Kinloch believes in miracles. He may need one to beat Sheffield in Detroit mayor race

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2 days ago

It never occurred to me I was in trouble after finishing second in the 2021 primary election that determined which two candidates would advance in the race to represent Detroit's 4th City Council district.
After all, I was a first-time candidate who survived a vigorously-contested race in a crowded field that included a prominent lawyer, a charismatic community leader with an army of enthusiastic volunteers and a candidate who had been on the ballot for just about every election held over the past several years — who also was favored by progressives, funded by billionaire Dan Gilbert's political action committee and boosted by a couple of dark money entities who spent a chunk of change to promote her candidacy.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, I thought finishing second with more than 24% was just swell — especially since the first-place finisher, Latisha Johnson, only got 32% of the vote.
It seemed to me that left 44% of the vote up for grabs.
It wasn't until my campaign braintrust met with a voting data guru that I began to worry.
"You can still win," I remember him telling us, as we packed my dining room on a sweaty August evening. "But it's going to be tough."
Then I started hearing from political movers and shakers who had been sitting on the sidelines that they didn't think I could overtake Johnson because she had finished 8% ahead of me.
That's EIGHT LOUSY PERCENT, people!
I was able to convince some of those skeptics not to go all-in with Johnson. But the help I had been led to expect before the primary never materialized.
My share of the votes increased by 15% in the general election, but it wasn't enough.
Johnson picked up 29% more votes, and won the election by a margin of 60% to 39%.
Which is why she's in City Hall ... and I'm writing this column.
I share this anecdote to illustrate the challenge the Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr. faces after finishing second in the crowded Tuesday, Aug. 5, mayoral primary with more than 17% of the vote to City Council President Mary Sheffield's nearly 51%.
The race, of course, isn't over.
Unlike the primary election, where candidates speak almost exclusively about themselves, candidates in a general election often spend a lot more time speaking about their opponent — and not in an especially flattering way.
Events can propel a candidate forward, while missteps can hold a candidate back.
My Free Press colleagues and I will dig deeper into the finalists and, as part of our mission to inform the public and do our duty to defend democracy, tell you what we find. Not to help or hurt either candidate, but to give you the news you need to make an informed decision before casting your next ballot.
History and conventional wisdom say Kinloch will need something like a miracle to overtake Sheffield between now and Nov. 4, when the polls close and we find out who will replace Mayor Mike Duggan when he completes his third term on Jan. 1.
In the meantime, let's take a look at some of the challenges facing Kinloch — as well as a potential advantage — and muse over how Sheffield might handle her transition from front-runner to de facto mayor-elect. Then I'll share what I've heard about whether Duggan will weigh in on the race, as well as ponder whether it makes sense for him to say anything about who should take his place in the mayoral Manoogian Mansion before he officially becomes a full-time gubernatorial candidate.
Miracle worker
If anyone can overcome a 34% gap, it may be Kinloch.
He built Triumph Church from just a few dozen parishioners to a multicampus megachurch with campuses ranging from Wayne to Genesee counties and claiming more than 40,000 members.
Of course, it took more than three months to accomplish that monumental task.
Some of the urgent challenges facing Kinloch include raising money and recruiting more volunteers. That's not to say Kinloch doesn't already have a robust team, it's just that when you need to make up a lot of ground, you can't possibly have enough supporters knocking on doors for you.
A review of Kinloch's latest campaign finance report shows that most of the 900 or so donations he received between Jan. 1 and July 20 were small contributions, presumably from parishioners and other regular folks who believe in him and his message.
Unlike Sheffield's campaign finance report, which is chock full of donations from CEOs and billionaires, Kinloch's report showed very few donations from executives or other folks who can afford the $8,325 maximum campaign contribution allowed under Michigan law.
Kinloch also spent most of the $400,000 or so he raised, which was slightly more than half of the $737,000 Sheffield raised in the same period. And the 56 grand he reported in the bank as of July 20 was a fraction of the $451,000 Sheffield had on hand at that time.
Both candidates have benefited from third-party support, including political action committees, unions, and nonprofits spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in dark money — a term that describes money donated to nonprofits that can spend it to promote candidates without disclosing where they got the money or what they're spending it on. (Nevertheless, I've uncovered hundreds of thousands in dark money spent to support Kinloch and Sheffield with television ads and mailings.)
While some of Kinloch's biggest and most visible supporters, like the UAW, may double down to protect their investment in his candidacy (and to protect themselves in case Sheffield wins and turns out to be vindictive), Sheffield will find it much easier to get her donors to write another check. And she will surely attract new donors now that she appears all but certain to be Detroit's next mayor.
That makes Kinloch's chance of keeping up with Sheffield's fundraising, let alone surpassing her, virtually impossible.
Volunteers, like donors, also like to sign on with perceived favorites.
While that could make it hard for Kinloch to get more folks to jump onboard, Sheffield's problem may be finding a bandwagon big enough for all of her new friends.
Kinloch does have a couple cards to play that may help him.
Elections are often about change. Sheffield has cast herself as the heir apparent to Duggan. So she's the status quo candidate.
Kinloch is clearly the outsider, and pushed that message during the primary. I'm not sure change will be as big a factor this time, however, since some of the voters I spoke with said the person they most wanted to vote for this time was Duggan.
