Freep's M.L. Elrick: Kinloch 'Failed To Lay Even The Foundation of a Competitive Campaign'

Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr. (Campaign photo)

Everything pointed to a lopsided victory for Council President Mary Sheffield in the race for mayor. The last major poll before the election had her leading by 50 percentage points, and in the August primary she received 51 percent of the vote compared to Rev. Solomon Kinloch, who finished second with 17 percent.

Sheffield ended up clobbering Kinloch on Tuesday night, garnering 77 percent of the vote compared to his nearly 23 percent, which comes out to about 54 percentage points.

Detroit Free Press investigative columnist M.L. Elrick writes that Kinloch didn’t put up much of a fight:

In the end, it wasn't much of a contest.

Mary Sheffield, the Detroit City Council president who had all the money and most of the endorsements, flattened the Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr., who built a network of churches out of practically nothing but failed to lay even the foundation of a competitive campaign for mayor of Detroit...

Kinloch also made some tactical errors. Either out of arrogance or ill-advised strategy, he skipped most of the multitude of forums and candidate nights that proliferated throughout the primary.