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The new ad
The Michigan Democratic Party launched a new digital ad campaign Thursday blaming ex-Detroit Mayor Duggan for mismanaging a scandal involving potentially hundreds of demolition sites filled with harmful contaminants that pose health risks to residents.
The first ad, 1-minute, 9-seconds, which is running on social media platforms, concludes that Duggan can't be trusted. The party did not disclose how much it will spend on the ad campaign.
Duggan, 67, who finished his 12th year as mayor in December, left the Democratic Party to run as an independent for governor, a move that has angered the Democratic Party. It fears the ex-mayor will siphon off enough Democratic votes to swing the election in favor of Republicans.
The ad is just the latest attack on Duggan by the Democratic Party. In early January, for example, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel told reporters about Duggan: “Let’s be clear, this campaign is nothing but an expensive and self serving ego trip on a road to nowhere."
In a press release promoting the new attack ad, Hertel said:
“Mike Duggan has put the health and well-being of children and families at risk after he spread toxic, poisonous dirt throughout Detroit. The repeated failures and callous disregard from Duggan are shameful, and because of him, hundreds of sites in neighborhoods across the city are now filled with dangerous and harmful contaminants that pose serious risks to those living around them."
Andrea Bitely, Duggan's chief communications officer, said in a statement to Deadline Detroit:
"Just once I'd like to see the Michigan Democratic Party run an ad about what they stand for. They are nothing but predictable — they stand for nothing but tearing their opponents down. The city discovered the contaminated dirt, the city removed the contaminated dirt, and the city is holding the contractors accountable."
In late December, days before leaving office, Duggan held a press conference saying that separate investigations, including one by the Detroit Police Department, were underway to determine how many demolition sites in the city contain contaminated backfill and whether an excavation company defrauded citizens by using tainted material. The state Department of Environment, Great Lakes & Energy is also investigating.
"As we have for the last 12 years, we will test every single site with suspected contaminated backfill, we will immediately remove any soil found unacceptable, and we will pursue reimbursement from the responsible contractor,” Duggan said at the time.
The Democrats' new commercial begins with Duggan boasting in 2015 that "we made it very difficult for you to bring in soil unless we were confident of where it came from."
Then it cuts to the voice of freelance reporter Tom Perkins speaking in a recent interview on WDET about his article in The Guardian about the toxic dirt.
"The Duggan administration made a surprise announcement that it had accidentally spread a bunch of toxic dirt throughout the city on home demolition sites," Perkins says in the interview. "They refused to tell me what was in the dirt. I pressed them for 4 or 5 days on it, and they just would not say what was in the pits."
"There’s lots of ways people can be exposed to this and that it’s a real risk," he said.
Duggan is then heard saying: "When we are going into your neighborhood and putting dirt into the lot next door, it has been certified as clean."
Shortly after, Perkins says: "Kids who are playing on the lots, who come into contact with it, Maybe we’re not eating dirt, but some people are planting gardens or parks. Duggan’s skating out of town, leaving these pits full of toxic waste next to people. But he got his political win, and that’s what he’s campaigning on."
The commercial ends with a statement flashing across the screen:
"Duggan’s mismanagement is costing taxpayers millions and hurting our kids. He can’t be trusted."
