was yeah and then a lot of people are asking about Mary Sheffield. And oh, we haven't nominated or voted for a mayor that came out of council in a long time. Look at the last time that a city council president was running.
Speaker 3:Gil was the oldest person in history to run for mayor. Quite different than Mary and Kwame was the youngest, Seriously his historic race the oldest and the youngest.
Speaker 4:And so I hear now people compare Mary to Kwame, and now I hear people compare Chris to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, now Mary is no Kwame Kilpatrick. The reality is, Mary Sheffield has quite a long track record of governance and there's never been any scandal regarding anything that she's done. There were scandals with Kilpatrick when he was in Lansing and I don't need to go over what some of those things are. Let's just say I worked closely enough and know enough to understand where the bodies were buried. We actually had a whole criminal trial, a couple of criminal trials against him, where a whole lot of things came out in the wash. That is not Mary Sheffield. It's not fair, but it is what you do when you have a strong woman candidate. A lot of times, people will come up with any and everything and they will disqualify them.
Speaker 3:The reality, if you can say that, mary sheffield, gil hill was, his biggest thing was he was on beverly hills cop and gil hill was in the pocket of the greek town casino mobsters that were downtown. There were people who did not trust those affiliations. Kw Kwame came through. He was energetic, he was exceptionally charismatic and he was able to express a vision. So he came out and he said I'm your son. And he was, regardless of what anybody says about him.
Speaker 3:Now, he was an exceptional candidate for mayor and I know that he went to Second Ebenezer Church, which is a church that founded Vanguard Community Development Corporation. I knew him, I knew his wife we don't need to talk about that and I saw his campaign unfold. He also had his mother, carolyn Cheekskill Patrick, a very, very popular member of Congress at that time, and he had the unspoken support of the Shrine of the Black Black Madonna, to which his family belonged to socially, if not religiously. So, comparing Mary to that, mary has been in office. We can look at her votes. They haven't all been votes that I like. Some of them have been. We can look at her track record and what she says. I haven't liked everything, but I've liked some things. Judge her by that.
Speaker 4:Don't pretend as though Mary is a tainted person simply because she's an impoverished person and there are a lot of people saying a lot of unfair things about her. I mean, I'll just be honest I hear from some of these not people directly working for other campaigns, but people supporting other candidates that are saying things that are just nasty and wrong.
Speaker 3:If you don't like her, don't vote for her, but don't vote for her based on the kind of things that you're talking about the nasty and wrong things. Her name is Mary Sheffield. She's got a father named Horace Sheffield, and I addressed this when we interviewed her on Authentically Detroit. My name is Donna Givens. I have a father named Donovan Givens. Okay, I never wanted to be judged by who my father was. I'm going to be straight up. Okay, I can't control that.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to get out and disavow him, but look at her track record in city council and how she's voted. Look at who's been in her office and the people that she surrounds herself with. She has some of the same sap people that stay with her for years, and these are not the kinds of people who are, you know, I think, easily compromised. I have a lot of respect for a number of her people, so I say that about her. I like Santel Jenkins too. I think Santel Jenkins is a brilliant woman. I think she's a kind person. I think she's committed to Detroit. If you don't like Santel Jenkins, don't make it about her being a woman and don't come with cheap shots. Make it about other things, just like we do with the guys we don't. Solomon Kinloch is not being subject to the same kind of nature scrutiny as Mary Sheffield is. I don't think, and you know. No, you don't. Well, I mean he is being.
Speaker 4:I mean, I hear things every day. I guess I'm just right there.
Speaker 3:You hear things every day. That is my job to talk to people about the bad things.
Speaker 1:So what are you hearing?
Speaker 4:I mean, people are very uncomfortable with the idea of his relationship with the church that he wouldn't untie himself from. They feel like Is that unfair? No, I guess. But yeah, yeah, no, some people are unfair. I mean they go back years and say, oh, he's the pimp pastor. He got rich off the community suffering.
Speaker 3:That's unfair. Is it, I think it is. I think that's below the belt. I think that calling somebody a pimp pastor is unfortunate.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's right.
