During a September day of back-to-back meetings and campaign stops, Mary Sheffield stepped out of city hall to find her top aide waiting in the parking lot. There was a problem. 

Minutes before, during a speech in Howell, Vice President JD Vance offered to send National Guard troops to Detroit — a majority Black city still scarred by the military crackdown on its racial uprising nearly 60 years ago.

Sheffield and her chief of staff were crafting a response rejecting Vance’s offer when a white-haired man in a suit walked up, putting a fine point on the tension.

“You’re going to be under so much pressure and scrutiny as soon as you say ‘I do!’ ” he teased, referencing his belief that Sheffield would be sworn in as Detroit’s next mayor come January 2026.

“Oh, don’t put that out there!” Sheffield shot back.

After joining the Detroit City Council as its youngest-ever member and rising steadily over 12 years to become president, Sheffield is now the front-runner for Detroit’s top job. On Nov. 4, she and Triumph Church pastor Solomon Kinloch will go head-to-head to replace longtime Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running for governor in 2026.

If elected, Sheffield is poised to walk into a gauntlet. The end of nearly $1 billion in federal pandemic relief funds could mean cuts to key programs that the city — still among the nation’s poorest big cities — has come to rely on. President Donald Trump is, meanwhile, not only deploying military troops to Democrat-led urban centers, but on a mission to dismantle Medicaid and other social services vital to cities like Detroit, while waging a tariff war that the Detroit Three automakers say could cost them billions.

Sheffield’s political background may present additional challenges: A longtime champion of grassroots causes that require significant funding, as mayor she would have to square what she has promised with what’s possible, while being pulled in different directions by her corporate backers and the core supporters whose causes she has elevated. And as a 38-year-old, successful Black woman poised to be the city’s first female mayor, some political experts and residents have said she’ll face a level of scrutiny that Duggan, an older white man, largely escaped. 

Sheffield has already drawn some heat with a misstep: Days after Vance name-checked Detroit, news broke that she took six Jeezy tickets from Comerica Bank in potential violation of city ethics rules. Sheffield says she was given legal clearance — which the city’s corporation counsel confirmed — to take the tickets and she gave them away to Detroiters.

Is she ready?

Current and former city officials say Sheffield is prepared to be mayor. The Sheffield they know is sharp, energetic and exceptionally hard-working; a dedicated public servant who has taken more initiative on the council than the overwhelming majority of her peers and predecessors, and whose background fighting housing instability and other issues affecting the city’s vulnerable signals she’s in politics for the right reasons. Duggan endorsed Sheffield in late August, saying that “from the beginning” he knew she was “the most qualified person, the best prepared to be the next mayor.”

Still, “There’s anxiety because people are scared of change,” said Council member Fred Durhal, a Sheffield mayoral primary opponent-turned-supporter. “Duggan has done a great job and people are like, ‘OK where does this go?’ But she’s been there as long as he’s been there, and council has played … a significant role in how the city has moved forward.”

Sheffield says she’s sober about the challenges ahead, but she can continue to build on the progress made under Duggan, ensuring it reaches parts of the city that still are struggling. 

The optimism she projects is hard to quash.

As she pulls out of the city hall lot while fielding questions from a Free Press reporter about the threat Trump poses, Sheffield rolls down her window at the sight of a waving security worker.

“Hi mayor, can I get your autograph?!” the woman calls out.

“No, I need yours!” Sheffield replies with a broad smile, turning to the reporter to explain, “That’s my girl.” A moment later, through the still-open window comes another “Hi, mayor!” from a person Sheffield this time does not recognize, but extends the same familiarity.

Ask Sheffield whether she’s ready to be mayor, and she’ll tell you she was made for it.

Dualities abound

Framed on the wall at Sheffield’s Jefferson Avenue campaign office are two, side-by-side headshots: In one, Sheffield wears a red blazer and sports a toothy grin; in the other, she dons a black blazer and closed-mouth smirk.

