... and here we go with part two of my series at The American Prospect on the strange case of political leadership in Detroit. This is "Racing to Run a City Without a Motor."
Perhaps the most amazing story of the Detroit mayoral race is that the candidates are running like it matters.
The city is in the throes of bankruptcy, with nearly $20 billion in debts and long-term liabilities. It’s too soon to tell what settlement or terms Detroit will have to abide by in the years to come. Meanwhile, emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a lawyer appointed by Governor Rick Snyder in March, has the authority of both mayor and council for at least another year. He’s using that authority, too, leaving Mayor Dave Bing (who is not running for re-election) with little decision-making power in his final months in office. Facing this new governance, several city councilmembers opted to resign, or to not run for re-election this year. The president pro tem left for a $225,000 a year job in Orr’s office.
One couldn’t be blamed for thinking that this year’s mayoral election would be anti-climatic, positioning an incoming mayor as nothing more than a placeholder as Detroit moves through the fire of transformation. Whoever wins the 2013 mayoral race is going to be what amounts to an adviser for Orr, at least through the end of the emergency manager’s term in late 2014. And yet, the campaign has become a soap opera, with the two men on the November ballot—Democrats Mike Duggan and Benny Napoleon—battling each other with brute strength.
See part one, on Dave Bing's complicated mayorship, here (and a touch more of the backstory here).
A few thoughts: I appreciate how writing a series is a sort of sneaky way to do longform journalism that you might otherwise not find a home. But a series is also its own thing -- the pacing over time is a different material to work with. (Related: Megan Twohey's five-part Reuters investigation is one of the best I've ever read: beautifully written, revelatory, urgent, and perfectly integrated). Anyway, I'd like to experiment more with the serial model of journalism. This Prospect project as just a two-parter, but it's whetted my appetite.
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