Speaker 3:I think that Solomon Kinloch has certainly done a lot of good in his role as pastor and if you don't like pastors, that's your business but I think using that terminology is not fair for a person like him.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't either, but those are the kinds of you know. It's a lot of mudslinging, a lot of what we hear as journalists from you know people that can claim to be close to some of these people, but how close are they really? Did you work for them for a few months or weeks or one day? And that's a lot of. It is people who their authority comes from. Well, I worked with this person for a time, for a one campaign, and this is my it's like well, that person.
Speaker 4:You can't judge somebody off of a one year experience.
Speaker 3:I mean, last week we interviewed our Lisa Hurd and she told you that when she met me, somebody told her that I should run for mayor. If I ran for mayor, there'd be some awful things said about me. You cannot lead without ever making people angry, without building enemies. You cannot lead If you're doing something. I know people who lead and everybody likes them. I feel like if everybody likes me, I'm doing something wrong. You're not supposed to like me. If I'm challenging you on what you're doing, if I'm standing up for the community, somebody's not going to like that and I'm okay with that. But I'm also okay with the fact that Mary Sheffield, simon Kinloch, tontill Jenkins, fred Durhall all of those people I'm okay with the fact that they have detractors.
Speaker 3:What I really want to know is what is your track record and what will you do while you're in office? Do you have the capacity to do it and can you get the votes? That's the only thing I care about with Craig. Yes, I care about his track record and I care about what he's done when he's in office. So it's never going to be because he's a Republican or because I always saw him sitting at the Byron Simbats. It's going to be because of what he did when he was in office that I have more specific things about that. I'm looking for justice. I think that's the lens we should judge Candace on. It's not because he's a man, it's not because of his age. It's because of what?
Speaker 4:he says. He says judge me not based on my failure to get on the ballot in the 2022 governor trial race, but my last eight years of being your police chief. You know you come with the receipts, donna, and so not everyone will. A lot of people are just going to go along with the narrative that, oh you know, detroit didn't burn during the riots. That weren't really all that much riots.
Speaker 3:There weren't riots. We certainly weren't in Detroit.
Speaker 4:We saw some windows break in Kalamazoo and certainly in Grand Rapids. I guess you could call that a riot.
Speaker 3:We saw a young black woman taken down by a chokehold. We saw people mass arrested, go to federal court and the federal courts threw out their charges because there was no basis for them. We saw them try to reinstate those charges even after that. What we saw was a punitive police force. And so if you think free speech is at risk right now under Donald Trump, that they were speaking and they had the right to that speech, it's not fair. I wasn't out there marching. I was glad I was like somebody's marching for me so I can sit up here, because I remember there was a pandemic going on. I was afraid of dying, so I honored the marchers. Not everybody did, but the police brutality, the chokehold of a young woman making the front pages and the police officer saying, oh no, she just fell into the crook of my arm is offensive. But I don't want to stay there. Let's talk about city council, city council also has some interesting things happen there are.
Speaker 4:There's a few interesting candidates and I want to zoom into the city council district that I live in and I guess I still would live in even if I lived in Cass Court or still, because of redistricting, district 5. What's up, district 5? D5, stay alive. Mary Sheffield will say. Mary's been the council member there for a while yeah, about a decade and we're going to get a new one. I've been talking a lot, probably the most, to Renata Miller. Chantel Watkins is not going to appear on the ballot. She received some of the support from Detroit Action folks and some of the folks that are close to Rashida Tlaib. Denzel McCampbell is a candidate out there in District 7. He was supporting Chantel. She wasn't able to make the ballot, and so over. In District 5, who do we got? Let's pull up the list, shall we?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, one of them while you're looking up the list, is a friend and colleague, george Adams from 360 Detroit, who is a self-described entrepreneur, realtor and real estate investor, but somebody who I've worked with over the years and certainly had a lot of political debates with, and he was a late entry into the race. But there's others.
Speaker 4:Yeah, michael Richard, I talked to him a few weeks back. He's excited. Michael Hart, willie Burton is the name that I'm waiting to say, because we know Willie from his days on the Board of Police Commissioners. Willie is an interesting guy. He's got a lot to say when he gets on the phone with you. What do you make of Willie Burton? I'm waiting for that. I've been waiting for this since we started today. Donna, what is your opinion of Willie Burton? Interesting guy.
