Detroit awaits gender shift with incoming city council

Brenda Jones and Santeel Jenkins (Photos by Minehaha Forman/Michigan Messenger)

The new city council, with six men and three women, bucks that historical trend.

So what caused this shift? Local political observers disagree on whether gender was an issue for voters, but they have their theories.

Democratic political analyst Mark Grebner, who serves as an Ingham County commissioner, thinks the embarrassing antics of present council members did not help female candidates this election cycle.

“I think it was a plus to be male. That’s unusual,” Grebner told Michigan Messenger. Grebner said women have fared better in past Detroit elections possibly because more than half of those who turn out on voting day are women.

“The people who were on the council managed to give women a bad name,” Grebner said, referring to former Councilwoman Monica Conyers, Martha Reeves and Barbara-Rose Collins, who all made news with embarrassing antics, indulgent spending and in Conyers’ case, criminal activity.

Former Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers

In June, Conyers was convicted in connection with a bribery scandal for receiving money in exchange for a favorable vote on a $1.2 billion waste disposal contract. Collins became known for wearing tiara and gown to city council meetings on her birthday, and sang the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” at a special city council meeting.

Grebner noted that while both male incumbents were elected easily, female incumbents polled poorly and of the two that were re-elected one barely made the council. “When you look at the top three candidates really in contention for council president — all men, right?” he asked.

“If you take say James Tate and Lisa Howze — maybe there’s a plus to being named James rather than Lisa,” Grebner said, referring to Councilman-elect James Tate, and businesswoman Lisa Howze, the first runner up for council.

“It’s hard to disagree with anybody that thinks [Monica Conyers] and Reeves and [U.S. Rep.] Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick and so forth aren’t exactly models to be emulated by anybody,” Grebner said. “It’s not really fair to blame all women for them but I think there’s something to that.”

While Grebner admits that his ideas about the reason for the gender shift are “back of the envelope scribbling,” other political voices in the city have a different outlook.

Mildred Madison, president of the Detroit League of Women Voters, said she believes voters picked candidates based on what they have to offer the city, not their gender.

“I think voters looked at the people. I really do. I don’t think they looked at it as a gender issue,” Madison told Michigan Messenger, adding that the League of Women Voters plans to monitor all candidates whether they’re male or female to make sure that they are doing a good job for the city. “This is how we will judge them,” she said.

Madison notes that having a council made up mostly of women for the past 20 years has done little to advance the cause of equality for women in Detroit.

“If you look at the city right now, the contracts and decisions they made did not favor women,” Madison pointed out. “They did not favor Detroit. The contracts that were given were given to suburbanites, they were given out of state and certainly they were not given to women.”

Madison said she’s happy with the leadership elected this year. In fact, she said she supported all candidates for city council. “All 18 were excellent. This is the best group we’ve ever had,” she said. “We’ll have to see how they perform.”

When asked whether having a majority of men on the council may change the leadership style for better or worse, Madison said gender is not a factor when it comes to good leadership. “We’ll look at it and see what they’re going to do. I’m not going to make a judgment on it,” she said.

The fact that all but one of the men elected to city council plan to carry guns, referring to a column by Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press, isn’t something that the league has weighed yet. But Madison said that it’s not just men carrying concealed firearms in Detroit, where public safety is unstable.

“We have to look at pros and cons before we make any decisions and we haven’t done that yet,” Madison said about whether council members should carry guns. “Public safety is a big concern in the city and these elected officials have to travel citywide.”

Miriam Muley, president of the Greater Detroit branch of the National Association for Women Business Owners agrees with Madison. Muley thinks voters picked candidates they felt were capable of leading the city out of crisis and were not looking at gender at all. Before the primary, there was a nearly even number of men and women among the 167 candidates.

Muley thinks the women who didn’t fare well either lacked the experience or the right campaign strategy. “If you had a scenario with an equal or large number of women [candidates] that speaks to the credential, the capability, the marketing outreach of those candidates relative to their predecessors,” Muley told Michigan Messenger, “Maybe some of the talking points of their candidacy didn’t resonate with their audience relative to the men.”

Muley disagrees with Grebner’s idea that past female council members turned voters off to women politicians. “I would be hesitant to take the knee-jerk reaction to say it’s because of their predecessors,” Muley said, referring to the gender shift on council. She said this year voters were more concerned about the future of the city in tough economic times than any other issue. “It’s all about getting jobs, it’s all about resuscitating the economy,” she said.