Detroit Mayor's Race Is in Home Stretch

Democrats Face Off With Plans to Reshape City

DETROIT -- Freman Hendrix, aspiring mayor, stepped from a Cadillac, took off his blazer and stood at the center of a circle of factory workers. He said if he is elected on Tuesday, he will improve the dilapidated bus system, rescue the besieged police department and "start turning this city around."

Saving one of his strongest cards for last, he added, "I won't embarrass you."

Hendrix, 55, rolled past incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick in the August primary largely because many voters see the city hemorrhaging people and possibility as its mayor steers Detroit toward insolvency and ridicule. Kilpatrick, 35, hurt his own cause in his first term by spending public money freely on himself and his aides while eliminating hundreds of jobs.

Although the incumbent mayor earned a spot in Tuesday's runoff and apologized -- "Detroit, I've made some mistakes and I'm sorry if those mistakes hurt anyone" -- polls show him trailing Hendrix, a former deputy mayor, as the two Democrats entered the campaign's final weekend.

The bigger question, beyond which man will win, is what either can accomplish. Detroit is spending $15 million more a month than it takes in. It suffers the notoriety of being the poorest city in the country and one of the most crime-ridden. Unemployment has ranged between 12.7 percent and 15 percent this year, compared with 6.6 percent in Michigan and 5 percent nationwide.

Although there are patches of good news, voter Charlene Crossley is not alone in believing Detroit will not rebound in her lifetime.

"If I could get out of the city, I would," said Crossley, 56, a surgical technician who intends to vote for Hendrix. "You're scared of your neighbors. I keep my house looking like the neighborhood on the outside so no one will think, 'She's cleaning up.' "

Willie Huling, an anesthesiologist, surrendered and joined the suburban exodus.

"We've got an urban area with very few middle-class citizens in it," said Huling as he waited with Crossley to view the body of civil rights icon Rosa Parks last week. "I don't think anything could bring me back."

Detroit has lost about 1 million residents since its mid-century heyday, leaving it with 900,000. Once dubbed the Arsenal of Democracy for the factories that manufactured munitions, tanks and warplanes, the city is the epitome of Rust Belt decline. It continues to be rocked by an economy that rewards cheap labor, and its surrounding communities provide better schools and services.

"I've seen poverty increase. We're seeing older and older neighborhoods, lots of abandoned buildings and obsolete shopping strips," said Eleanor M. Josaitis, chief executive and co-founder in 1968 of Focus: Hope, a nonprofit group that delivers food monthly to 43,000 Detroit residents. "So many seniors are living on less than $500 a month, and who can live on that?"

At the same time that schools are laying off teachers because enrollment is declining, deepening the system's problems, some progress is evident, particularly in Detroit's battered downtown. About 50 shops and restaurants have opened downtown in the past three years, and loft conversions are increasing. The number of residential building permits has more than doubled.