Young Nearing an Easy Victory in Detroit

Coleman A. Young, the black mayor of this deeply troubled city who is seeking an unprecedented fifth term, was sweeping to an easy victory in Tuesday’s primary election.

But in a surprising upset, a little-known conservative black businessman, Tom Barrow, was defeating John Conyers Jr., a powerful black Democratic congressman, for second place and the right to challenge Young in the Nov. 7 general election.

The top two finishers in the nonpartisan primary qualify for the general election race for mayor of the nation’s sixth-largest city.

With 70% of the 921 precincts reporting, Young had 69,869 votes, or 52%, to 31,295, or 23%, for Barrow and 23,262, or 17%, for Conyers. Ten other candidates split the rest of the vote.

Heavy Voter Turnout

Voter turnout was the heaviest in 20 years, contributing to a slow ballot count Tuesday night. But exit polls conducted by at least two local television stations projected Young as the winner, with Conyers a distant third behind Barrow.

Conyers has never lost an election in his 25 years in Detroit politics.

Most local political observers had expected Conyers, a 13-term Democratic congressman from Detroit’s West Side--and a former ally of Young--to come in second, setting up a bitter battle in the general election. Over the final weekend of the campaign, Conyers received the endorsement of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has long feuded with Young.

Most observers here also felt that Conyers was the only candidate with a chance to beat Young in the general election.

Little Experience

Barrow, a conservative accountant and the nephew of the late boxer Joe Louis, has little political experience. Most of his support has come from black and white professionals, who are heavily outnumbered by the city’s working class black voters, who routinely support Young.

Conyers, who entered the race just before the filing deadline in July, apparently lacked the organization or funding to put together an effective campaign. Although his surprise entry into the race generated a brief period of excitement in the city, his subsequent stumbles on the campaign trail apparently cost him the support of many of the voters looking for an alternative to Young.

His controversial television advertisements, which depicted a series of violent crimes in order to dramatize the city’s problems, also may have backfired. The fact that Conyers has been in Washington for the past 25 years also enabled Young to depict Conyers as something of a carpetbagger.

‘Wrath of the Voters’

In his victory speech Tuesday night, Young lashed out at Conyers, charging that “candidates that sought to tear this city down, to drag it into the dust, have felt the wrath of the voters.”

Still, in the city’s most competitive mayoral campaign since Young first took office in 1973, all of Young’s challengers candidly discussed the economic blight and unrelenting drug-related crime that plagues Detroit. With thousands of abandoned buildings and crack houses dotting the city, Barrow and other candidates have tried to portray Young as a mayor who has sacrificed the city’s neighborhoods for the sake of downtown office development.