“That’s both of my sides,” she says. “My little cousin, she calls me ‘mean-nice.’ I’m like, that’s a good way to put it, nice and mean.”

For Sheffield, who is a Gemini — as, she notes, was the late Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young — the “split personality” for which the zodiac sign is known can be a political asset, useful for the balancing act that awaits her if elected.

She’s outwardly polished in a uniform of pantsuit and heels, with a direct line to many of Detroit’s power brokers. But she’s unafraid to get personally involved when the city’s messy realities assert themselves. Outside the same campaign office, she has intervened in fistfights between teens and checked on multiple wayward men, including one slumped on the sidewalk with his pants down.

She’s a people person, quick to break into song and dance with supporters. But, she insists she’s also low-key. Each of her typically 12-hour days starts with a solo 5 a.m. workout, followed by meditation or prayer. And, she says, “if I had it my way, I’d just be chilling with family.” (Sheffield wears an engagement ring, but says she’ll share more about that after the election.)

Sheffield is confident and commands rooms with ease. But crisscrossing Detroit with her one-on-one, it can be easy to forget she’s favored to be mayor of the state’s largest city. She still gets visibly excited by yard signs displaying her name, pointing them out in a slightly higher register. And she’s vexed by her detractors’ misconceptions, like that — having hailed from a locally famous political family — she hasn’t had to work to get where she is.

“I don’t ever open up like this,” Sheffield said. “For so long, I’ve sheltered myself because you need a guard up with politics … but I also want to be cautious, to say people actually pride themselves on the fact that I am very accessible … (they’ll say) ‘She’s just one of us.’

“But that’s one thing about politics that has been difficult, because I never wanted to change the core of who I am.”

Family ties: Standing against injustice, standing up for Kilpatrick

Sheffield came up in a service- and leadership-oriented family that also contained dualities. 

Her late grandfather, Horace Sheffield Jr., was revered for his involvement in the labor and Civil Rights movements, serving alongside giants like Walter Reuther and Martin Luther King Jr. 

“Part of his greatness was in his willingness to swim against the tide,” began a Detroit Free Press obituary after Sheffield Jr.’s death in 1995, when Mary Sheffield was 8. In his 20s, as president of the NAACP’s youth chapter, Sheffield Jr. spoke out against the organization for siding with Ford management during a bitter struggle to unionize the automaker. While with the UAW, he fought a lack of Black and female representation on the union’s international executive board, helping diversify the board within a year.

Mary Sheffield’s father, the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, the head of the Detroit Association of Black Organizations, also modeled “hard work for the betterment of others,” Sheffield said. But he also displayed the underbelly of politics. After former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was accused of steering $70 million in city contracts to a friend as part of a bribery scheme to enrich himself, Sheffield III ran Kilpatrick’s legal defense fund. Sheffield III also led a Detroit alternative school that had just a 3% graduation rate before it was forced to close by the state, with the district ordered to repay funds. And he has advocated for controversial Moroun family and DTE initiatives while receiving advertising support from the family and donations from the power company’s foundation. (Sheffield III has defended the school as a last resort for troubled youths and said his advocacy work was not influenced by donations.)

It was Sheffield’s father who encouraged her to get into politics in 2010, at age 23, when she ran for a seat in the state House and lost. He also helped on her mayoral campaign. But the two do not always agree and in recent years have found themselves on opposite sides of important issues, like tax incentives for the Ilitches’ Olympia Development District Detroit (Mary Sheffield opposed them). 

In a recent campaign video highlighting her roots, instead of talking about her high-profile father, Mary Sheffield mentions “my mother, who showed me how to lead with compassion.” Yvonne Lovett, Sheffield’s mother, grew up in the since-demolished Jeffries Housing Projects, off the Lodge freeway, before climbing her way out of poverty with a nursing degree and becoming a nursing school professor. (Lovett died of brain cancer when Sheffield was 25.) 

“My daughter … comes from a long line of intelligent and free-willed women,” said Horace Sheffield, adding that “at no point in her entire political life have I ever told (her) what to do.”

