Detroit has never had a female mayor, and there hasn’t been a woman candidate in Detroit’s mayoral general election since 1993.
Current contenders – City Council President Mary Sheffield, former council president and ex-nonprofit CEO Saunteel Jenkins, and two-time mayoral candidate DaNetta Simpson – are all seeking to change that by moving forward in next week’s primary election.
Both Sheffield and Jenkins acknowledge there have been times in their political careers when they’ve been underestimated and overlooked — and their leadership undermined — because of their gender.
“For me, I’ve always just tried to lead with integrity and ensure that we’re delivering for everyday Detroiters. But I think unfortunately women always have to work harder, and oftentimes have to overcome a lot of different stigmas and barriers others don’t have to face,” said Sheffield, the race’s acknowledged frontrunner.
“As a woman who also prides myself on being kind, and I’m soft-spoken, people assume that is weakness, that means I’m timid, when in fact I’ve done many tough things and have had no problems making tough decisions throughout my life and career,” added Jenkins.
A 2023 Pew Research Center national survey found that 54% of Americans believe that woman seeking high political office face a major obstacle: having to do more to prove themselves.
“You gotta look at the national read. How people respond to women and just in general,” said Karen Dumas, a communications strategist who has worked as a chief communications officer under former Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and director of community relations for former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Detroit is actually an outlier among major U.S. cities in having never elected a woman as mayor. Among the U.S.’s most-populated cities, 21 of 25 have (or had) women serve as mayors, with New York being the most notable exception. Also, Michigan’s largest cities (aside from Detroit) have all had female mayors, including Grand Rapids, Flint, Battle Creek, Lansing, Ann Arbor, Warren and Southfield.
Women politicians can be judged differently
In 1972, Erma Henderson became the first Black person elected to the Detroit City Council, going on to serve as council president for 12 years. She entered the 1989 mayoral race, challenging incumbent Coleman A. Young, who was vying for his fourth term. Though Henderson was defeated in the primary, she was not the last Black woman who aspired to be elected to the city’s top job.
Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Sharon McPhail ran for mayor in 1993.
“We only raised, for the primary, $105,000. And there were 26 people in that race and I won. I beat all of them in the primary. In fact I remain the only woman (in Detroit) to win a primary for mayor,” McPhail told attorney Mike Morse on a 2020 episode of his “Open Mike Podcast.”
However, in the general election McPhail succumbed to Dennis Archer, the second Black man to sit on the Michigan Supreme Court, losing 56% to 43%.
“Dennis was in a better position from the start of the election. He started a year and a half beforehand, he was able to build name identification,” said political consultant Eric Foster. “He was able to get people through the identification phase and through the acceptance phase before Sharon got into the race.”
Khary Frazier, the Founder of Detroit is Different, an online magazine, said he watched McPhail fight through the bias and sexism that came with seeking a highly visible executive position in the 1990s.
“I think Sharon’s one of the most brilliant people I know, but one of the most misunderstood ever. With that being said, some of the stuff she dealt with speaks to what society has dealt with,” he said.
McPhail talked about how she felt the Detroit Free Press intentionally tried to negatively portray her by placing a Barbie doll ad next to a Q&A piece written on her after the primary election.
“That was because Paul Hubbard’s wife, he was in the race too, he was a social worker in the city,” she said in the same podcast interview. “When they asked her what she thought of me, the first woman to ever win a primary for mayor, she said that I was an ‘overly aggressive Barbie doll.’ ”
Frazier said he’s seen several examples over the years in Detroit where a woman politician who comes across as assertive or cocky is looked at as “bitchy” whereas a man asserting himself in that same way is looked at as providing “true leadership.” Dumas added that this was something she experienced regularly.
“When I was in the Bing administration, the decisions I made would have been applauded if I was a man, but I was called the high-heeled mafia for just trying to get people to do what they are supposed to,” Dumas said with a laugh. “But I had never let that inhibit who I am or how I move forward.”
Detroit has supported female governors
On a state level, Detroit has supported women in executive leadership. Michigan has had two women governors, Jennifer Granholm (2003-2011) and Gretchen Whitmer, who was first elected in 2018.
In that 2018 race, Whitmer dominated Wayne County, winning the Democratic primary with 43.7% of votes, while Dr. Abdul El-Sayed garnered 32.1%, and Shri Thanedar 24.3%. Whitmer went on to outgain Republican Bill Schuette in Wayne County, earning 70.3% of the votes before being reelected in 2022.
There aren’t any concrete conclusions that can be found in the comparison between Detroit’s support for gubernatorial and lack of the same for mayoral women candidates.
“I think women can be effective leaders, but I’m not so sure what they (the voters) are ready for here in the City of Detroit,” Dumas said.
In February, Sheffield jumped out to a commanding lead with 34% of the vote via a poll conducted on behalf of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus. In July, a poll conducted by Target-Insyght showed Sheffield still in the lead with 34% of the vote. That same poll showed Jenkins in the second spot, garnering 17% while Simpson had less than 1%. Foster said he believes that the familiarity both Jenkins and Sheffield have with the voter base has played an important role in this race so far.
The two highest vote getters on August 5 will move forward from the primary.
“Both Saunteel and Mary have been on the ballot before. They’ve had to go through the process with the voting consumer to buy them as a candidate and to stay with them as their selection even when other campaigns tried to get them to change their buying decisions,” said Foster.
Sheffield said she thinks we are seeing “tremendous progress” in the perception of female politicians. “Every time a woman is elected in these seats, it continues to show what we can do as leaders and the significance of what it means to have women in leadership,” said Sheffield.
Jenkins also cited improvements she’s seen.
“When I interned for Maryann Mahaffey in 1998, there were not a lot of women in political leadership throughout the state of Michigan or around the country … but the fact that more women are involved in politics, I think, is an improvement,” Jenkins added.
Longtime Detroit resident and civil rights activist Edith Lee Payne thinks that the possibility of a woman being Detroit’s next mayor should be celebrated — but more for the candidates’ qualifications than their gender.
“I don’t think it will be because it’s politically correct, not because it’s time, just because they have demonstrated their ability,” she said. “So without putting that female gender lens on the person, let’s just strip away that and look at that individual and what that individual brings to the office of mayor. Let’s look at this first.”
DaNetta Simpson agreed: “Find a way to help everybody, and that’s history. Being a woman, it doesn’t matter — it matters what you’ve done.”