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Richard Helppie
Hello. Welcome to The Common Bridge. We are continuing our series with candidates for the office of governor for the great state of Michigan. Look, I know even if you're not in Michigan, you do have an interest in this because Michigan is a vital industrial center in the United States. Michigan sits on an international border. There's been a lot of talk about trade. Michigan is also the home of organized labor, the birthplace of the United Auto Workers, and it is a state that I think is fairly reasonable, has voted for Republicans, has voted for Democrats. Today we have with us on The Common Bridge, running as an Independent, the Honorable Mayor of the City of Detroit, Mr. Mike Duggan. Mike, welcome to The Common Bridge.
Mike Duggan
Richard, thanks for having me.
Richard Helppie
Glad to have you here. A lot of people know you. A lot of people don't. When you think about why you want to be governor of the state of Michigan and what kinds of assets we have to get you excited, what are two or three of the top things you wanted to concentrate on? Why are you the best choice for governor when we go to the polls next year?
Mike Duggan
Well, the voters are going to have to decide that. But I was born in Detroit. I've been in Michigan my whole life, and when I saw the city sliding into bankruptcy in 2012 - 2013, when half the street lights were out and Detroit led American homicide, poverty and unemployment, I thought that I could help and I ran for mayor. At the time, there were a lot of people who were skeptical that a white guy could win in an 83% black city, but I campaigned house to house all year long, and people of this city supported me. I feel like we've made a lot of progress in the last 12 years. But I look at what's happening in the state, I look at a state where 60% of our fourth graders can't read at grade level, and we're near the bottom of the country. I look at a state that is in the bottom of the country and people under the age of 30 leaving, and I think maybe I can do something to help there. We'll see what the voters think.
Richard Helppie
Detroit is certainly a much better place under your leadership; you and former Governor Snyder getting the bankruptcy through, cleaning up the finances. But I always look at that as a small part of the story, because what did you do with the money? Tell the listeners and readers and viewers how you went to work and used those available funds to improve the city that you were responsible for.
Mike Duggan
The city had lost $100 million a year for several years until it was no longer able to borrow anymore. But worse than that, 200,000 people moved out of the city of Detroit in the ten years before I ran for office, and they left behind 47,000 abandoned houses. It was really devastating to be in the city of Detroit, very hard to watch our children walk past those those vacant houses to go to a park where the grass wasn't cut all summer, and to say, this is just not right. The bankruptcy was helpful. It was started before I became the mayor, but we came out of bankruptcy in December of 2014, my first year as mayor. We came out of bankruptcy with a city that hadn't had a new auto plant in 20 years, a city that, when you dialed 911, took longer for an ambulance to show up than anyplace else, we still had the highest homicide rate. So bankruptcy didn't solve the underlying problems, it just realigned the balance sheet. It really was... I had great partners on Detroit City Council. We laid out a plan. We became very effective at bringing manufacturing back and jobs back by the thousands and eventually the city got going in the right direction.
Richard Helppie
It's a markedly better place. I encourage everybody to visit the city of Detroit. I think it is the best city in the country today; all right, a little hometowner in there, but the parks look great, the street lights are on, the police cars are new, so much of the blight is removed, and there's a sense of determination and hope. I guess that hope leads to the future. If we were going to say that whomever becomes the governor next year, that a child born in that same year is going to come of age or graduate high school in 2044, what kind of state should they be graduating into? And what can the governor that will be elected next year do about that child's future?
Mike Duggan
Well, I'm spending a lot of time. As I ran for mayor I went to every neighborhood in the city every night, now I'm going to small towns and places all around the state. But every time I go to a city, I sit down with teenagers and 20 somethings and I ask them the question - I'm not a great believer in reading some report on why we're losing population - I say, what is causing you to make these decisions? And it's really instructive to listen to young people. They love the quality of life in Michigan. They love the beauty of Michigan, but for many, they don't think the jobs of the future, their career interests, are going to be here. We are not doing a good job of building the economy of the future. When you hear kids say, I'm going to school to study hard so I can move out of Michigan, that's a sad thing. I never could have imagined thinking that growing up. And so I spent a lot of time talking to them. We have to build the economy of the future. We have to bring in the tech jobs. We started doing that in the city of Detroit. Of course, Bill Ford renovated the train station, which had been vacant for 40 years and is spectacular, but next to it was an abandoned Detroit Public School book depository that caught fire in 1979. It's now called New Lab and it has 140 mobility startups; anything having to do with mobility innovation from people around the country are all in that center. Young people are moving back to the city because we created the kind of job opportunities we wanted. We rebuilt the riverfront to what USA Today calls the finest river walk in America. It's the quality of life the kids want, and we're building the kind of housing that's affordable but also has character to it. You put those things together. The Census Bureau just released a report; Detroit was one of the top 100 cities in America in population gain last year. That's something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime.