But he said he has made suggestions — ones that Sheffield has often ignored.

He didn’t want her to run for council president, noting how difficult it has proven historically to be elected from that role to mayor. On her casting the lone vote against tax incentives sought by the Ilitches’ Olympia Development and Stephen Ross’ Related Cos. in 2023: “I said, ‘Mary, you vote like that and you could kill your chances of being mayor.’ ”

In the end, he said, “She was right. I was wrong.”

Steeped in service, ‘called’ by God

Sheffield’s involvement in community affairs started young. As a little girl, she passed out food to homeless people in the former Cass Corridor with her mother. By age 10, she volunteered for her first political campaign, alongside her father, for former Mayor Dennis Archer’s reelection.

At 13, she was chanting “no justice, no peace” in an estimated 15,000-person crowd outside Fairlane Mall. Her father had organized a demonstration after security guards at Lord & Taylor killed Frederick Finley, a 32-year-old whose daughter was accused of stealing a $4 bracelet. Speakers included Dick Gregory, Al Sharpton and Cornell West.

“It really showed me the importance of having strong leaders speak up for injustice,” Sheffield said. “Here was this person that had been killed, their family was there, and I remember a sense of hopelessness — they were like voiceless, they were crying. But, then you had these powerful figures standing up on their behalf.

“I always felt a weight of responsibility, even at that age, like, ‘Girl you gotta speak up! You gotta say something!’ ”

At 14, Sheffield began to find her voice — at the pulpit. She became a minister at her father’s then-church, New Galilee Missionary Baptist, on Detroit’s east side. 

The first sermon she preached was from the Book of Jeremiah, whom biblical scholars say was as young as 17 when God called upon him to serve. The passage Sheffield read began: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nation.” 

“And Jeremiah said, ‘Why me?’ ” Sheffield recalled. “He said, ‘I’m too young.’ He said, ‘They’re not going to listen to me.’ But the Lord said, ‘I will give you the words to say.’ ”

Sheffield marvels at the parallels between Jeremiah’s story and her own.

“I mean, how preordained is this?!” she said. “I have deeply believed that this is what God has ordained and called me to do. Because you know, being mayor, it’s a lot. It’s sacrifice. It’s scrutiny. It’s your reputation … but I’m being obedient, to be used as a vessel to bring forth the change in Detroit.”

Clashes with mayor as a rising council star

Sheffield decided to run for council in 2013, a year after her mother’s death. By then, her resume listed a degree in public affairs from Wayne State University; a governmental affairs and financial aid job at the Wayne County Community College District; and a disciplinary officer role at the Wayne County Jail, where she worked for three years under the guidance of the late Sheriff Benny Napoleon, a friend of her father’s. Sheffield said she believes Napoleon intended the job as a lesson in humility, to show that “no matter how far up you go in life, no matter what you do — it’s always going to be about serving people.”

The Detroit City Council was transitioning from all city-wide seats to electing council members by district, creating a downtown-area district that overlapped with the state House district Sheffield had lost three years earlier. The late council member JoAnn Watson, who lived in what became Council District 5, was not seeking reelection, leaving the contest open. Sheffield had lost her previous bid by just 73 votes. This time, she won. 

She joined the council at age 26, with Detroit on the brink of seismic change — in the midst of the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history, and with a new mayor and virtually all-new council. 

“I didn’t understand all that I was getting myself into,” Sheffield said. “I mean, I ran hard for it. But once I was there, I was like, ‘Whoa! This is a lot to absorb, to learn.’ ”

For the first few years, as the city emerged from bankruptcy, she gained her sea legs. By 2017, she was swimming against the tide with a progressive minority that frequently clashed with the more conservative Mayor Duggan.

Sheffield’s first big legislative fight was an affordable housing proposal in which she sought to require new developments receiving city incentives to set aside rental units at a deeper level of affordability than the mayor wanted. That proposal ended with a continuation of the status quo, but Sheffield managed to eke out an affordable housing trust fund to benefit the city’s lowest income renters, eventually funding it with $15 million.