Then there's the matter of what Sheffield says versus what she does.
Kinloch could play up how she has used city resources to promote her political ambitions, and how she says she doesn't take money from billionaires, when she absolutely does.
Could pushing those narratives be enough to turn the tide?
Perhaps, but I reported all of this before the primary ... and Sheffield got even more votes than anyone expected.
Ultimately, if Kinloch can't raise enough cash to spread the word far and wide, whatever message he has won't make a difference.
Everyone loves a winner
A hot rumor in the days leading up to the primary was that Duggan would endorse a candidate after the votes were counted. Given his good working relationship with Sheffield, she was considered most likely to win Hizzoner's blessing.
Regardless of what Duggan may have been thinking, endorsing Sheffield becomes a lot easier after she collected slightly more than half of the votes cast in the primary.
The danger for Duggan in choosing a candidate is that he risks alienating any voters who favored other candidates. By running for governor as an independent, Duggan is already in danger of ticking off voters he'll need in overwhelmingly Democratic Detroit. If the primary vote had been spread more evenly among the candidates, I would have predicted that Duggan, who has been careful not to seem to favor any of his would-be successors, keeps his peace.
Now, backing Sheffield brings much less risk.
It also potentially brings much less reward.
Sheffield can rightly feel like she didn't need Duggan's help in putting together a spectacularly successful primary campaign, which means she may also feel like she doesn't owe him anything if she is elected mayor and he asks for help with his gubernatorial campaign.
Armchair political quarterbacks thinking Kinloch could catch Sheffield if every candidate in the primary got behind him and, more importantly, brought their voters with them, are, to put it kindly, delusional.
Losing candidates often hope to salvage something from their effort by backing the front-runner.
Back in 2021, all but one of the candidates in my race endorsed Johnson after the primary. Even after the workhorse who finished third with 19% of the primary vote endorsed me, we weren't able to generate enough additional support to catch up to Johnson.
Even if the losing candidates stay out of the race, their donors surely will not.
People still write checks because they like and believe in a candidate. Most of the biggest checks, however, come from people who part with their hard-earned lucre because they want to make a friend in a high place.
The "Anybody-But-Sheffield" crowd still may pony up for Kinloch. But my bet is that the number of contributors hoping to hedge their bet will send a lot more dough Sheffield's way.
See how they run
Kinloch strategically skipped most of the candidate forums held during the primary, preferring not to risk getting down and dirty with the pack when he could be knocking on doors or doing less perilous campaign tasks.
His team was so certain they would finish in the top two that they figured it made more sense to lay low until the general election.
To their credit, they made the runoff.
It's also possible Kinloch alienated potential supporters by seeming too aloof to appear with the other candidates. That's certainly the narrative his opponents peddled to whomever would listen.
We'll never know whether that's why Sheffield exceeded expectations in the primary — pollsters and pundits expected her to get around 35% of the vote — and why Kinloch didn't get much more than 17%, even with his massive congregation and their family and friends.
My question now is whether Sheffield will pass on forums and other invitations to appear with Kinloch.
As the perceived front-runner, Sheffield took more shots than any other candidate at forums and debates during the primary. And she didn't like it, often asking for a minute to rebut criticisms clearly directed at her, or trying to speak over the moderator if they didn't give her a chance to defend herself.
Now that Sheffield is undeniably the front-runner, Kinloch's best chance to climb is by pulling her down — and I bet she'll have even less patience for that kind of guff.
As a gifted orator comfortable communicating with a large audience, Kinloch could outshine Sheffield if they share a stage.
If he misspeaks or stumbles, he has nothing to lose.
If Sheffield puts her foot in her mouth, she could choke on it and let her lead slip away.
I'm sure Sheffield's advisers are telling her to limit her engagements with Kinloch, and to try to avoid any joint appearance that isn't before a friendly crowd or hosted by an organization or union that already supports her.
If she is given that advice, and takes it, that would be a shame.
Not because everyone loves a food fight, but because we deserve to see how our leaders perform under pressure. And, make no mistake, things are going to get hotter for Detroit's next mayor as some post-bankruptcy costs kick in and the hundreds of millions in federal aid that helped Duggan succeed won't be coming from Washington in the foreseeable future.
The bigger shame would be if Kinloch and his camp decide that Sheffield's lead is insurmountable and that the race is essentially already over.
Kinloch vowed at his primary night party to fight block-to-block. But if the post-primary support he was expecting fails to materialize, or if he finds that most of his calls go straight to voicemail, or if volunteers stop showing up in significant numbers, he may convince himself the best way to bring about the change he says Detroit needs is by focusing on his ministry.
In the first sermon Kinloch gave after reports of a domestic violence conviction from 30 years ago surfaced late in the campaign, he said he was "19, stupid, undeveloped and an immature young man" and learned from his mistake.
He accused his opponents of "trying to use intimidation and bullying tactics by hiring surrogates and operatives to throw rocks and hide their hands.
"I didn't ask for the fight," he said, his voice rising, "but if you want one, you're going to get it!"
Then he told his cheering parishioners: "Ain't no punk in this pulpit!"
We're about to find out.
M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, director of student investigative reporting program Eye On Michigan, and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at [e-mail] or follow him on X at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The Rev. Solomon Kinloch may need miracle to become Detroit mayor
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