Detroit Mayor Contest Takes on Racially Charged Edge : Politics: Both candidates are black. But Sharon McPhail questions Dennis Archer’s ties to white suburban interests. He attacks her integrity.

At a prayer breakfast last week, Rev. Charles Adams, a former president of the local NAACP, needed just a few choice words to inflame the already racially charged contest for the mayor of Detroit.

“They (the suburbs) want a mayor to shuffle when he’s not going anywhere, scratch when he’s not itching and grin when he’s not tickled,” he said.

Adams, who is supporting Sharon McPhail in the nonpartisan Nov. 2 election, later apologized for the statement that was widely reported and interpreted as an direct attack on her opponent, Dennis Archer.

The incident may be the defining moment in the campaign. Even though both candidates are black, in a city that is 75% black, the campaign has centered increasingly on race.

It is reminiscent of campaigns of Mayor Coleman A. Young, who was a master at painting his opponents as the water carrier of the affluent, white suburbs. Such tactics helped him stay in office for an unprecedented five four-year terms.

Young, 75, decided in June not to seek another term because of his faltering health and popularity. But Young endorsed McPhail last month, and since then the battle has focused less on crime, jobs and development and more on personalities, style and racial politics.

“It took a very harsh tone after the primary with some very personal attacks,” said Lyke Thompson, a political science professor at Wayne State University. “The race issue has come into the campaign in coded form.”

Under Young, Detroit made great strides in empowering its black majority. But in the last two decades, the city has lost a third of its jobs, per capita income slipped 25% and the poverty rate doubled.

“The main issue in this campaign is, ‘Can anybody raise Detroit from the ashes?’ ” said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics. “Is there life after Coleman Young?”

The answer will rest on either Archer, a lawyer and former state Supreme Court justice, or McPhail, a former prosecutor and now administrator with the Wayne County prosecutor’s office.

Archer, who ran Young’s 1977 mayoral campaign, decided two years ago that it was time for new leadership in Detroit. He began raising campaign funds and gathering business and community support.

Archer, 51, paints himself as an agent of change. “Business creates jobs, and we will be a pro-business city,” Archer told the Detroit Economic Club last week. He points to the successes of Cleveland, Baltimore and Pittsburgh as models.

He finished first in the crowded September primary with 53% of the vote. McPhail finished second with 26%. She has closed the gap some since, but most polls continue to show Archer ahead.

McPhail, 44, also portrays herself as independent and committed to change. “You challenge the system or you defend it,” she told the Economic Club. “I challenge it.”

She favors community-based solutions--tapping into grass-roots and volunteer organizations--to solve Detroit’s drug, poverty and other social problems.

Both candidates favor increasing the size of the police force. Archer says he will reassign police on desk duty to put more than 380 cops on the street. McPhail, who was appointed to the police commission by Young in 1985, wants to add 2,000 officers to the street by using federal grant money and by allowing cops to moonlight for private businesses.

On economic development, McPhail emphasizes neighborhood councils to direct revitalization and corporate help to reorganize city finances. Archer wants to create an economic development office to cut red tape and attract new business. Both oppose casino gaming in Detroit and support building a new baseball stadium downtown.

With so much agreement on major issues, the campaign has come to focus more in the closing weeks on style and character.

Archer, who has raised nearly $2 million--four times his opponent--in campaign funds, has attacked McPhail sharply in advertisements. In one ad, he criticizes McPhail for failing to vote in many city elections.

McPhail’s integrity has come under question in several articles in the local newspapers. She was accused of improperly seeking to have charges against a friend’s son dropped in a felony case handled by the prosecutor’s office.

In characteristic blunt style, she lashed out at a fellow prosecutor, whose version of events she labeled a lie, and at the newspapers. Both Detroit newspapers have endorsed Archer.

While McPhail comes across as direct and street-smart, Archer is less emotional and more controlled.

McPhail’s attacks on Archer have a veiled racial edge. She questions Archer’s ties to suburban interests and his racial credentials. She notes that he initially favored the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In his endorsement of McPhail, Young cited her strong civil rights record: opposition of Thomas, supporting assistance for Haitian refugees and helping obtain financial help for black auto suppliers.

But Young’s support may cut both ways. Young fans are likely to back McPhail. However it could hurt with others who want to break with the politics of the past.

“People are tired of the city being broken down,” said Ballenger. “They want change.”