Don't bury Mike Duggan — he's not dead yet! Still, the race for mayor of Detroit is on.

The only thing I can say for sure about the race for mayor of Detroit is that I will NOT be a candidate in 2025.

Even if Mike Duggan decides he won't seek a fourth term, I'm pretty sure my fellow Detroiters are not looking for another White Mike.

Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield isn't waiting for anyone to tell her the coast is clear, as my colleague Dana Afana and I reported last week. Sheffield quietly declared she is running for mayor, then more loudly declared she might not run for mayor, then clarified she's really only exploring whether to run for mayor, though I think it's safe to say she decided long ago she wants to be mayor.

Whew!

Don't feel bad if you're confused. Politics can be like this, especially two years away from an election.

Running a campaign is like planning a party: If you send invitations out too soon, people forget you're throwing a banger by the time you're ready to welcome guests. If you wait too long, folks may already have plans. Either way, you run the risk of buying too many shrimp. And we all know what happens when shrimp go bad. ...

But if you think Sheffield is being wishy-washy, think again. Michigan law says that as soon as you begin acting like a candidate — which includes something as simple as securing a domain name for the website you might use if you decide to run for office — you have 20 days to file a statement of organization. Sheffield filed her paperwork on Aug. 16, two days after she created her campaign committee. If the law said you had to file a statement of organization as soon as you dreamed of being mayor, I suspect everyone on the city council would have filed that paperwork on their first day in city hall!

More: Council President Mary Sheffield gets a head start in the 2025 race for mayor of Detroit

Sheffield told me Wednesday that her ultimate decision won't be predicated on what Duggan decides. The political grapevine has been buzzing for months that Duggan will run for governor when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's term ends in 2026. Duggan told Afana he won't even decide until 2024 whether to run for mayor again, let alone make plans for 2026. But the smart money says Hizzoner will call it quits after three terms and aim higher.

Of course, the smart money also said Dennis Archer would run for a third term in 2001, a little-known state representative who still had braces on his teeth couldn't beat city council president and part-time movie star Gil Hill, Freman Hendrix would beat Kwame Kilpatrick in 2005, Detroiters would never elect another white mayor, and a write-in candidate could never win.

If you're keeping score at home, Archer did not seek a third term, Kilpatrick was the kid who beat the "Beverly Hills Cop" star in 2001, then staged a miraculous comeback in 2005, and Duggan was elected as a write-in candidate in 2013 after getting kicked off the ballot on a technicality.

Still, here's a bet you won't lose: Sheffield isn't the only person in Detroit — and, perhaps elsewhere — who at this very moment is thinking of running for mayor in 2025. She's just the first to make headlines. My guess is every other candidate is just waiting for Duggan to reveal his next move.

So, let's salute Sheffield for having the guts to (mostly) stop playing coy, then review some potential candidates who could end up playing catch-up if Hizzoner walks and Madam President does more than explore.

The front-runner

History has not been kind to city council presidents who run for mayor

Hill failed in 2001. Erma Henderson came up short in 1989, when Coleman Young was elected to a fifth (and final) term.

Looking back over the past 100 years, the only city council presidents I could find who became mayor were Kenneth Cockrel Jr., who took over in 2008 after Kilpatrick resigned in the wake of the text message scandal, and Louis Miriani, who became mayor in 1957 after Mayor Albert Cobo died. Unlike Cockrel, Miriani subsequently was elected to a full term as mayor. He lost his reelection bid to Jerome Cavanagh, was later elected to the city council, and after that spent a year in prison after being convicted on tax charges. Like I said, history hasn't been kind to city council presidents who ran for mayor!

History isn't Sheffield's only challenge.

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After winning a tight race in 2013 to represent the 5th District, which stretches from the Detroit River on the near east side through downtown and the New Center to the near northwest side, Sheffield has faced virtually no opposition. She's also never run citywide. And it takes a large, experienced and well-run organization to cover Detroit's 139 square miles.

That's not cheap, which is where Sheffield's reputation as a populist could hurt. Grassroots candidates typically don't do well with the fat cats who write the big campaign checks or fund the political action committees which flood the airwaves with advertising. I watched Sheffield with great interest last year when Dan Gilbert went back to the city council seeking additional tax breaks on his downtown Hudson Block project. When Sheffield voted to give Gilbert the additional breaks, I thought she was tipping her hand about how badly she wanted to be mayor. Her vote seemed to be a signal to the business community that they could count on her to continue the city's recent tradition of bending over backward — and sometimes forward — to hand over piles of tax breaks and incentives to big shots developing signature projects, most of which are slated for the city's Central Business District.

