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Dave Bing, the Hall of Fame basketball great who spent most of his career with the Pistons, was elected mayor of Detroit yesterday.

With 100 percent of the vote in, Bing received 49,054 votes (52.3%) to 44,770 votes (47.7%) for Kenneth Cockrel Jr., who had been serving as acting mayor since the resignation of scandal-tarred Kwame Kilpatrick.

The election is only to fill the remaining months of Kilpatrick's term. Voters again go to the polls in August for a primary and November for the general election for a full, four-year term. Cockrel, who with his defeat returns to his post as city council president, is expected to run again this year.

This was Bing's first campaign for office. Since retiring from the NBA, Bing has been a successful businessman. But how will he be as mayor? Detroit Free Press' Bill McGraw is not sure:

Mayor Dave Bing.


The Honorable Dave Bing.

It certainly sounds different.

And Dave Bing, as he takes office, is one heck of a different mayor. It will be fascinating to watch if he turns out to be different good or different bad.

As an NBA star and Detroit businessman, Bing exuded grace, style and know-how.

As a candidate, he sometimes sounded clunky and was vague bordering on amorphous.

Asked in the first debate what he would do about fixing the city's $300-million budget deficit, Bing said he couldn't comment because he didn't have enough information, even though public officials have been discussing the figures -- all public information -- in public for months.

On the WDIV-TV (Channel 4) "Flashpoint" show Sunday, Bing bragged that he had refrained from making campaign promises.

"People know who I am in this city," he said.

He announced he had a panel of 25 experts who would help him evaluate city government, but refused to name them.

That lack of specificity in a big-time campaign is different.

In September, around the time disgraced mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was pleading guilty to felonies, Bing moved into Detroit from a gated community of million-dollar homes in Franklin and leased a condo in a building near downtown.

There is nothing wrong with living in a gated community of million-dollar homes in Franklin.

Except if you are going to run for mayor of Detroit. Then living in a compound in a wealthy suburb 20 miles from city hall is different. No serious candidate for Detroit mayor in memory -- and probably ever -- has had to move into the city to run.

Bing never has run for any office. He never had to deal with the messy business of making a government work or comforting the spouse of a dead cop or taking guff from members of a legislative body, much less members of the often farcical Detroit City Council.

A political neophyte serving as Detroit's mayor is different.

Bing emphasized his background as a businessman. The last businessman with no political experience to be elected mayor took office 119 years ago.

In a few days, Bing will take charge of the most troubled big city in North America. At 65, he is the oldest mayor elected for the first time in Detroit history.

It will be his job to see that the streetlights stay lit. It will be his job to see that police show up when called. It will be his job to get the garbage picked up. Those are three things -- among many -- that have proved to be problems for the last few mayors of Detroit. Bing himself has said the city is in crisis.

And Bing has to work his magic during a bad economy while the Detroit-based auto industry is being remade into something smaller and less important.

Only time will tell if electing Dave Bing the mayor was the electoral equivalent of thinking outside the box or a desperate shot at the buzzer.

The next election comes in less than three months.

That's different, too.

categories: All Politics Is Local

9:18 - May 6, 2009

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