Detroit Set for 1st White Mayor Since ’74 as Politics Shift

Sean Davis said his friends called him a sell-out when he volunteered for Detroit mayoral candidate Mike Duggan in February. After all, Davis is a black man from a city that’s 83 percent black, supporting a white candidate who until last year lived in the suburbs.

Davis didn’t listen. He said Duggan, who led Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon almost 2-1 in a poll last month, offers the best hope to change the trajectory of a bankrupt city where police don’t come, street lights don’t shine and neighborhoods are cut through by swaths of vacant homes and lots.