Detroit residents will elect a new mayor on November 4. There are two candidates on the ballot: current City Council President Mary Sheffield and the Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr.
Kinloch spoke to Michigan Public's Morning Edition host Doug Tribou about his priorities for the city, Detroit's role in the state of Michigan as a whole, and why he felt this was the right moment to get into politics for the first time.
Doug Tribou: You have had a long career in ministry and have served as senior pastor of Triumph Church for 27 years. Why did you decide to get into politics and run for mayor?
Solomon Kinloch: I've always been in the people's business, and so this is just an extension of that work. When you look at the fact that we are in such a critical time where the majority of the children in the city of Detroit live in poverty. When you look at the fact that poverty is the highest it has been since 2017, that the violent crime rate is the second in the nation — although many are touting decrease in crime — we cannot stay where we are. We have to be intentional and intense about how we move the city forward.
"We are in such a critical time where the majority of the children in the city of Detroit live in poverty."Detroit mayoral candidate Solomon Kinloch Jr.
DT: What are your top three priorities, if you’re elected?
SK: One, we have to make sure that we are not only providing people protection, but also prevention. Crime is still a problem. As long as I'm still standing in my pulpit, eulogizing our children and our residents who've been taken from this life too soon, we have not gone far enough. And so we will continue to create a safe city.
The other is affordable housing. We have to be intentional about building housing models where people can have housing and opportunities that live in this city. The other thing we have to make sure is that we are partnering with the school district to ensure that our children are in an environment where not only they will survive, but they will continue to thrive.
Economic development has to be the bedrock of all of this because the best way to deal with poverty is opportunities, is with jobs.
DT: Well, I want to dig in a bit to some of the priorities that you've mentioned. Let's talk more about safety. How would you improve safety in the city of Detroit and make policing more effective?
SK: Well, one, we want people who police to be the people who are from the community, so police where you live. We will continue to drive recruitment of residents and citizens to be a part of the solution. The other thing is that we will make sure that we're building better relationships between community and the law enforcement by making sure that we have liaisons between the community and the department to make sure we're improving those breaches of trust that have taken place.
We want to create safe havens for our children, engaging faith-based and other stakeholders by offering opportunities like we've done. Even at Triumph Church, we created programs where children can start off early in the morning to late in the afternoon in order to make sure that they had an alternative to being on the street.
DT: You mentioned economic opportunity and creating jobs, and the city just saw a record population increase last year. More than 6,700 new Detroit residents in 2024 alone. The growth in the recent couple of years is the first growth in decades there. What more work do you think is needed to keep young people in the city and to attract new residents?
"Just imagine if those same tax credits, tax captures, and incentives that we give to big business, that we use those same incentives for small businesses."Rev. Solomon Kinloch, Jr.
SK: Well, small business is going to be the bedrock of any revitalization and renaissance in the city of Detroit. We have 38,000 small businesses in the city. And what we want to do is make sure that those businesses and those entrepreneurs get the same access to the resources that we give big business and big development downtown.
Just imagine if those same tax credits, tax captures, and incentives that we give to big business, that we use those same incentives for small businesses, and they hired one employee apiece. That would be 38,000 new jobs. That would be one of the largest job growths we've seen in recent times.
DT: Infrastructure is a key concern for many Detroit residents as well. There's concerns about flooding in different parts of the city — some neighborhoods and along some of the freeways and side streets as well, and then just generally bridges, roads, etc. How would you try to address that?
SK: Yeah. You know, the problem is that like most residents, including myself, we thought the drainage fees and the sewage tax, rain tax, was resources that were going to go more intensely into resolving that. We got a long ways to go, particularly when you look at parts of the city that have been labeled flood zone, and now they're restricted and restrained from getting those development dollars.
According to the Department of Sewage, those monies have dried up. We're going to have to continue to work with the Water Authority and with the department and the state in order to come up with ways that we can stop kicking this can down the road.
DT: I'd like to ask you about Detroit's relationship to the state of Michigan as a whole. The city is the largest city in the state of Michigan. Lots of important economic activity happens in Detroit. But there's also been a push-pull about funding for Detroit at the state level and state government. There have been debates about how much funding should be spent to help Detroit in various areas.
There have also been some contentious votes that felt like a suburban-urban push-pull on regional transit. How do you see Detroit's larger role in the state of Michigan, and what role do you see the mayor playing in building those relationships?
SK: The mayor is not just a person that casts a vision, but he convenes the table. My leadership experience gives me a unique opportunity to continue to do what I've always done, and that is to build coalitions — because all of us have to get to a place where we understand that we can do more together than we can divided.
"City council leadership is not just about rubber stamping the administration."Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr.
DT: Current mayor Mike Duggan is not running for reelection. He's running for governor instead. And with certain caveats — every administration is criticized on various issues — I think it's fair to say that the three terms of the Duggan administration have broadly been viewed as a successful time for the city of Detroit.
Your opponent is City Council President Mary Sheffield, who's been on the council for 12 years. Why do you see yourself as the right person to bring change to the city, when your opponent was part of the successes that have happened over the last decade or so?
SK: Yeah, but if you want to herald the successes of 12 years, you've also got to take responsibility for the losses. We're not suggesting that some good has not been done. We're suggesting that it's not good enough.
City council leadership is not just about rubber stamping the administration. Where are the hearings? The municipal hearings? Where are the outside objective experts? Even Congress have congressional hearings to let citizens come in to say whether or not what you're doing is working. Where have we had that in the city of Detroit, despite everything that is done? Where the people can come in and say, this is actually working and this is not.
And when you look at the numbers, despite all that has been done, the majority of the children in this city are still living in poverty. And at some point, if you've had 12 years of failure, I don't know nobody who can fail in the job for 12 years and then get a promotion.
Editor's note: Some quotes in this article have been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can hear the full interview near the top of this page.
