Who is Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan really?
For nearly four decades in public office, Duggan has aligned himself with the Democratic Party. As a three-term mayor, he campaigned for presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. At the Democratic National Convention in July 2016, Duggan slammed then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“Detroit is 18 months out of bankruptcy, something Donald Trump knows a little bit about. But unlike Donald Trump, Detroit is only going to do bankruptcy once,” Duggan said at the convention. Several months later, Duggan called Trump “the most phony party nominee that I have seen in my lifetime.”
When Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by 145,000 votes in November 2020, Duggan called the claims of fraud by Trump and his supporters “utter nonsense” and said they’re “a real threat to everything we believe in … that everybody’s vote counts the same.”
But now that Duggan is running as an independent for governor, he has dramatically changed his rhetoric, turning his ire on Democrats and taking big donations from GOP party leaders, megadonors of Trump, and conservative power brokers with vested interests in state policy.
When Metro Times asked Duggan’s campaign on Monday about his seemingly fluid position on Trump and the president’s attacks on people of color and the LGBTQ+ movement, a spokesperson referred us to the mayor’s recent comments to none other than conservative Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley. The campaign also deflected questions about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that cost Michigan more than $1 billion, forcing steep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and food assistance that support millions of lower-income residents.
“I haven’t changed any positions, other than that I think the toxic relationship between the two parties is badly damaging the state and we need a different approach to get Republicans and Democrats to work together,” Duggan told Finley. “But I haven’t changed my position on any issue.”
But a review of recent interviews and social media posts show Duggan disproportionately attacking Democrats, raising questions about the sincerity of his past statements and the truth of his current ones.
“The Democratic support is crumbling for them, and I know they’re a little upset, but people are fed up with this Democratic Party in Michigan,” Duggan said on CBS News recently, before repeating a criticism he wrote on social media. “They care about two things: They hate the Republicans in general, and they hate Trump in particular, and they don’t stand for anything else. And a lot of people are deciding they have had enough of it.”
When the CBS reporter, Major Garrett, asked how his agenda would differ from Republicans, Duggan deflected: “The Republicans and Democrats both share the blame.”
In the Duggan campaign’s latest post on X, the mayor wrote, “So this week, Democratic Party insiders are attacking us for taking donations from Republicans.”
“They’re mad the independent campaign is getting support from both parties,” he added. “We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the same old partisan playbook. Demonize anyone who tries to bring Democrats and Republicans together.”
Whether Duggan’s shifting rhetoric signals a lurch to the right or is just campaign theatrics is anyone’s guess. He’s running as an independent at a time when the Democratic Party’s favorability nationwide has fallen to a record low.
Duggan is clearly reaching out to the red swath of Michigan that is outside metro Detroit. A survey released in May by the Detroit Regional Chamber showed that Duggan’s support drops sharply outside the region, where his name recognition and favorability ratings lag behind his rivals.
Regardless of his current rhetoric, Duggan can’t change what he’s said and done in the past. In July, less than six months before he began attacking Democrats, Duggan endorsed Harris and was in “deep campaign mode” for her. At the time, he slammed Trump.
“I spent four years with Donald Trump as president,” Duggan said. “There was no good relationship then. Basically we tried to keep our head down during that time. I think our starting point is, we need to elect a president who cares about this city and cares about this state. I remember he did the visit to the church in the campaign in 2016 and says, ‘I will help Detroit’s rebuilding.’ He got elected and never visited once in the next four years.”
In October 2024, when Duggan was campaigning for Harris, he criticized Trump for saying Detroit is more “developing” than “most places in China.”
Calling Trump’s memory “a little fuzzy,” Duggan said, “Since Donald Trump left office, the unemployment rate in Detroit is way down, the homicide rate is way down, and our population is growing for the first time since the 1950s.”
He added, “The best thing that happened in Detroit was when Donald Trump left office and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris came in and gave us real partners.”
Speaking at a press conference organized by then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign in September 2016, Duggan once again scolded Trump.
“Are you here just to use Detroiters as props in a re-imaging campaign, or are you here to have a real conversation where you’re finally going to give us the specifics on what you’re going to do to make American cities better?” Duggan asked.
Duggan hosted several Democratic presidential candidates since he was mayor, calling Biden “the best friend Detroit ever had in the White House” and saying Harris was “a good friend.”
That doesn’t sound like someone tired of Democrats or what he alleges is their lack of principles beyond hating Republicans and Trump.
As mayor, Duggan has changed his tone for political purposes in the past. When Police Chief James Craig announced he was retiring in May 2021, Duggan said at a news conference, “I tried to convince him to change his mind up until last night.”
A year earlier, Duggan called Craig “maybe the best police chief in America.”
But when Craig announced he was running for governor as a Republican in September 2021, Duggan changed his tune. During the State of the City address in March 2022, Duggan tore into Craig, saying crime rose mercilessly during his last five months as chief. Crime didn’t begin to fall until Duggan hired Craig’s replacement, Chief James White, the mayor said at the time.
“The first five months of last year before we hired Chief White, it wasn’t good,” Duggan said, adding that Craig’s failure to develop and retain partnerships with law enforcement diminished the police department’s ability to fight violent crime.
“Chief White doesn’t attack the prosecutor or the judges or the Feds, and everybody works together,” Duggan said.
As Duggan runs as an independent, both Republicans and Democrats are calling bullshit. Republicans believe he’s still secretly a Democrat, while Democrats claim he’s selling out to Trump and his supporters.
“The more Michiganders see through Mike Duggan’s fake shtick and hear how he’s being bankrolled by the same people who funded Donald Trump, the more they come to see that he cannot be trusted,” Michigan Democratic Party spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement Tuesday. “Duggan can lash out all he wants — but Michiganders will continue to see his self-serving and shady motives.”
Scott Urbanowski, a Democrat from Kent County, said Duggan’s big donations from Republican powerbrokers and Trump megadonors sends a message that he has abandoned his base.
“Whatever their motivation for backing him, these conservatives are inadvertently making it clear: Mike Duggan doesn’t give a flying flamingo about working-class Michiganders like me,” Urbanowski wrote on Facebook.
In his column Saturday, Finley wrote, “I’ve lost count of the number of calls I’ve received from Republicans expressing their skepticism about Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s abandonment of the Democratic Party in making his 2026 run for Michigan governor.”
He added, “Many are convinced Duggan is cloaking himself in independence for political expediency, rather than making a sincere break with the Democratic Party he served his entire career.”
Anna Hoffman, a writer for the conservative site Michigan Enjoyer, contends Duggan is deceiving Republicans.
“Detroit Democrat Mike Duggan sat down for an interview this weekend, said he’s still a Democrat, clarified none of his positions changed but he’s putting an ‘I’ after his name in the hopes some Republicans are dumb enough to vote for him,” Hoffman wrote on X.
Duggan has adopted Republican talking points, including calling undocumented immigrants “illegal” in January while speaking to business leaders. When called out by pro-immigration groups, Duggan dismissed the criticism as “political correctness,” another term that conservatives have adopted.
So who is Duggan as he runs for governor? So far, it’s anyone’s guess.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