In 2018, as tens of thousands of Detroit households faced water shutoffs or tax foreclosures, Sheffield stood at a podium outside city hall to unveil the “People’s Bills,” a sweeping package aimed, in part, to protect the city’s worse off. She proposed tying water rates to household incomes; requiring more publicly funded construction projects to give a majority of work hours to Detroiters; and requiring more developers receiving tax breaks to negotiate benefits with their surrounding communities.

The Duggan regime opposed all three initiatives, with the mayor’s then-chief of staff warning that Sheffield’s package could become “the emergency manager bill,” harkening back to the state-appointed emergency manager installed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder in Detroit during its bankruptcy.

Several key planks of the “People’s Bills” either were never introduced or defeated. But Sheffield did manage to gather support for ordinances halving the city’s $45 parking tickets for Detroiters; improving access to a tax exemption for low-income homeowners (approximately 5,000 households previously obtained it, now 13,000 do), and increasing transparency around the city’s adoption of surveillance technologies after a series of allegedly wrongful arrests by the Detroit Police Department using facial recognition.

In her third term, after a council majority voted her president in another youngest-ever accomplishment, she spearheaded a property tax reform ordinance to address overassessments that can drive foreclosures, and created a package of programmatic and other offerings for residents overtaxed from 2010-16, while vowing to continue to fight for financial reimbursement. And she developed a “Right to Counsel” ordinance to provide free legal representation to Detroiters facing eviction by landlords who themselves sometimes operate illegally. (The percentage of tenants with lawyers is now up from 4% before the pandemic to an estimated 70% this year, according to a nonprofit involved.) 

Sheffield’s colleagues and observers say she brought a rare level of activism to council and struck a balance between policy, ambition and compromise.

“On the initiatives that were top priority (for her), she fought with 100%,” said former council member and ally Raquel Castañeda-López. “She was a lot more successful at building coalitions in the broader community to get people to support legislation and with colleagues on council than I was, for sure. Her approach was more moderate in that regard, but ultimately she’s … been successful.”

Sheila Cockrel, a former city council member who is not endorsing either candidate, said Sheffield has for years approached the role with “a clear intellectual policy structure to her work.”

“Whether you agree with everything or not isn’t the point,” Cockrel said. “She actually had a frame of reference for the policy work she brought forward, and she named it and moved to execute … that is one of the indicators that this is a woman with real leadership skill.”

The Trump factor

At a Sept. 17 town hall, Mary Sheffield was fielding a grab bag of perennial concerns in a crowded gymnasium on the city’s west side. One woman said she’d been the victim of so many property crimes that she wanted Sheffield to impose an overnight curfew on adults. Mimi Trent, a native Detroiter, wanted more resources delivered to her neighborhood at Livernois and Joy Road, saying: “All we have are liquor stores (and) auto mechanics. … This does not reflect equity at all. We’re being left behind.”

As mayor, Sheffield would have to square these ongoing concerns while facing a Trump administration increasingly hostile to Democrat-run cities.

Detroit’s “next mayor is … not going to be popular at all,” said Stephen Grady Muhammad, who was chief of staff to former council president Brenda Jones. They’re “going to have to be ready to cut services, to potentially lay off employees.”

The city has run budget surpluses over the past 11 years, but relies heavily on the federal government for housing, infrastructure and transportation funds.

Officials were using nearly $1 billion of now-dried up federal pandemic aid to fund additional programs, including the “lifeline” program that lowered water rates based on household incomes; the “Right to Counsel” eviction prevention program, and crime prevention efforts known as Community Violence Intervention that the city has credited with helping reduce crime to record lows. Federal grants to nonprofits that help provide additional social services to residents also are being cut.

“This machinery is about to get broken by the federal government,” Rip Rapson, CEO of the Kresge Foundation, a major donor to Detroit initiatives, said in a recent Free Press article on the fiscal headwinds facing the next mayor. “The federal government is about to leave the building completely. And I think we don’t fully understand just how complex and challenging that’s going to be.”

