Until Dec 4 2024, Mike Duggan was one of the Democrats’ most odds-defying success stories.
More than a decade earlier, he became Detroit’s first white mayor in more than four decades after winning the primary election through write-in votes after a judge threw him off the ballot.
During his three terms, he has been credited with bringing the decaying, bankrupt, crime-ridden city back from the brink – a poll in May gave him an approval rating of 84 per cent.
But weeks after the 2024 presidential election, while the Democratic Party was still licking its wounds following Kamala Harris’s defeat, Mr Duggan announced he was abandoning the party.
Sick of what he described as “toxic” two-party politics stalling progress in Detroit and across the country, he launched a run for Michigan governor as an independent.
Mr Duggan has been credited with bringing Detroit back from the brink – ADAM GRAY
“The Democratic Party is motivated by only two things: they hate Republicans in general and they hate Donald Trump in particular. Those are the only unifying themes,” Mr Duggan said.
“And when the only thing you can unify yourself around is anger at the other party, you don’t have any agenda, which is why people in this country are really angry at the Democratic Party,” Mr Duggan added, jabbing his finger in frustration on the large wooden desk in an office in downtown Detroit.
“I’ve never seen the attitude toward the Democratic Party be as sour in America as it is right now, and that’s the reason.”
After he launched his candidacy, the money began pouring in from wealthy donors from both parties. He has raised over $4m, almost as much as his rivals.
Michigan is a purple state. It voted for Mr Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Mr Trump again in 2024. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor, will finish her second term next year.
Gretchen Whitmer and Mike Duggan in June 2024 – Aaron J. Thornton
Statistically, the odds of winning as an independent are not good. Michigan has never elected an independent governor and only a handful of candidates have ever been successful across the US, but Mr Duggan is undeterred.
A poll carried out in October put him in third place with 26 per cent of the vote, behind Democratic frontrunner Joceyln Benson with 30 per cent and Republican John James with 29 per cent.
He is overwhelmingly popular in Detroit, the state’s biggest city. When he took office, it had the highest homicide rate of any large US city, 40 per cent of the city’s street lights did not work and it was $18bn in debt.
Last year, it recorded the lowest murder rate since the 1960s and had $500m (£382m) in cash reserves, and in 2022 the city’s population grew for the first time since the 1950s.
But Mr Duggan has to win across the state, not just its biggest metropolis, beyond which he admits not many people know who he is.
“My whole life I’ve been told I can’t win elections… I think most people in Michigan are fed up with politics as usual and those who say that an independent can’t win do not understand how angry people are at the two parties,” he told The Telegraph.
“The party leadership is mad at me, but the average person is happy to have a choice.”
Since starting his campaign, Mr Duggan has been added to the Democrats’ list of undesirables.
The state Democratic Party has attacked him for running a “self-serving campaign”, accusing him of choosing to run as an independent because he could not win a Democratic primary.
The party has erected billboards across Detroit reading “Maga money loves Mike Duggan”, a jab at the GOP donors that have contributed to Mr Duggan’s campaign.
“The Democrats think the worst insult you can call somebody is ‘Republican’ – this is what’s wrong with the party, but that’s how they’re attacking me,” Mr Duggan said.
“And of course, Republicans are calling me a Democrat, they think that’s the worst insult too.”
Mr Duggan was born in Detroit in 1958, when the city’s population topped 1.8 million and it was on the precipice of a steep decline.
“Motor City”, as it was known then, was home to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Its booming automotive industry made it one of the richest cities in the US in the 1940s. But as automation and foreign production grew, its manufacturing base collapsed.
The city saw an influx of African Americans escaping the south’s Jim Crow laws, but many were blocked from moving to white areas and the 1967 race riots caused an exodus of white residents from the city.
Mr Duggan joined the Democratic Party in the 1980s, making for “interesting” Thanksgiving dinners with his Republican father Patrick J Duggan, a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan.
“We thought debating was fun – we weren’t mad at each other because we were in different parties,” Mr Duggan said.
After graduating from Law School at the University of Michigan, Mr Duggan served as a Wayne County prosecutor. In 2004, he was appointed as the chief executive of the Detroit Medical Centre and was credited with turning the hospital system around. He left in 2012 before launching his mayoral bid.
