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Michael Edward Duggan (born July 15, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 75th mayor of Detroit from 2014 to 2026. Duggan previously served as the Wayne County Prosecutor from 2001 to 2004, and as the deputy county executive of Wayne County from 1987 to 2001.
Duggan was a member of the Democratic Party until 2024, when he became an independent. He is currently an independent candidate in the 2026 Michigan gubernatorial election.
Beginning in 2004, Duggan was president and CEO of the Detroit Medical Center. He was in this position when the formerly nonprofit DMC was sold to publicly traded Vanguard Health Systems in 2010.
Instead, he mounted a write-in campaign, and received 52 percent of the vote in the August primary election. Under Detroit's two-round system, the two highest vote-getters run against one another in the general election, which meant that Duggan ran against second-place finisher Benny Napoleon, who had won 29 percent of the vote. Duggan ran with the campaign slogan, "Every neighborhood has a future", on a platform of financial turnaround, crime reduction, and economic development. He received 55 percent of the vote in the general election in November, becoming the first white mayor of the now-majority-black city since Roman Gribbs, who served from 1970 to 1974.
Duggan had pledged to create a municipally owned insurance company, dubbed "D Insurance". However, the bill failed to pass in the Michigan Legislature.
Detroit’s unemployment rate declined during Duggan’s first term, reaching 7.5 percent by 2017; though the city's population had also declined. Duggan also created the "Grow Detroit’s Young Talent" program, a youth summer employment program that employed thousands of youth.
In 2017, the city began issuing Detroit ID, a municipal identification card, which helps enable residents without a social security number to access city services and some banks.
Toward the end of his first term, Duggan established a city office focused on sustainability and environmental planning, which later produced a citywide sustainability action plan. Duggan’s stance on graffiti drew praise for his cleanup efforts and criticism over fines imposed on property owners for graffiti not removed within seven days. He also required murals to be registered with the city. Inside Detroit's merciless graffiti crackdown
In 2018, the city of Detroit was released from state oversight, giving its municipal government full control over its operations for the first time in four decades.
In 2019, Detroit’s Office of Inspector General released a report concluding that Duggan had provided preferential treatment to the nonprofit Make Your Date by "unilaterally" directing city resources. The report also found that his chief of staff Alexis Wiley and two other top aides, had ordered public employees to erase emails having to do with to the nonprofit Make Your Date. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel launched an investigation into this. In September 2020, Investigative Reporters and Editors awarded Duggan and the city the dubious honor of the "Golden Padlock Award", recognizing them as the most secretive United States agency or individual.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Duggan was credited with having implemented efforts such as mass testing. In March 2021, Duggan initially declined to order 6,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, saying that he believed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were better options. After backlash, Duggan declared he would no longer decline the vaccine.
Duggan spent much of the last days of his second term managing the city’s rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine. In February 2021, Duggan went to Washington D.C. to meet with other state and local leaders and President Joe Biden to discuss the responses to the pandemic.
In December 2021, Duggan announced plans to demolish the abandoned former American Motors Headquarters building.
Duggan and other city Council Members developed a $203 million plan to provide affordable housing for Detroit residents.
In 2023, Duggan proposed a land value tax, which would double the tax rate paid on bare land while reducing taxes on homes, businesses, and other property investments. State Representative Stephanie Young introduced legislation to create a land value tax. In October, the land value tax failed to pass in the Michigan House of Representatives.
In 2023, Detroit recorded its first year of net population growth since 1957 according to estimates by the United States Census Bureau. Prior to this release, Duggan had filed lawsuits alleging that the bureau had undercounted the city's population.Multiple sources:
In November 2024, Duggan announced that he would not seek a fourth term as mayor.
On June 29, 2021, Duggan announced his engagement to Dr. Sonia Hassan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Duggan and Hassan had been publicly linked prior to his divorce from Maher, and their relationship was the subject of public scrutiny and whether Duggan and the city gave preferential treatment to a program that Hassan led at Wayne State University. He married Hassan in 2021.
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