Sheffield told the Free Press, “it’s going to be a more difficult time navigating this political climate, but I do remain hopeful.”

“I’ve really watched how Governor (Gretchen) Whitmer has navigated things (with Trump). I think she’s a really good example of how you don’t have to like the person or agree with the person, but there’s still a way that you can work to bring resources back for the betterment of the state and of the city.”

As mayor, Sheffield said, she would “tread lightly — I’m not trying to pick a fight. But I’m also not going to allow anyone to step over our rights.”

Past city officials have noted that Sheffield has some experience dealing with crises, having served on the council during bankruptcy and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rapson told the Free Press that, above all else, the city’s next mayor will need problem-solving skills akin to Duggan’s. 

“It’s not so much who has the big vision; not so much who has the greatest charisma; it’s who can we put in that slot who can manage a different existential crisis from anything we’ve really had,” he said.

Sheffield, for her part, does not believe she needs to sacrifice vision for the sake of crisis management.

That Wednesday in the gymnasium, she pitched ambitious plans to fill a 40,000-unit affordable housing gap, expand Community Violence Intervention efforts, and grow a grant program while cutting red tape to “ensure Detroit is the best place in the country” to build a small business.

Sheffield has said she’ll aim to increase city revenues, in part, with new taxes, and is considering creating city sales and entertainment and sports venue ticket taxes. Both would require state legislative approval. For numerous initiatives, she says, she plans to rely on funding from the private and philanthropic sectors and state. 

Ultimately, however, Sheffield says significant improvements will require attracting new investment and growing the population. She has outlined plans to hire a chief growth officer to identify ways to diversify city revenues — but beyond that, says she’ll more or less stay the Duggan course, focusing on boosting income taxes by offering Detroiters more employment opportunities; continuing to “attract emerging industries” like tech, clean energy and AI, and addressing quality-of-life issues to lure and retain residents.

Corporate or for the people?

After hearing Sheffield’s full pitch, Trent, the Livernois-Joy area resident, later that week told the Free Press she remained undecided in the mayor’s race — unsure of what Sheffield would prioritize in a more fiscally constrained environment.

“I want someone to truly be for the people and not for corporations,” Trent said.

Once the “People’s Bills” pioneer who backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2020 and voted against additional tax breaks for District Detroit, Sheffield is now endorsed by the Detroit Regional Chamber and backed by many of the same big donors as Duggan, including Dan Gilbert and the Morouns, who own the Ambassador Bridge and a trucking and logistics company. 

While campaigning, Sheffield has emphasized her pro-development bona fides — on council, she approved the overwhelming majority of tax break requests from businesses — and has been noncommittal about what she’ll do with a nonpartisan think tank’s recommendation to retire a downtown-wide taxation district she acknowledges as “a problem because that money cannot go back into our neighborhoods.” 

For the next mayor, “that balance between the neighborhoods and the business community will be a challenge because the interests and needs … are sometimes competitive,” said Karen Dumas, a top aide to former mayor Dave Bing. 

Sheffield, for her part, sees the relationship as more symbiotic, frequently repeating the phrase, “Business needs people and people need business.”

Her former mayoral primary opponent, council member Durhal, a conservative Democrat and the regional chamber’s choice in the primary, recalled the conversation that convinced him to cast the deciding vote to elect Sheffield council president. 

“She said: ‘Well, wouldn’t it be great if we could just bring everybody together? I’m telling you, I’m going to be able to do that.’ ”

“I liked her panache. I liked her confidence.” Durhal said. “She’s a damn hard worker, and if she’s able to bring that into the business community, we’ll be able to have a little bit more progress for the city of Detroit.”

By contrast, ex-council member Castañeda-López said she hoped to see her former ally continue to lead with their shared values of “equity, access, and inclusion.” 

“Moving forward, I’m just hoping she’s able to stay true to who she is.”

Violet Ikonomova is an investigative reporter at the Free Press focused on government and police accountability in Detroit. Contact her at vikonomova@freepress.com.