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Detroit City Council shapes up to be very LGBT-friendly

Jason A. Michael

'The only thing that we can do is ask Detroiters to vote for us to get on the council. We're just going to campaign hard and campaign smart and pray that our message resonates with Detroiters. We've already gotten off to a good start. But for us that doesn't mean that we can rest. For us that means that we have to work harder.' -Charles Pugh, who led in votes in Detroit City Council primary election results

DETROIT – Pulling ahead to a first-place finish in last week's primary election, former newscaster Charles Pugh is poised to make history this November by becoming the first openly gay person elected to the Detroit City Council.
"It's really exciting," Pugh said. "I honestly want to thank Between The Lines for helping me, first of all, to come out to the public five years ago, which honestly makes the discussion of my being gay kind of old news. You all told that story and it empowered me to tell my own story on the radio and in the mainstream print media. Now, Detroiters are like, 'So what? We knew that. We're going to vote for him. Stop beating that dead horse.'"
In the race to narrow 167 candidates down to 18, Pugh, who pulled in 59,560 votes, bested the second place finisher – current City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. – by a whopping 10,000 votes. The highest vote-getter in the general election automatically becomes the council president, and the community is abuzz with talk of Pugh as president. It's something the candidate himself puts no energy into and has no time to consider.
"The only thing that we can do is ask Detroiters to vote for us to get on the council," said Pugh. "We're just going to campaign hard and campaign smart and pray that our message resonates with Detroiters. We've already gotten off to a good start. But for us that doesn't mean that we can rest. For us that means that we have to work harder."
The Triangle Pride PAC sent questionnaires to all the candidates and received about 30 responses. The PAC endorsed nine candidates – the number of council seats – and seven of those they endorsed will move forward to the general election. Along with Pugh, the list includes incumbents Cockrel, Brenda Jones and JoAnn Watson, and Gary Brown in the top nine, as well as Fred Elliott Hall and Mohamed Okdie, both of whom finished in the bottom half.
Determining who among the other top finishers is LGBT-friendly isn't easy, as the PAC doesn't list the scores for all who filled out questionnaires on their Web site and will not discuss individual responses.
"We wanted to really think about making the endorsements useful, so we thought let's just do the nine that we really, really want," said Bernadette Brown, director of policy for the Triangle Foundation. "We definitely had more than nine that were good questionnaires. We were very pleased with the number of people who responded and the number who were very pro-LGBT."
For instance, Saunteel Jenkins, the former chief of state to the late councilwoman Maryann Mahaffey, who was for years the chief supporter of LGBTs on the council, came in fifth last week. She told Brown while attending the Hotter Than July black Pride picnic that a staff error caused her questionnaire to be turned in late. And incumbent Alberta Tinsley-Talabi, who came in ninth, also didn't submit a questionnaire. She has, however, spoken at LGBT events, including an opening ceremony for HTJ, in the past.
Brown said the PAC will now re-evaluate the questionnaires it received and decide if it's going to revise its endorsements for the general election in November.
In other council election news, Motown legend Martha Reeves will not return for a second term, having come in 25th place last week. It marks the first time in 15 years that an incumbent did not make it past the primary. Reeves made international headlines when she was elected in 2005, but the rest of her coverage she garnered while on the council was largely unflattering. She made headlines for tax troubles, being driven repeatedly to the casino by a city employee in a city-owned car and referring to her council position as a "second job" to reporters while taking time off from her council duties to tour with the Vandellas, as well as for her unwavering support of fellow councilwoman Monica Conyers, who recently resigned and pled guilty to bribery charges.
Despite his first place finish, Pugh is feeling a bit of backlash from all this as other candidates in various post-election coverage repeatedly referred to him as another "celebrity" candidate. It's a term he takes great offense to.
It's a "myth, misnomer or strategy by other candidates to portray me as somebody who's an outsider who's led this privileged life," said Pugh.
A Detroit native, Pugh's early years in the city were rough ones. He was only three when his mother was murdered, and seven when his father committed suicide. Raised by his grandmother, Pugh graduated with honors from Murray Wright High School before studying journalism at the University of Missouri on scholarship. His goal was always to return to his hometown by the time of his 10-year class reunion from high school. And after working jobs in smaller media markets in Kansas, Indiana and Virginia, he managed to do just that when he accepted a job at WJBK Fox 2 in 1999.
For 10 years, Pugh traveled to every part of the city, talking to every type of citizen, while he reported for Fox 2. In the process, he earned a great deal of respect and trust from them, as evidenced by last week's election results.
"I followed my dream of being a newscaster and worked really hard to accomplish it," Pugh said. "Then to have somebody use it against me and say, 'Don't vote for him, he's a celebrity'? That makes no sense. Not only am I not a celebrity, but I'm uniquely positioned to make good decisions and set priorities for this community."

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