The Detroit City Charter says you have to live in Detroit at least one year before running for mayor. That makes sense. Unfortunately, the charter’s muddled language has created confusion about how that year of residency is calculated.
Mike Duggan moved to Detroit on April 16, 2012. He filed his nominating petitions to run for mayor on April 2, 2013. His campaign believed, not irresponsibly, that the charter means he has to be a resident for a full year before the filing deadline, which was May 14 this year.
The Detroit Election Commission affirmed that interpretation last month. However, Wayne County Circuit Judge Lita Popke says no, you must be a Detroit resident for 365 days before the day signatures are physically submitted to the City Clerk. She therefore ruled that Duggan can’t run.
Here's the problem: If another potential candidate moved to Detroit the same day as Duggan, but waited until the filing deadline to submit his petitions, that candidate would be eligible to run. Even though both Duggan and our fictional candidate have the same Detroit bona fides, one is legally a Detroiter eligible to stand for election and the other isn’t. That’s absurd.
I don’t mean to argue that Judge Popke’s decision to boot Duggan is necessarily wrong. I’m not a lawyer, and from a layman’s perspective, Popke’s ruling seems reasonable based on the charter language. However, Duggan's apparent misstep is the mother of all technicalities.
The question isn't when he moved to Detroit, nor is there any question that he established his residency in time to qualify as a candidate. The issue is when he filed paperwork.
It never should have come to this.
Sound + Fury = 0
The residency requirement is poorly written. We know this because the Detroit Election Commission interpreted it one way — the Charter means you have to have been a Detroiter for a year as of the filing deadline — and a judge ruled another way — you have to be a Detroiter a full year before walking petitions into the clerk’s office.
Duggan confirms Wednesday morning that he's appealing. Then we’ll see what the Court of Appeals thinks. At which point, the state Supreme Court will probably get a say. Their ruling is the only one that ultimately matters. The rest of this is sound and fury signifying nothing.
As a result, Detroit’s mayoral primary, just eight weeks away, will be fought before judges in a courtroom as much as it is fought before voters in Detroit’s neighborhoods. All because the definition of a qualified candidate is open for debate.
This isn’t even about Mike Duggan in the end.
Some folks believe Duggan is Detroit's indispensable man, Cory Booker crossed with Jack Welch and wrapped in bacon. Really, the former DMC CEO is just an above-average political operator in a town that has been too long impressed by mediocre political operators. Detroit will endure with or without a Duggan administration.
This Isn't Quantum Physics
The real issue is why charter language on something as straightforward as a residency deadline isn't airtight. This isn't complex stuff.
The residency rule is intended to ensure all candidates have been Detroiters at least a minimum time. The letter of the law, as interpreted by Judge Popke, means the residency rule is a moving target defined one way for a candidate who turns in petitions on date X and another for a candidate who turns in petitions on date Y.
If this ruling stands, it exposes a major defect in Detroit’s new charter. The law is supposed to be a shield, not a sword. That’s especially true with election law because a political system in which candidates can lawyer each other over technicalities and ballot access is a system where the candidates with the best lawyers will almost always win elections. That may be good news for students in America’s overcrowded law schools, but it’s a terrible way to select leaders.
Moving forward, and regardless of Duggan's fate, Detroit would be best served by modifying the charter so the residency standard is perfectly clear: You must be a resident for a full year before a specific fixed benchmark date. It doesn’t matter if that date is the filing deadline, the primary election, or even Jan. 1 of the year of the election, so long as it's clearly the same date for all candidates.
Judges don’t need to be deciding who is and isn’t Detroit-enough to run for office days before voters are supposed to go to the polls.
