DETROIT — The race for Detroit’s next mayor is set to pit a longtime City Council member against a popular pastor, after council President Mary Sheffield and megachurch leader Solomon Kinloch were the top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary.
Voters will decide in November which of the two will succeed popular three-term Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running as an independent for Michigan’s open governor’s seat in 2026.
Sheffield and Kinloch bested a field of seven others, including former police Chief James Craig, former City Council member Saunteel Jenkins and current member Fred Durhal III.
If elected, Sheffield would be the first woman and the first Black woman to hold the role of Detroit mayor. She first was elected to the City Council in 2013 at age 26 and has been council president since 2022. Her father, Horace Sheffield III, is an activist and pastor of New Destiny Christian Fellowship church.
Kinloch has been senior pastor at Triumph Church for about 27 years. The Detroit-based church has more than 40,000 members across a number of campuses. Kinloch also was an autoworker and member of the United Auto Workers union.
Sheffield spoke to supporters at a downtown rooftop venue Tuesday night after easily taking the top spot in the crowded field.
“Detroit, we made this moment together,” she said. “We claimed it together, and, Detroit, I believe that our best days are ahead of us.”
She said the primary win belongs to every boy or girl told to “dream small,” every neighborhood where people feel left behind, every senior who “paved the way” and every college student who wants to stay in the city.
“This is our moment,” she said.
Kinloch said that despite Detroit’s resurgence, prosperity has not trickled down to enough of its residents.
“Until we reach the whole town, we have not done nearly enough,” he told supporters Tuesday night before being declared the second highest vote-getter. “I didn’t enter this race to chase power. I came to serve with a purpose. If we want a city that shines, we cannot ignore what’s in the shadows. If we want Detroit to rise, we cannot celebrate billions in investment downtown, but poverty in the neighborhoods.”
Kinloch also said crime still needs to be addressed. “It’s time we reckoned with reality, that far too many Detroiters feel left out.”
The continued growth of the city could be at stake since Duggan, who is running for Michigan’s governor in 2026 as an independent, has helmed Detroit as it exited the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history and surged back to respectability following decades of economic hardship. The former prosecutor and medical center chief has overseen a massive anti-blight campaign and pushed affordable housing developments across the city.
The next mayor will inherit a city on much firmer footing than the one Duggan was elected to lead in 2013 when an emergency manager installed by the state to oversee the city’s flailing finances filed for bankruptcy on its behalf.
Detroit shed or restructured about $7 billion in debt and exited bankruptcy in December 2014. A state-appointed board managed the city’s finances for several years. Detroit has had 12 consecutive years of balanced budgets.
Developers have built hundreds of affordable housing units in the city, and more than 25,000 vacant and derelict homes and buildings have been demolished.
The next mayor will be under pressure to maintain that progress and continue to keep the city’s financial and population growth going. In 2023, the census estimated that Detroit’s population rose to 633,218 from 631,366 the previous year. It was the first time the city had shown population growth in decades.
Detroit also is becoming a destination for visitors. The 2024 NFL draft held downtown set a record with more than 775,000 in attendance.
New hotels are popping up in and around downtown. But perhaps the most visual example of the city’s turnaround has been the renovation of the once-blighted monolithic Michigan Central train station.
For decades, the massive building just west of downtown symbolized all that was wrong with Detroit. That’s before Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford Motor Co. stepped in and bought the old Michigan Central and adjacent properties. It reopened in 2024 following a six-year, multimillion-dollar renovation that created a hub for mobility projects.
While no longer a manufacturing powerhouse, Detroit’s economy still is intertwined with the auto industry, which currently faces uncertainties due to tariffs threatened and imposed by the Trump administration. Stellantis, the maker of Jeep and Ram vehicles, has two facilities in Detroit. The automaker said last month that its preliminary estimates show a $2.68 billion net loss in the first half of the year due to U.S. tariffs and some hefty charges.