Speaker 3:He's a renegade. He certainly challenged the police commission and was unafraid to speak truth to power. He didn't necessarily follow the conventions, but I think there are some legitimate criticisms of the police commission, including the police commission under James Craig. To my great misfortune, james Craig became mayor. I want him to be a city council person, just so he could call him out from the council table. No, I'm just joking. I think that I don't know that he has the kind of leadership skills necessary to govern or to legislate. I don't know what his agenda is, I don't know what he believes in, and so he's a hothead, or it seems like he's a hothead.
Speaker 4:Maybe that's unfair. All of these candidates, they're sort of politically unproven. None of them. I don't want to call them no names, but I guess if you're looking at this on Ballotpedia from anywhere else but the city of Detroit, Michigan, having covered it for the last five years, you don't know who these people are. D5, Renetta Miller will tell me it's the district where the most money comes and goes through. I don't know that it's the wealthiest district. I don't believe that to be true, but I do know. District 5 stretches across Midtown right up against District 6. And it's kind of a sprawling. I'm trying to look up the actual map of the district. It's a sprawling district.
Speaker 3:It's downtown, it's Midtown, it's North End, it's over there by the Herman Kiefer area and it's partly on the east side of Detroit, so it is a sprawling community on the east side of Detroit. So it is a sprawling community and it is an area obviously the most. That's the area that attracts the most economic investment in the city of Detroit by far.
Speaker 4:Renaissance Center is there.
Speaker 3:Renaissance. Oh yeah, I mean it's yeah.
Speaker 4:The new buildings are there Right on that border. It's borders right up there.
Speaker 3:I actually live in District 5. Okay, yeah, we both live in District 5. Okay, yeah, we both live in District 5.
Speaker 4:And it's a very different areas of Detroit. I'm on Art Center. I almost doxed myself completely there. I can't.
Speaker 3:I don't really care.
Speaker 4:Listen, I'm on If you want to come shoot me down, come do it.
Speaker 3:And I'm in the Rivertown community on the east side still, but love District 5. Lots of great places in the district. I think my question is not political experience. I mean, willie Burton did run for the Detroit Police Commission. He was the youngest Detroit police commissioner to be voted into that seat. My question are a couple of things. One of them is what is your vision? What is your integrity? Can I trust you to carry out your vision, in other words, and do you have the ability to legislate? Legislating mean more than just voting, but also helping to influence other people at the council table. Yeah, do you have the capacity to push back against the mayor?
Speaker 3:One of my pet peeves with district city council people is they think that they only have to act on behalf of the people in their district, but the city charter doesn't say that their responsibility is to hold the mayor accountable, to be a check on the mayor's power.
Speaker 3:That's how our government works, and so if you're only concerned about your district, then you can be bought off or compromised by agreements that you side agreements you make with the mayor as opposed to thinking I've got to think about this whole city and I'm accountable for people, no matter where I live.
Speaker 3:The reason that we have city council districts is not that each city council district can have its own mayor. It is because at one time, almost all of the city council people lived in one of two neighborhoods and those are wealthier neighborhoods and so you had low income communities, communities in Southwest Detroit, having absolutely no representation. There was nobody who really knew who they were and what their needs were, and so we do want the city council person to be able to bring information about their needs to the city council table but then legislate as if they are acting on behalf of the whole city, and we see very few city council people actually doing that. I think Mary Sheffield, as council president, did a pretty good job. I think Gabriella Lopez has done a pretty good job. I actually think Angela Calloway has done a pretty good job, although I have not really worked with her, but there's others who have not really, you know, looked at the whole of the city.
Speaker 4:Santiago Romero is the new D6. Lopez was her.
Speaker 5:She came in afterward. Thank you, I think you like both of them.
Speaker 3:Thank you, two different individuals.