He hopes that if he is elected outside of the party machinery, he will be able to win support from both sides of the aisle and enact lasting change that won’t be undone by the next administration in what he describes as “non-stop ping pong politics”.
“The only way to build change in this state that outlasts me is to do it as an independent and I think nationally, I also want to show people that if the parties are going to keep behaving like this, the two parties don’t own your vote,” he said.
In Monroe, a Detroit suburb where Mr Trump beat Ms Harris by 27 per cent, Republican voters Kathy and Ron Vanetten said it was “very possible” they might vote for Mr Duggan.
Kathy and Ron Vanetten might vote for Mr Duggan – ADAM GRAY
“He works with people and tries to make things better and improve the neighbourhoods, improve the downtown area and make Detroit a great place to come, so that’s awesome,” Mrs Vanetten, 77, said.
Mr Vanetten, a retired toolmaker, said Mr Duggan “might be the one that pulls [running as an independent] off”.
Some Democratic voters were more sceptical. Survat Jin, 35, who works for Ford Motor Company, said he is concerned about Mr Duggan’s GOP-aligned donors.
Speaking outside Michigan Central, the former Beaux-Artes style train station that stood dilapidated and hollow for 30 years before Ford spearheaded a $1bn redevelopment, Mr Jin said he voted for Mr Duggan for mayor but at the moment he is more inclined to support the Democratic candidate on the ballot.
“I think that there’s much broader problems at stake that maybe don’t align with his initial campaign as mayor,” he said.
Survat Jin is concerned about Mr Duggan’s GOP-aligned donors – Adam Gray
Patrick Cooper-McCann, assistant professor of urban studies at Wayne State University, said there is a fear among Democrats that Mr Duggan will split the Democratic vote and hand the keys to the governor’s mansion to the Republicans.
“They’re kind of turning on a dime and trying to do what they can to damage it politically because it is a risk,” he said.
“I think that he’s the only independent candidate for governor who could possibly win. His biggest hurdle outside of the fact that he’s running outside of the traditional support system of one of the two parties, is that he’s very well known in Detroit, but he has surprisingly little record like recognition outside of Metro Detroit.”
Mario Morrow, a veteran political consultant who has known Mr Duggan since the eighties, said that his decision not to run in a primary will allow Mr Duggan to raise money and speak to voters while his rivals spend time and cash attacking one another. But he notes it will be a challenge without a national party behind him.
“It is not going to be an easy task. If anybody thinks it’s going to be an easy task, then I don’t know what they’re drinking or smoking,” he added.
At first glance, Mr Duggan, a softly spoken Michigan man in his sixties, might not have much in common with Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected New York mayor, and Mr Trump, but he contends that they all ran campaigns as political outsiders.
“People want change and being outside the political establishment is a huge plus… I’m certainly running against the establishment, no doubt about it,” Mr Duggan said.
Asked whether progressive politics, like those offered by Democratic socialist Mr Mamdani, could be a path forward to the Democrats, Mr Duggan is dismissive.
“The Democrats aren’t my issue. I left them,” he said.
Mr Duggan with Joe Biden in 2014 – Bill Pugliano/2014 Getty Images
If he wins, he does not think he will have a problem working with Mr Trump. He has not attacked the US president and notes that while Mr Trump has deployed the National Guard to a string of Democrat-led cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, he has never threatened to send troops into Detroit.
“There are Democrats who want to call attention to themselves by fighting with Trump, and they think it raises their profile, it raises their donor base. It’s not good for the people in their cities,” he said.
“I’ve disagreed with President Trump on the Canadian tariffs. It’s hurting the Michigan economy, but I am not going out of my way to attack the president in order to call attention to myself. It’s just not what I do.”
His son Edward Duggan is his campaign manager, who spearheaded the Biden for Michigan campaign in 2020 and Ms Harris’s campaign last year, but Mr Duggan said he also has Republicans working on the campaign.
For now, Mr Duggan is still juggling his role as the current Detroit mayor. The Manoogian Mansion, where he has lived for the past 12 years, is filled with boxes as he packs up his belongings for his successor, Mary Sheffield, a moderate Democrat he endorsed.
But Mr Duggan is excited for the opportunity his impending unemployment will offer.
“Jan 1, I’m out of the mayor’s job, and I will be campaigning full time.
“Most people in this state want an independent governor. I have to convince them that I’m the independent governor they want,” he said.
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