MAY IS ENOUGH

If the 18 candidates running for mayor really want Detroit to succeed, they will pledge that if they lose, they will not run again in November 2009.

You may not have realized it, know it, or worse, you may not care, but there are 18 candidates running for mayor of Detroit in the special before the formal election in November.

The fact of the matter is this: Detroit is transition. Currently Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr. is the interim mayor, but somehow he seems to think that he’s already been elected. Be that as it may, the residents of Detroit will have their chance to make it known who they want to be the mayor in the primary in February and then again in the special general election in May. Once that election is over, the entire state of Michigan will have to decide whom we want to elect as governor.

The last thing that Detroit needs is a heavily contested special election in February and May and then turn around and see another heavily contested election over the summer.

May should be the last dance. Once we get our mayor in May, he or she ---I see you Sharon McPhail --- should slide into victory in November so that the city of Detroit can get on to handling the business of saving our city that is currently on life support.

Detroit residents, neighborhoods and businesses deserve the peace of mind that we won’t have to go through an entire year of elections. How can the city stabilize if we have the potential of having 4 mayors in 16 months? No business will want to invest in a city where they don’t know who the leadership is. Or worse, where the leadership changes every couple of months.

We have a long list of candidates, some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t. I affectionately refer to the lesser-known candidates as the “miscellaneous candidates.” Next week, I will be profiling some of the most viable mayoral candidates, and some not so viable (Coleman A. Young II, I’m talking to you!).