Speaker 4:But that's okay, you're going to see Gabby on the ballot. She is not going to be barred and disqualified. That was something that you know. They were looking at a write-in campaign at one point. They're going to be on the ballot. Mark Brewer was able to convince the county and the city to put her there. Tyrone Carter Gabby that's going to be an interesting race. I think that's the most interesting race. There's no primary for that. Right there to the general. If I was a betting person, I don't know if I would bet against the incumbent, but Tyrone's going to work hard.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't bet against the incumbent either, not considering her track record in the community, it seems like people really care about her. She's been very active at problem solving. I think she's worked on a truck rotting ordinance, a fugitive dust ordinance and other things that are of great concern to people in Southwest Detroit, given the level of pollution in that area, and I think it's also important to the people who are of Hispanic Latino background to have representation at the city council table, and I think they will close ranks around her. A lot of her activism also, though, has impacted the part in 4217 of Southwest Detroit that is primarily black, and again, those are the ones who are really dealing with the most polluted industries in their area, and she's acted on their behalf. So it'll be interesting to see what Tyrone Carter's argument is. She was almost disqualified because of a technicality, and that is also the reason that Chantel Watkins was disqualified a technicality. How do you feel about the disqualification? Can you explain it? How do you feel about that?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, the county abides by a set of rules and I mean they're pretty clear. These rules exist for reasons that I think Jocelyn Benson and Janice Winfrey and Daniel Baxter could explain better than I could, being not an election administrator, but they exist, I think, for various reasons. We've seen the last few years these issues become maybe not more prevalent, but we're just sort of becoming aware of them more Obviously with the 2022. Gubernatorial Republicans could not hire the correct signature petition signing firm. They hired one that had previously been convicted of this same crime.
Speaker 4:That kept garrett saldano and james craig and other republican I forget what one of the other woman's names was, but since then in Michigan there's kind of been this oh, is everyone going to make the ballot? I even heard some folks say part of the reason why the business community is keeping their pearls close to the chest, not showing their hand yet, is because they're concerned that James Craig could not make the ballot or Solomon Kinloch could miss the ballot. And, of course, you're going to have challenges. People are paid. There's a whole economy around making the ballot. Robert Davis is a serial litigator in Detroit and he is trying to prevent Mary Sheffield and Fred Durhall from getting access to the ballot for various reasons. Mary, there's an issue she didn't put her website on something that asks for it. And then Fred, of course, he is the third, and so every single document that doesn't match up with the third, I, I, I. Behind Fred Durhall, people can contest that these challenges are likely not going to go anywhere but they exist also for various reasons.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they do. So I consider there to be a sea change difference between a falsified signature name on a petition, between some other not having enough names, all of that kind of stuff. That's fraud, that's fraudulent behavior, even if the candidate himself did not carry that out. What happened to Adam Ollier was not a technicality. It was actually fraudulent signatures and it was his responsibility as a candidate to know which signatures were on there to say, hey, I didn't know, I trusted these people.
Speaker 4:It's the same impetus on the rules, though I mean it is the candidate's responsibility to know the rules.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to disagree with that, but that's fraud. Fraud is different than I made a mistake and I put my apartment number on this petition, which is what Chantel Watkins said was her violation On some of these petitions. They threw them out because on the petition my apartment number was there. That's a different type of violation.
Speaker 4:It has to be the voter. I mean, it has to be the people that are signing these petitions. If you're approached by somebody and they say, hey, will you sign? This is a state petition. You need to be a part of the registered, the qualified voter file and that's the issue. People move, and then they become disqualified from their petition signature counting.
Speaker 3:This is what she said In an email that she sent out. Unfortunately, I've been disqualified from appearing on the ballot due to a technicality in the petition header. My apartment number was included, which led to the dismissal of 281 signatures. The um Header was the issue, not the validity of the voters, not whether they lived in the district, which is a fair issue. I agree with that, but the header was the issue. And with Santiago Romero, I got that right, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Gabby, gabby, yes, oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3:It's one of those days where maybe I didn't get enough sleep and I'm mixing names up. But anyway, with her, the issue was not that she did not pay or file her campaign report. The issue was a technicality in her reporting it under the wrong header. And then she actually refiled and compliant with the law, and did not get information that she hold a fee, and it's that kind of technicality. If I'm attempting to do the right thing and I made a mistake, should there be a way to cure it short of throwing me off the ballot?