Then, in March, Sheffield cast the lone vote against the more than $800 million in tax breaks the Ilitches sought for the latest iteration of their sluggish District Detroit downtown project. She issued a thoughtful statement that pretty much nailed why many of us questioned the wisdom of the deal. In the process, Sheffield may have caused potential deep-pocketed supporters to wonder just what they'll get if she replaces Duggan, who hasn't met a big deal he didn't like.

Sheffield's focus has also been a concern. While serving on the council, she has hawked health supplements and workout clothing. And she spent a year and a half going to law school, an undertaking that requires considerable time and concentration even if you don't have a demanding day job.

Sheffield told me she put her legal studies on pause and that her "heart and passion was on continuing to focus on the legislative position that I'm in."

While some political operatives question the wisdom of Sheffield's decision to hire a virtually unknown out-of-state consulting team, at least one consultant sees it as Sheffield sending a message that she's serious about running by bringing a big fish into our relatively small pond. Archer, for example, hired David Axelrod of Chicago. Axelrod later helped an Illinois politician with an unconventional name become America's first Black president.

"This is an exploratory phase," Sheffield said, indicating that UpRising Strategies of Mazomanie, Wisconsin, is helping with fundraising. "If anyone knows me, knows my record, I am a hard-core Detroiter as relates to supporting Detroit-based businesses."

Translation: If she runs, Sheffield will bring home-grown talent onto her team.

Sheffield wouldn't say whether her plans would change if Duggan opted to run again, but she added that her decision will not hinge on who else is running. She also said she didn't give the mayor a courtesy heads-up about her ambition.

"I still have an opportunity to have a conversation with the mayor," she said, "if that's the direction that I want to go."

You can bet a lot of people will want to speak with Hizzoner, if he decides to stop after 12 years. I think Sheffield is counting on that, and trying to position herself at the head of the pack.

"I expect, because it will possibly be an open seat, that you will have a lot of people who will get in," she said, declining to name potential rivals.

Sheffield has one advantage over most candidates that doesn't come cheap: name recognition.

But she's not the only person with a million-dollar name who could get in the game.

Surveying the field

Let's get this out of the way right away: I don't know whether Coleman Young II is planning to run for mayor.

Again.

Actually, I'm certain Young will run for mayor again. But I don't know whether it will be in 2025. Duggan smooshed him in 2017, but one of the things that drives Young (and, no, I'm not referring to his mother) is living up to his father's legacy.

Another big name who has run for mayor before is Warren Evans. Evans ran in the 2009 special election held to complete Kilpatrick's unfinished term. Evans did not make it out of the primary. He was elected Wayne County Executive in 2014 and was elected to a third term last year.

"If Executive Evans were to decide to do this, he would be an extraordinary candidate who enjoys broad support across the city," said Alexis Wiley, who started Moment Strategies after stepping down as Duggan's chief of staff. Wiley stressed that she is not speaking for Duggan and has not spoken with Evans.

One of the most important steps Evans will have to take to run for mayor is move to Detroit. A county spokeswoman did not return a message inquiring whether Evans still lives in Canton, which he listed as his home in paperwork he filed to run for county exec in 2022.

Other names circulating — or being floated — include businessman Dennis Archer Jr., Focus: HOPE CEO and former 13th Congressional District candidate Portia Roberson, City Councilwoman Mary Waters, former deputy mayor and 2021 mayoral candidate Anthony Adams, The Heat and Warmth Fund (THAW) CEO and former city council president Saunteel Jenkins and Charity Dean.

Dean is a lawyer and CEO at the Metro Detroit Black Business Alliance. She served as Duggan's director of the city's Department of Civil Rights, Inclusion and Opportunity. If she can muster the enthusiasm I encountered at a party the business alliance co-hosted last May during the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference, Dean could be a sleeper worth watching in a crowded field.

That event is where I met the other prominent name that comes up in any discussion of the 2025 race: Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist.

When I told Gilchrist a lot of folks hope his future involves a return to Detroit in 2025, he looked at me knowingly and said: "What about 2024?"

Since then, there has been little talk of Gilchrist running for the open U.S. Senate seat or Congress, so a mayoral campaign may not be so farfetched. Unlike most of the potential candidates, Gilchrist has run citywide in Detroit — and almost won. In 2017, he lost to incumbent city clerk Janice Winfrey by fewer than 1,500 votes.

Mario Morrow, who has decades of political consulting experience, said 15 to 20 candidates could run for mayor.

"If Mike Duggan decides not to run, the floodgates will be open," Morrow said. "Right now, nobody is the odds-on favorite."

When I asked Jamaine Dickens of Compass Strategies which names he has heard, he summed it up as well as anybody.

"When I'm asked this question in the community," Dickens said, "I make it short and quick: It's too damn early to tell."

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Race to replace Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan off to early start