William Lucas, the 1st Wayne County executive and onetime candidate for governor, dies

William Lucas — an FBI agent, Wayne County sheriff, the first Wayne County Executive and a former Democrat who became a Republican Party nominee for Michigan's governor — died Monday. He was 94.

“I was very sorry to learn of the passing of Bill Lucas," Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said. "He was a fine public servant who provided decades of dedicated service to the people of Detroit and Wayne County. My thoughts are with his family at this difficult time."

Family said he died peacefully after being ill for the past two weeks, according to news accounts.

Funeral arrangements were not available late Monday.

Born in Harlem, New York, in 1928, he went on to have a career in public service spanning 35 years, according to a brief biography of him in the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, where he donated his papers.

Orphaned in his early teens, Lucas went to live with an aunt and attended Morris High School in the Bronx where he starred on the school track team.

The U-M biography said he married his wife, Evelyn, while in high school and they later had five children, three of whom became physicians.

His speed also brought him athletic scholarships, and he became the first in his family to go to college, the biography said. In 1952, he graduated from Manhattan College with honors.

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Lucas briefly worked as a teacher and welfare case worker in New York City.

He later joined the New York Police Department, where he worked for nine years, often undercover. He also enrolled in Fordham University's law school, taking classes at night and earning a degree in 1962.

At his graduation, he met Robert Kennedy, then U.S. attorney general, who offered him a job in the Justice Department. Lucas became a civil rights division investigator — and then joined the FBI, which sent him to Cincinnati and then Detroit.

In Detroit, he joined the Wayne County Sheriff's Office as undersheriff, and two years later was appointed Wayne County sheriff. In 1970, he was elected Wayne County sheriff, and reelected twice more.

In 1982, he was elected to the newly created office of Wayne County executive.

Three years later, he switched his party affiliation, which made national news, and in 1986, won Michigan's Republican gubernatorial primary. He beat millionaire businessman Dick Chrysler, the front-runner until the closing days of the campaign.

He — and the Republicans — hoped to make history by making Lucas the first Black man elected as a state governor since the Reconstruction era.

However, he lost to incumbent James Blanchard, and in 2004, ran again for Wayne County sheriff, but lost to incumbent Warren Evans, who, at the time, said Lucas was "like a father to me."

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: William Lucas, Wayne County sheriff and candidate for governor, dies