Speaker 4:Well, that's certainly what the lawyers and attorneys for these candidates will say. It's all happening in good faith and there is rules. Within the rules, there's sort of provisions that allow for exactly how Gabby got back on the ballot, which is kind of what you're explaining.
Speaker 3:But I'm also saying who does it benefit to exclude these candidates? Who does it benefit to exclude Chantel Watkins, who had the most interesting campaign slogan of anybody? I used to fight in the streets, not fighting for the streets. I really wanted to see where that went, because that video was just amazing.
Speaker 4:She'll have another opportunity to run for another office. Yes, well, hopefully so.
Speaker 3:But who does it benefit? It seems to me as though it doesn't benefit voters.
Speaker 4:Well, the voters are the ones that make up the rules.
Speaker 3:We did not make up the rules. We don't make up those rules Come on, we do.
Speaker 4:We vote for the clerk.
Speaker 3:We vote for the clerk. We don't vote for the rules.
Speaker 4:The rules are coming from the state.
Speaker 3:The rules. We don't vote for the rules. My point is we don't vote for the rules and we don't vote for how they're enforced.
Speaker 4:We can certainly change them by citizens' ballot initiative.
Speaker 3:We can, but what I'm trying to get at is, we can, and then you have to make sure that petition language is correct. In a real democracy, I should have maximum choice in who I vote for. If the voters felt like wait a minute this woman committed fraud by putting her apartment number on here then the voters could make that decision. We don't have that opportunity. There could be a fine, there could be some other kinds of penalty other than taking them off the ballot. I think that there's two people that it benefits. Number one it benefits the people in the clerk's office who get to exercise this kind of power, and it also benefits incumbents and career politicians, because career politicians can cite these rules backwards and forwards If what we're saying we want.
Speaker 4:It benefits the consultants that these politicians have to pay for. I mean now post. How does Adam know he's going to be on the ballot? Because he tells me I've hired the foremost experts in ensuring your signatures are valid. It helps the consulting class because it's a lot of rules and provisions and legalese that have to be followed very carefully and it is not easy to even describe or explain to the layman.
Speaker 3:It's great to have the best people, but I'm going to tell you what would have made me really happy if he had said I know I'm going to win because I've gotten to collect these signatures myself. I know I'm going to win because I've walked the streets and I've collected enough signatures myself.
Speaker 4:That's what he tells me he's going to do.
Speaker 3:No, that's great, because I don't want to hear about who he's going to hire. You're running for office and you want to win. You better talk to some folks, get your name on the ballot and do the footwork. This idea that you can delegate away that kind of relationship is really bothersome to me.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, he'll tell you that. He'll say I've knocked the most doors and I plan to do that this time around as well.
Speaker 3:That's the only thing I want to hear from him. I want to hear he's knocking the doors, If he's knocked the doors and when he's knocking the doors. What I also want to hear is that he's not just talking, but he's listening to what those voters are saying to him, so that he can do a better job.
Speaker 4:People are questioning whether they're saying Adam has the experience that Donovan is going to learn this time around of running for this seat again and sort of getting to know the district. That's what I'm hearing.
Speaker 3:That's from insiders. You're not necessarily hearing that from voters, because I don't think that voters think that way.
Speaker 4:No, well, they're inside voters. They do vote in Detroit. Well, they are the 13th district.
Speaker 3:You know those insiders. They have their own way of looking at things.
Speaker 4:They do.
Speaker 3:And I want to look, but anyway, this has been a great discussion. We're going to do this again.
Speaker 4:Another level setting day. We usually have a guest.
Speaker 3:We do.
Speaker 4:That's what they say now the Democratic speech is to level set.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we do need to level set, and I think you go into places I don't have to, so bring that back to me. I am so committed to voters in this city, voters in these districts. I really only want to represent them. I'm so tired of all of these people who stand between voters and democracy. And there's a whole machine, there's a whole industry around that.
Speaker 4:That concerns me. Industry is a great way to put it. I'm in that industry.
Speaker 3:You are, but you're on the fringes of the industry and you're coming to talk to me, so thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Black Detroit Democracy podcast. Be sure to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms and, of course, support Black independent reporting on Detroit1millioncom because good journalism costs no-transcript.