Richard Helppie
Congratulations to you and the city council for that dogged pursuit of creating a better life. You mentioned education and where our fourth graders are and then mentioned the young people, and at some point they're going to say we're going to start a family. I hope they do. When you think about education - and we are both products of the great educational opportunities in the state of Michigan - what's going on, and what are your ideas about turning that around?
Mike Duggan
I'm spending a lot of time with superintendents and teachers and principals, and I talked about this. I did a speech at Mackinac that your viewers, I think, could find online, where I took people through what's happened in the last ten years. Every time the Republicans and Democrats switched control in Lansing, they changed the rules. Ten years ago schools in this state were graded A,B,C,D,F, then that got repealed and they graded them green, yellow, red. Then that got repealed, and they graded them top to bottom, and they went and closed the bottom ones, and that got repealed, and they graded them A,B,C,D,F and last year they repealed the A,B,C,D,F. There's basically no measurement, no accountability. There is no teacher, no principal in this state who has any idea what they're being held to. They keep changing the textbooks because they keep changing the curriculum every time the Republicans and Democrats swing back and forth. We've gone from 19th in the country in fourth grade reading under Engler to 44th today. We've gone down for 25 years, and it hasn't been one party or the other. It has been this chaos of being in an evenly divided state where the two parties always try to use schools for partisan advantage at election time, instead of sitting down with the educators and saying to the educators, what's the curriculum we need? What kind of resources do you need? And, we're going to hold you accountable for delivering.
Richard Helppie
That's a great analysis. Mike, you've been a Democrat and quite successful through Wayne County and now as a mayor of the city of Detroit, you've elected to run as an Independent. Can you share with the audience of The Common Bridge what led you to that conclusion, and perhaps why will you be more effective as a governor as an Independent?
Mike Duggan
There's no question. I really reached a point where I just felt like if I ran and got elected as a Democratic governor, I'd be dealing with the same things that Gretchen Whitmer is dealing with, the Republicans lined up against you because they're in the other party and you're trying to take their jobs in the House and the Senate. Of course, the left wing of the Democratic Party has never been fans of mine. They aren't necessarily fans of Governor Whitmer, which means that the governor goes up with very little ability to get things done. You saw this last cycle. I think the Governor vetoed 12 Democratic bills that came out of the lame duck session. It's gotten so out of control. And I thought, what would happen if everybody wasn't obsessed with a so-called trifecta? And that's what's happening, the donors are pouring huge amounts of money trying to win Democratic control - the governorship, the House, the Senate - or Republican control of all three so they could pass their agenda. Even when, once every ten years, you get a trifecta, when the other side gets their trifecta, they just repeal. It works out fine for the politicians, ranks out really well for the campaign consultants, who are, with 100 million dollars a year in a campaign, they're making money. But if you're a kid who wants to say, where's the economy of the future, if you're a tech company saying, where are the data warehouses, if you're a data warehouse company saying, why would I build in a state where every time there's a wind storm, the power grid goes out, you don't have a reliable power supply. The things that we need to do to be competitive aren't being done, and most of these things ought not to be partisan issues. I still haven't figured out why teaching an eight year old to read should be a partisan fight. Mississippi has gone from 49th to ninth in the country. They put in a sound curriculum, they gave the kids support in small groups, and they stuck with the program. Idaho's done the same, and Louisiana has done the same, and Ohio has done the same. We need to have, as far as I'm concerned, partisan-free schools and partisan-free economic development strategies that you can build consensus on, and that's what we've done. Certainly in Detroit, our economic development strategy hasn't wavered in 12 years, and it's the reason we've landed, really, 20 manufacturing plants and cut the unemployment rate.
Richard Helppie
Indeed. As you were landing those jobs too, you insisted that if there were going to be any kind of tax break, that those coming in had to hire Detroit first. You were serving the citizens that elected you and trusted you with their future. I think that's a great aspect of what you've been able to achieve as the mayor. I concur with you, if you've listened to my program, I think the Republicans are lost. The Democrats are maybe a little crazy from time to time and they're tearing the country apart. If you look at some of the single party states, like California, we need immigrants in the country, no doubt, we need immigrants in Michigan. When you think about what the role of the next governor needs to be around immigration, what are your thoughts about that? When you look at what's going on in California, how are California and Michigan different?
