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Gabe Leland. (Photo: Youtube)
Residents of Detroit's District 7 can begin gathering signatures to remove federally indicted City Councilmember Gabe Leland from office.
The Wayne County Election Commission on Tuesday approved the language of a recall petition filed early this month by community activists.
"We need proper representation in that seat, this isn't just about the federal probe," Ramon Jackson told Deadline Detroit after filing the petition Jan. 3. "He should have been recalled and out of there even before he got indicted ... he's being doing wrong ever since he got in there."
Leland was indicted last year for allegedly soliciting a $15,000 cash bribe from a local business owner. In a recent profile on the embattled councilman, Jackson and a number of District 7 leaders charged that he's put special interests before residents of his underserved district, where median income hovers around $15,000.
Jackson and community leaders behind the recall effort will have 60 days to gather what they believe to be between 2,000 and 3,000 signatures from registered voters in the distirct. Michigan law requires that petitioners gather the equivalent of 25 percent of votes cast in the district for governor in the last election before a recall can take place.
Leland has shown no signs he'll step down as attacks on him intensify.
"I'm a problem solver and the community knows where I stand," he told the Free Press this month as the recall effort began. "I'm not going to let a former opponent politicize the electoral process. I will not bend to this political attack, and neither will the community."
That "former opponent" is Joanna Underwood, an activist helping with the recall effort. Underwood, now a Detroit charter commission member, ran against Leland in 2017 as he sought his second term. She has said she ran only because Leland torpedoed a community benefits ordinance designed to include lower-income residents in the city's comeback, which has been spurred by tax-subsidized development projects.
Leland went on to call the activists a "rogue group" trying to "steal a council seat from the good people of the 7th distirct." At least a half-dozen leaders from various corners of his district have echoed Jackson and Underwood's concerns in interviews with Deadline.
In addition to the federal indictment on bribery charges, Leland is alleged to have extorted the former owner of the now-closed Centre Park Bar for thousands of dollars in food and booze.
He also voted to approve more than $2 million in city contracts with companies affiliated with his former girlfriend, Jennifer Fiore. She's the daughter of Gasper Fiore, who was a year ago convicted of bribery. Leland did not disclose their relationship prior to his votes. When he learned the Fiore family’s towing operation was under federal investigation, he met with Police Chief James Craig to pump him for information, making Craig so uncomfortable he told The Detroit News he “contacted the FBI as soon as [Leland] left the room.”
Leland will have a chance to challenge the recall effort if it advances.
