Tom Barrow begins his daily slate of campaign stops by doing what he's good at: talking.
Barrow, running for Detroit mayor for the fourth time since 1985, was the guest on a two-hour show on WCHB (AM 1200) hosted by a rotating block of relatively friendly on-air personalities.
The topic for most of those two hours last Saturday centered around what Barrow called the "hubris and arrogance" of former front-runner Mike Duggan, who had raised a large amount of money and had the backing of a cross-section of residents and business people.
Duggan -- after a challenge from Barrow and labor activist Robert Davis -- is off the ballot after two courts found he wasn’t a Detroiter for a year — as required by city charter — when he turned in his signatures to become a candidate in August's primary.
"This man is wily," Barrow said.
Duggan, he contended, "is playing right into the mindset where Detroit is a code word for people of color."
Privileged, White Outsider
To Barrow, Duggan represented all that is wrong with city politics: A privileged, white outsider tried to come into Detroit to show black leadership how to properly run the city after years of mismanagement.
Barrow told listeners that he was looking for ways to disqualify Duggan when he stumbled across the charter language that he suspected could be a problem for the former CEO of the Detroit Medical Center with a long career in public service and politics. Duggan moved last year from Livonia to run for mayor.
It’s because of “divine intervention,” Barrow said, that he found the key to Duggan's demise.
“We’re just the players, but I think this is God,” Barrow said.
Following Barrow for a day, it was clear the legal battle, which ended Wednesday when Duggan dropped out of the race, had consumed the candidate and his aides. While Barrow was full of anti-Duggan bluster on the radio, when talking to supporters, he indicated he was ready to get back into the actual campaign.
‘This Has Held Us Back’
Following the radio appearances, Barrow arrived at his campaign headquarters on Gratiot Avenue near Chene Street shortly after 11 a.m. for a volunteer meeting. So far, the race has been an uphill battle. Every public poll has shown him far behind Duggan and Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon. Barrow has said his own polling indicates he's doing much better.
A tall, sturdy 64-year-old with a booming voice, Barrow drives a 2003 Jaguar built by Ford and says he won't buy a new one because the car is no longer made by an American company. He's the first the first to arrive at the office, a bland and relatively small space that was once a tax-preparation office.
That's a coincidence, because Barrow, a CPA, spent 18 months in prison after a 1994 conviction for tax evasion. He continues to maintain his innocence and fight for recognition from the government that he did no wrong.
He lays out two boxes of donuts and brews a pot of coffee for about 15 campaign workers who arrive roughly 30 minutes later.
It’s at this meeting where he presented his vision of a winning campaign, one built on personal interaction with voters and heavy use of social media.
Online Strategy
Social media, if Barrow has his way, will let his campaign reach Detroiters directly without the intervention of the news media, thus "cutting out the middleman." For instance, future campaign meetings will be live-streamed online for free, giving supporters a chance to see the inner workings directly.
“I understand technology backward and forward,” Barrow said. “I can write code. I understand all this stuff, and I see a huge opportunity here. I tell my staff we need to work smarter, not harder, and that’s what we can do here.”
Barrow told staffers and volunteers gathered in the muggy office that he hopes to unveil soon his five-step Detroit revitalization plan, which includes a new tax on entertainment called the “Heroes Tax,” the heroes being Detroit's emergency responders.
The four-percent tax, based on similar taxes in other major cities, would be applied to any ticket, food or merchandise sales made at sporting events or live theater performances in order to keep emergency services afloat. Barrow says the tax shouldn’t anger the mostly suburban visitors who attend those events --- though he probably understates the opposition he would receive from both from the public and especially the teams and theaters.
“It’s only fair,” he said.
Softer Side
These proposals would already be part of the mayoral debate, he said, were it not for his legal battle with Duggan.
“The Duggan thing is really slowing all of us back” by drying up much of campaign's time and resources, he said.
Speaking on Saturday, between pro-Barrow rulings from Wayne County Circuit Court last week and the Michigan Court of Appeals this week, Barrow expressed some sympathy for his rival.
“I’m not going to gloat because I know he is humiliated. It’s time to move on,” Barrow said.
After thanking his supporters, he had a few hours in the office because of a rescheduled campaign event to sort through paperwork. Lots of it.
“This isn’t the fun part of the campaign,” he said. “But it can sink you. That’s what happened to Duggan.”
‘These Are My People’
At 3 p.m., Barrow and some campaign staffers arrived at the Gospel of Truth Tabernacle of God, a small church located on Ogden Street on the city's West Side.
Church members served barbecue ribs in the basement to a packed room of about 50 or so supporters. Barrow, again in his element, campaigning and talking at ease, portrayed himself as one of the people, someone who has risen through the ranks and knows what it takes to make Detroit great again because he has seen it great before.
“There’s nothing about this city that I’m not comfortable with. Nothing,” Barrow said. “These are my people. I’ll talk to any one of you. I’ll come to the barber shop, I’ll come to your home.”
Barrow, a nephew of Joe Louis, played up his family ties to the boxing icon, as he likes to do, and built a rapport with the mainly middle-aged crowd.
“It takes a real man to come along with us and talk to us small folks,” one man told Barrow as he was speaking.
“You’re my people,” Barrow responded.
‘Judged Unfairly’
At a final stop for the day, at WHPR, a cable station in Highland Park, Barrow presented himself to the TV audience as a “Coleman Young-esque” candidate, as someone who can stand up to Lansing and have them "respect us."
Barrow grew up in modest circumstances on the east side and lives nearby today, in a much larger house on the Detroit River, not far from the Manoogian Mansion. He made a name for himself when he ran against Young, receiving 39 percent of the vote. The legendary Young, Detroit's first African American mayor, basically ignored Barrow during that campaign. Barrow ran again, and lost again, in 1989, when he scored 44 percent.
"Even when I was running against him, I had immense respect for him," Barrow said. "That's what we need now.
“We have come to be unfairly judged by Kwame Kilpatrick, Dave Bing, and to a lesser extent, Dennis Archer,” he said, referring to the corruption surrounding Kilpatrick and what he perceives as weakness in Bing and Archer. “If Coleman Young was mayor right now, we’d never be disrespected like we are now."
While short on specifics, he promised to “leave Detroit with a number of black millionaires.”
“You don’t have to be black to be successful here, but you do have to be a Detroiter,” he said.
He rejects the notion that he plays the race card, instead saying it is impossible to look at the state's response to the financial crisis and not see racial prejudice behind it.
“The system is lined up against us,” he said. The financial crisis and the state’s response, he continued, "is a kind of ethnic cleansing.”
Then Barrow took his toughest shot at Duggan yet, calling him a fake Detroiter and a fake Democrat.
“People kept asking what I meant when I said he doesn’t have a ‘Detroit accent.’ Well, it means he doesn’t know us. He doesn’t live like us. He didn’t grow up like us … He’s a reliable, suburban Republican appointee. It’s all a part of the plan to take over Detroit.”
Barrow is fully aware his campaign and his race-inflected rhetoric ruffle feathers and raise questions about whether he is overly suspicious about alleged plots against Detroit. Many critics in both Detroit and the suburbs see his political style as divisive.
"I don't mean to be exclusionary. I mean to be inclusionary."
With that being said, he would not change one thing about his style of politics because he sees himself as one of the last lines of defense against an assault on the city of Detroit. And he likes that.
“This is my hour,” Barrow told a caller on the show. “This is the time. Give me the chance to do it.”
