Detroit Mayor Duggan breezes to 3rd term over challenger Anthony Adams

Mayor Mike Duggan wins third term in office with ease

Mayor Mike Duggan defeated challenger Anthony Adams in a landslide.

DETROIT (FOX 2) - Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has easily defeated attorney Anthony Adams to win a third four-year term.

Duggan was the clear favorite to win Tuesday's election after first winning in 2013 and taking over in January 2014. That was just after the city emerged from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Duggan had won more than 72% of the votes in the August primary in which the top two vote-getters in the nonpartisan primary moved on to the general election.

"Thank you Detroit, eight years ago you took a chance on me and it has been quite a journey," Duggan said to chants of four more years at an impromptu press conference at 10 p.m.

He also spoke about some of the initiatives left to do.

"I didn't run again because the work was done," he said. "We've got a lot of work still to do. So what is the next four years going to look like if you are in one of those neighborhoods that still has abandoned houses? Even after we've taken 16,000 down, even after we have rehabbed 8,000, if you are still in a (neighborhood) with blight, we are going to get there in the next four years.

"Every single house with blight is either going to be rehabbed or is going to come down. We are going to remove blight from all the neighborhoods."

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan gives victory speech

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has won his third term by a landslide over challenger Anthony Adams.

Duggan also spoke about plans to make vacant land affordable to residents in order to repurpose them for community gardens or parks. The mayor also touted future park developments at Riverside Park in southwest Detroit and Ralph Wilson Park behind the post office.

Detroit at Work was also a talking point as Duggan promoted the job training program and brought the industry back while tearing down sites like the old Packard Plant.

Duggan was asked by FOX 2 about the topic of crime, but he responded with optimism talking about the drop in incidents from the past four months.

Adams was a former deputy mayor in the early to mid-2000s under Kwame Kilpatrick. He ran on a platform of directing more help to neighborhoods rather than building up Downtown and Midtown.

Detroit mayoral challenger Anthony Adams

Duggan declined a chance to debate Adams as his campaign manager Alexis Wiley said it would only provide a platform for a rhetoric of "divisiveness and hate."

Duggan's last two election wins came against the late Benny Napoleon in 2013 and challenger Coleman Young Jr. in 2017. Young is currently the leading candidate for one of two at-large council seats.

--The Associated Press contributed to this report.