Hello all, it is one day later and we have the general election qualifers for the major offices in Detroit. Both the incumbent mayor and the incumbent city clerk seem to be highly likely to get re-elected and had only comparatively minor opponents. The real action was in the City Council and Charter Commission races. More below the fold
Winners of the Detroit City Council Primary in order
Charles Pugh
Kenneth Cockrel Jr.
Gary Brown
Brenda Jones
Saunteel Jenkins
Kwame Kenyatta
Joanna Watson
Jai-Lee Dearing
Alberta Tinsley-Talabi
Reverend Andre Spivey
James Tate
Lisa Howze
Shelley Foy
Fred Elliot Hall
Raphael Johnson
Mohammed Okdie
David Cross
John K. Bennett
With the exception of Okdie (who I will discuss briefly in a bit) all of these candidates were people I went into at length in my previous article at http://www.dailykos.com/... so I won't go super in-depth on them hear.
Out of this group the only two people that I would not be happy with on the council are Tinsley-Talabi and Watson, and I had not hope of Watson not getting re-elected, but, and the best news of all, neither Monica Conyers (she was on the ballot despite pleading guilty to federal corruption charges) nor Martha Reeves (note: Martha Reeves did not even finish in the top 25, so she wasn’t even close) made it through the primary. Also, the top 9 finishers are by no means a lock, as Spivey and Tinsley-Talabi were within 100 votes of each other and James Tate finished fairly well also (with Lisa Howze a short ways back, but it is a position that she could rally from).
Interesting to note that the entire Detroit Free Press endorsed slate made it through the primary (Pugh, Cockrel Jr., Brown, Jones, Jenkins, Spivey, Howze, Foy, and Cross), though not all of them are in a good position to make the final 9. Also interesting note that of those advancing from the primary 4 have connections to the Detroit police department (Bennett if he makes it, Brown, Foy and Tate) and 3 run business ventures in the city (Hall, Cross, and Dearing). Also, there is a tendency towards name recognition as many of the challengers either have well known names from either themselves (Dearing, Pugh, Brown) or through parentage (Hall’s father is Elliot Hall, which is a very familiar name to Detroiters). The top 12 is Pugh, Cockrel Jr., Brown, Jones, Jenkins, Kenyatta, Watson, Dearing, Tinsely-Talabi, Spivey, Tata, and Lisa Howze and the top 12 is important because (baring scandal) the Top 12 is generally considered the cut-off to have a shot at getting on the council.
The recent pre-election poll was broadly correct at the top of the ticket (Pugh, Cockrel Jr., Brown, Brenda Jones) but was highly incorrect below the top 11 or so as Martha Reeves finished outside of the top 25, much less the 18th she finished in the poll. And John K. Bennett scored much better in the poll than he is on election night. And the pre-election poll didn’t even have a top 19 finish for eventual advancers Shelley Foy, David Cross, Mohammed Okdie (a note on Mr. Okdie, who’s the one top 18 finisher I haven’t discussed: He has a MSW from Wayne State University and is a retired social worker with the Detroit Schools and claims in his mivote.org video that he was a community liaison for John Conyers), and Lisa Howze.
I have to reiterate how happy I am with the results of the primary as there is a long tendency of the corrupt and the ineffectual to exploit the past injustices of outside areas towards the city in order to keep power through a "against the system" effect (that is totally false except to endanger the whole region economically, as per the original rejection of the Cobo deal). With the exception of Watson’s relatively strong showing, the voters of Detroit have rejected that phony technique which has ill-served them for years all of the Top 12 finishers (save Watson and occasionally Tinsley-Talabi) are reform minded individuals interested in getting jobs and livable neighborhoods into the city. While name recognition still played a part (the top 5 finishers, who received significantly higher vote totals than ever those in the 6-8 spots, were all either incumbents or had a certain amount of celebrity factor thrown in) but that was to be expected considering that there were 168 candidates running for city council. Having said that, the fact that neither Conyers nor Reeves were even in the top 25 is nothing but a good sign for the city.
Detroit Mayor primary winners
David Bing (incumbent)
Tom Barrow
Jerrol Sanders
Currently Bing is a lock to advance past the primary (with a healthy 71% of the vote), meanwhile as of this writing Barrow and Sanders are with-in 200 votes of each other for the second spot that will advance. Its really remarkable for Sanders to do as well as she has considering that any media attention that hasn’t gone to Bing has gone to Barrow do to his long background in Detroit politics.
Detroit City Charter Commission primary winners
Freean Hendrix (former Detroit Deputy Mayor, 2005 and 2009 Mayoral Candidate)
Mary Rose Robinson
Teola Hunter (former Wayne County Clerk)
Ken Coleman (former legislative aide to both the state legislature and the Detroit City CounciL)
Jenice Ford (Former vice chair of the city Ethics Board)
John Johnson (former Detroit Corporation Counsel)
Jeffrey Robinson (teacher and program supervisor for the Detroit Public Schools)
Reggie Reg Davis
Cara Blout (retired Detroit Deputy Police Chief)
Jonathon Kinloch
John Eddings (former Detroit City Ombudsman)
Ken Harris (CEO Detroit Black Expo)
Tonya Meyer-Phillips (attorney who assisted the Kwame Kilpatrick investigator)
Patty Fedewa (attorney for the National Labor Relations Board)
Sarah Lile (attorney of counsel at WilliamsAcosta PLLC)
Walter Crockett (business owner)
Olumba-John Olumba (lawyer for a non-profit)
Elena Herreda
Only 9 of the above will ultimately be elected to the Charter Commission, and Hendrix, Rose Robinson, and Hunt all received significantly more votes than the others so name recognition was a factor. I would like to see Eddings, Fedewa, and Lile make the commission though, due to their spefic backgrounds, but that will be tough.
Detroit School Board
I didn’t cover this previously because the situation with the school district at present serverely limits the school board’s authority. However, the fact that, out of the top 4 finishers there were 3 incumbents plus Lamar Lemmons (this being the son who was the State Rep and who was a part of Kwame Kipatrick’s effort to take out his critics among Detroit area State Senators, not his father who’s a much better public servant) tells me I’m not going to like the ultimate result.