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The
Michigan Socialist | News | Michigan
Detroit City
Council elections:
Nothing to smile about
By MARTIN
SCHREADER
Editor, the Michigan
Socialist
MANY PROGRESSIVES throughout the Detroit area
are celebrating the victory of JoAnn Watson in the recent
Detroit City Council election.
Watson, a liberal community activist and the
first woman to serve as director of the Detroit chapter of the
NAACP, edged out longtime Detroit politician and former cop,
Gil Hill.
Watson's victory was clearly an upset; most
political analysts saw Hill's stature as being able to carry
him past his opponent fairly easily.
However, they did not count on Watson running
a strong grassroots campaign, and successfully lining up
several popular local politicians in her corner.
What likely tipped the balance in favor of
Watson was, in fact, the endorsement of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
... of Hill.
The endorsement by the mayor, whose popularity
has sunk to an all-time low due to allegations of nepotism and
corruption, was effectively a "kiss of death" for Hill.
Since taking office, Kilpatrick has become
infamous for his frontal attacks on city workers, as well as
firefighters and police officers.
But Watson's election, hailed by mainstream
liberals and radicals throughout the city, is really nothing
about which to smile or celebrate.
In fact, it would be fair to say that Watson's
victory was Pyrrhic.
First, only about 12 percent of eligible
voters went to the polls, and Watson only received a little
more than half of those ballots cast.
This means that Watson can count on a
"grassroots" base of, at the most, only about 6 or 7 percent
of the voters in the City. Certainly, that's nothing to
celebrate. Second, many of Watson's votes came as a result of
(or, in spite of) a negative campaign that saw a new low in
sleaze and attacks.
Instead of focusing on those issues that
separate her politics from Hill, Watson ran commercials
pinning on him responsibility for a rise in crime and
corruption (a responsibility that cannot be ascribed to any
one political figure in Detroit, Michigan or even the U.S.).
Watson will be finishing out the term for the
late Brenda Scott, who died last September after complications
from elective surgery, and will face re-election in 2005.
She will be the all-important ninth member of
the City Council, which is currently divided into two factions
-- one firmly in the pocket of the mayor and the state
government, and another, which seeks more "home rule" for
Detroit. | 