Mike Duggan
Well, we're different a lot of ways, starting with, at least in the city of Detroit, control of our streets. But we had 100 days of protests during the George Floyd aftermath and never had a store looted, never had a fire started, one of the few cities in America. We believe in free speech but we don't let you damage property or injure people, and of course, we'll be probably facing those issues again in the coming days. My grandfather came here from Ireland and started a real estate office on Mack, on the east side of Detroit, and when President Obama was looking for home for the Syrian refugees, Detroit stepped up, when they were looking for homes for the Afghan refugees, Detroit stepped up. If you come to this country lawfully Detroit is a welcoming city, and the immigrants have contributed enormously to this city's history and to our vibrancy today. I do think that we should be expanding legal immigration and Donald Trump has expressed support for the idea that if you get a college degree in the United States, you should be able to stay here. When I worked at the Detroit Medical Center, it was just terrible. We would train doctors in their residency at the DMC, they complete their training on their student visa, and then they'd have go back to the country they came from, even when they wanted to be here. And I thought, what kind of talent are we losing? On the other hand, the city of Detroit is not a sanctuary city. If we arrest you breaking into a house and you're an undocumented immigrant, and ICE asks us to hold you, we honor the ICE detainer request, which is why we've never been cross ways with the federal government. We cooperate with ICE when they want to pick up somebody that we've arrested. We don't do enforcement for ICE, but when we arrest somebody for committing a crime, they're notified. If they want to come pick that individual up, they are [picked up]. and I think we've got the right balance, but in this debate we are losing the focus on people who are undocumented, the value to this country of people who come here illegally.
Richard Helppie
Absolutely. What about some of the broader issues? You were at the Detroit Medical Center and did a nice job bringing that organization around. When you think about affordability and health care and affordable taxes, if you're speaking to the residents of state of Michigan, as you pursue the governorship what types of things should they be hearing from you?
Mike Duggan
Well, the biggest issue I hear, no matter where I go, is the affordability of housing. When I go up to Traverse City... and they're interesting conversations, I'll sit with 60, 80 people at a time, we just have conversations. I'm not a guy who goes to a cocktail party and shakes hands, I want to sit down and have a real conversation with you. I'm up in Traverse City, I said, what's your biggest issue up here? And they say affordable housing. I said, well, let me tell you what we did in Detroit. We built up one and a half billion dollars in affordable housing in the last six years and let me show you how I've done it. We should be doing this statewide. Then they take me over and show me this tent city they call the Pines with 200 tents of homeless people, and I say to them, we have no tent cities in the city of Detroit. I couldn't believe they had that kind of homeless problem in Traverse City. They couldn't believe we had no people living in tents in Detroit. But by the end, you end up with with common ground. It's almost heartbreaking when they say to me the people who have bought the vacation homes up here have so priced the housing out of the market that they were showing me a new affordable housing complex they were building in Traverse City and it was for public school teachers. I said, when we've hit the point that you have to build special affordable housing for public school teachers, something's wrong, but I will take the policies we brought in Detroit. We need to make home building simple. We've got to take costs out of it, but we also have to have the funding that fills the gap, because nobody's going to build an apartment that costs $1,400 a month to build and accept $800 a month in rent. Nobody's going to do that. You've got to have a funding source to cover that gap. We've mastered that in the city of Detroit, and I think we can expand it statewide.
Richard Helppie
I had a guest on my program, Greg Coburn, who's written extensively about housing and Detroit shows really well. In fact, the central theme is that more units equals fewer homeless people, right? (Mike Duggan: That's true.) It doesn't matter climate, location, whatever. Very interesting guy, by the way. He was a private equity guy, very successful, and then went back and got a PhD, and now he teaches housing policy at the University of Washington. Very dry material, unless you need a roof over your head, then it's very important. Before we get into other policy areas, just on the political landscape next year, 2026, when the gubernatorial race will be on, we'll also have a race for the United States Senate. We're going to have Donald Trump's first midterm. How do you think those two national elections might affect the governor's race, if any?
