Elrick: Opposition Trying to Dig Up Dirt on Mike Duggan In Governor's Race. He Says He Welcomes it.

Mayor Mike Duggan (file photo)

The governor's race is still a ways off, but indications are that the fight won't be so gentlemanly—or ladylike.

Detroit Free Press investigative reporter M.L. Elrick writes in his column that the opposition is trying to dig up dirt on Mayor Mike Duggan, a Democrat who has decided to run as an Independent.

"The more they do it, the more they help me," Duggan told Elrick in January, explaining that the criticism supports his view that the two-party system is so toxic that it's almost impossible to get things done. "I want them to say a lot of bad things about me."

Then, Elrick writes, Duggan was the featured speaker last week at the Detroit Free Press Breakfast Club and had this to say:

"The Democratic Governors Association, which funds candidates, immediately announces in Washington they've got a $3 million ad campaign—and they're raising the money to smear me right now. They hired an opposition research firm that started sending Freedom of Information Act requests to dig up dirt on me."

Elrick notes that the FOIA requests from the opposition to the city, from someone named Luther, "seek emails, texts, WhatsApp, Facebook messages, Signal, and X messages involving communications between Duggan and his current and ex-wives; towing titan and convicted felon Gasper Fiore; disgraced police executive Celia Washington; and Charles Dodd, the former head of the city's IT department who pleaded guilty to taking bribes."