Mike Duggan
I'm watching it right now, and people are fed up with both parties. The more hostile it gets in Washington, the more hostile it gets in Lansing, the bigger my crowds get. Every day, people are coming up to me, emotionally, saying, I've always been in the middle. I've always been Independent. I'm not just strictly Republican or Democrat, and I've never had somebody speak to this. The level of enthusiasm... in fact, somebody, a reporter, was covering one of my events, and said, you've got the only group in the country politically where there are smiles at your meetings. I was in Lexington, little town, about 1,000 people, north of Port Huron, 100 people showed up at my event that night and went back and forth a lot. I learned a lot about their community. Finally, I said to them, how many of you would have shown up here tonight if I were running as a Democratic candidate for governor? About a third of the hands in the room went up, and they looked at each other, and they started laughing, and they realized these folks would have never been in the same room politically, even though they were friends and neighbors, if it weren't for me as an Independent candidate. People end up leaving smiling, filling out volunteer cards, saying I'm going to tell my friends. Back in December and January I said I'm running as an Independent, people are like, what's that all about? Now it's starting to resonate, and it's really very enjoyable to go from city to city and have this conversation.
Richard Helppie
Just to punctuate that point, this is June 11 that we're recording this, and I'm publishing a column today about immigration and the calling out of the military in California. This is the dilemma: the established parties, 93% of Republicans are approving Donald Trump's approach and 82% of Democrats are against it. But here's the kicker, Independents, it's about even 51 - 49 and that, to me, is cause for hope, that people do want to come together, and that they have the sense they're not being served by the partisans. You've cited some great cases too; I hadn't thought about the whip sawing of policies depending on who's getting the trifecta. But Mr. Mayor, while we're here, as we move to our close, are there any other policy areas that you're particularly passionate about that the listeners, readers, viewers of The Common Bridge, many of whom are Michigan voters, should hear about?
Mike Duggan
I want to change politics in this state. And Richard, the numbers you just cited, the overwhelming number of Republicans approve of the National Guard, overwhelming number of Democrats in California disapprove them and yet, what happens? It's the people on the ground in Los Angeles having their stores looted, having the fires started, having their lives torn apart. The two parties are righteously saying, we're right. The average person is the one that suffers, and here in Michigan right now, we'll see how it plays out, but our police department is sitting down every day with the federal authorities, strategizing how we will work together to deal with potential issues. We're not attacking each other in public. And of course, the Detroit Police Department has a great deal of credibility in managing protests. We believe in protests, and we encourage protests, but we don't allow property to be damaged and people to be hurt. This is the kind of thing that I think you should be able to do. When these elections come along in 2026 I'm not going to pick sides in the State House races, Republican or Democrat. I'm not going to pick sides in the State Senate races, Republican or Democrat. You can vote straight ticket Democratic and vote for Mike for Independent or straight ticket Republican and vote Mike for Independent - all your votes count. When the legislators get to Lansing, I'm going to sit down and say, let's talk about things that aren't partisan: rebuilding the energy grid, getting the tech jobs of the future here, teaching our young kids how to read, rebuilding the career technical education, which has been devastated in the high schools. I can't believe how angry people are, particularly in rural areas, over the lack of vocational training programs in their high schools. These are things that we can rebuild and because I'm not trying to knock you out of your State House seat two years from now because I'm in the other party, let's sit down and work together. That's what I did with city council, and that's what I think I can do with the legislature.
Richard Helppie
That would be a breath of fresh air, I think, not only for our state, but potentially some good tailwinds into the rest of the country, because we are stuck right now in this partisan battle, which is the whole reason we started The Common Bridge. We're still stuck with issues around firearms and climate and environment and trade, and it's all about which party's winning. Mr. Mayor, very impressive work that you've done. You and I could probably talk the next three or four hours about this, but I know you have limited time. Is there anything that we haven't talked about, or any closing comments you've got for our audience today?
Mike Duggan
Nope, you're doing a heck of a job, Richard, I never thought you were going to become a podcaster in your next career. [Laughter.] You've done great!
Richard Helppie
Thanks. It's a lot of fun. It's the same thing; listening to people, trying to solve problems, trying to find a common ground, and that's why we're here. I'm not sure how good we're doing as far as bringing people together, but we're giving it a shot anyway.
Mike Duggan
Never know where life's going to take us, huh?
Richard Helppie
Indeed. We've been talking today with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. He is a candidate for the governorship of the state of Michigan. He's running as an independent. He's bringing some new ideas. With our guest, Mike Duggan, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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