This is a list of mayors of Detroit, in the U.S. state of Michigan. The current mayor is Mary Sheffield who was sworn into office on January 1, 2026.
History of Detroit's executive authority
During the earliest part of its history, Detroit was a military outpost, and executive authority was wielded by first French, then British military commandants. Soon after the Detroit area was taken over by American forces, civil authority became more prominent, and executive authority was placed in the hands of a series of appointed officials, elected boards, and elected officials. This included a brief stint in 1806–1809 with a largely ceremonial mayor.
Detroit's current strong mayor system dates from the city's 1824 charter. From 1824 to 1857, mayors were elected to terms of one year; from 1858 to 1953 the term was increased to two years, and after 1953 mayoral terms were four years.
Early French and British leadership
During the early part of Detroit's existence, local authority was vested in French and British military commandants. French commandants included:
- Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac (1701–1710)
- (1710–1714)
- Jacques-Charles Renaud Dubuisson (1714)
- Pierre Alphonse de Tonty (1717–1727)
- (1728–1729)
- , Sieur de Boishebert (1730–1733)
- (1733–1736)
- , Sieur de Charvis (1739–1742)
- Pierre Joseph Celoron (1742–1744)
- Paul Joseph le Moyne, Chevalier de Longueuil (1744–1748)
- Pierre Joseph Celoron (second term, 1750–1754)
- (1754–1758)
- Francois Marie Picote, Sieur de Belestre (1758–1760)
Seventeen British commandants led Detroit between 1760 and 1796.
- Major Robert Rogers (1760)
- Captain Donald Campbell (1760–1762)
- Major Henry Gladwin (1762–1764)
- Colonel John Bradstreet (1764)
- Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell (1765–1766)
- George Turnbull (1766–1769)
- Captain James Stephenson (1770–1772)
- Captain George Etherington (1772)
- Major Henry Bassett (1772–1774)
- Captain Richard Beringer Lernoult (1774–1779)
- Colonel Arent Schuyler de Peyster (1779–1784)
- Major William Ancrum (1785–1786)
- Thomas Bennett (1786)
- Captain Robert Matthews (1787–1788)
- Major Patrick Murray (1788–1790)
- Major John Smith (1790–1792)
- Colonel Richard England (1792–1796)
Early American leadership
When Detroit was turned over to the Americans in 1796, Colonel Jean François Hamtramck was named commander of Detroit, a position he held until his death in 1803.
The first local rule of Detroit was established in 1802, when Detroit was incorporated as a town. The original incorporation provided for a board of trustees to govern the town, the chairman of which was the highest governmental position. The first chairman of the board, appointed on February 9, 1802, was James Henry. Henry was elected to the position later in the year. Subsequent elections were held in May of each year, with the chairmen of the Board of Trustees being:
| Solomon Sibley was the author of Detroit's first city charter in 1806, and became the city's first mayor under the charter.
{| class="wikitable"
! #
! colspan="2"| Mayor
! Term
! Party
! Notes
|-
| 1
| 100px|Mayor Williams
| John R. Williams
| 1824–1825
| Democratic
| John R. Williams wrote the City Charter and served from 1824 to 1825 as the first mayor under the re-incorporation.
|-
| 2
| 100px
| Henry Jackson Hunt
| 1826
| Democratic
| Jonathan Kearsley served in the War of 1812, and was wounded badly enough to have his leg amputated. He moved to Detroit in 1819 to become of Receiver of Public Monies, a post he held for 30 years. Kearsley was mayor twice, being appointed once in 1826 to fill Henry Jackson Hunt's term after his death, and being elected himself in 1829.
| Major John Biddle was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1792, the son of Charles Biddle, former Vice President of Pennsylvania, He was in the US Army during the War of 1812, and was active in Detroit politics and civic life. He went on to serve as Michigan Territory delegate to the United States House of Representatives. His summer estate, "Wyandotte," was expanded into the current city of Wyandotte, Michigan.
| Levi Cook served in multiple positions in the government of Detroit and Michigan, including as Representative to the State House, Treasurer of the Michigan Territory, and mayor of Detroit in 1832, 1835, and 1836.
| Trowbridge moved to Detroit in 1819, at 19 years of age. In 1820, he served on the Lewis Cass expedition, led by Lewis Cass, so impressing Cass that the latter made Trowbridge his private secretary. In 1821, Trowbridge helped negotiate a treaty between the US government and the Winnebago and Menominee Indians, and was later appointed assistant secretary in the local Indian department. In 1837, he ran as the Whig candidate for governor of Michigan, and was defeated by Stevens T. Mason.
|-
| 11
| 100px
| Andrew Mack
| 1834
| Democratic
| A cholera epidemic broke out in 1834 during Mayor Charles Christopher Trowbridge's term; when the epidemic had subsided, Trowbridge resigned. He later represented Wayne County in the Michigan Legislature.
|-
| 14
| 100px|Mayor Porter
| Augustus Seymour Porter
| 1838 – March 14, 1839
| Whig
| Augustus Porter was the nephew of Peter Buell Porter; he practiced law for 20 years in Detroit, acting as city Recorder in 1830 and elected mayor in 1838. He resigned on March 14, 1839, to serve as United States Senator for Michigan.
| Whig
| Asher Bates came to Detroit in 1831, and served as Justice of the Peace and City Attorney.
|-
| 16
| 100px
| De Garmo Jones
| 1839
| Whig
| De Garmo Jones came to Detroit from Albany, New York, and was involved in many business ventures, including the Michigan Central Railroad.
| Zina Pitcher was a medical doctor, and began his career as a surgeon in the United States Army, eventually becoming president of the Army Medical Board in 1835.
| James A. Van Dyke was a lawyer by profession, served as City Attorney for Detroit, Wayne County prosecuting attorney, city alderman, and mayor.
|-
| 23
| 100px
| Charles Howard
| 1849
| Whig and in 1848 he was elected mayor of Detroit.
|-
| 24
| 100px
| John Ladue
| 1850
| Democratic
|In 1847, Ladue moved to Detroit, and began in the business of manufacturing leather and purchasing wool.
| Zachariah Chandler arrived in Detroit in 1833 and opened a dry goods store. In December 1838, Harmon took part in the Battle of Windsor, personally burning the British barracks and the steamer Thames. and serving as Collector for the Port of Detroit. After he left the office of Collector, Harmon spent much of his time in Washington, DC, during congressional sessions.
|-
| 27
| 100px
| Oliver Moulton Hyde
| 1854
| Whig
| Henry Ledyard was the son of prominent New York lawyer Benjamin Ledyard and Susan French Livingston (the daughter of Revolutionary War Colonel and US Supreme Court justice Brockholst Livingston and granddaughter of New Jersey governor William Livingston).
| John Patton was a carriagemaker born in County Down, Ireland. He emigrated to the United States as a boy, and later came to Detroit and established a factory. He was an alderman as well as mayor of Detroit.
|-
| 32
| 100px
| William C. Duncan
| 1862–1863
| Democratic
| William C. Duncan moved to Detroit in 1849 and set up shop as a brewer. He died in a boating accident near his home on Grosse Ile, Michigan.
| George C. Langdon began work as a clerk, and eventually went into the business of brewing and malting, amassing a considerable fortune. After his stint in the mayor's office, he suffered some reversals of fortune, and was forced to return to clerking at the City Hall.
| Thompson was a Republican while serving as mayor, and a delegate to both the 1876 and 1880 Republican National Convention. He also served as a state senator, being elected in 1894. In 1888, Thompson was party to a sensational and public fight, where Thompson was considerably pummeled, with his broth-in-law Daniel Campau, where the latter warned Thompson that "he must not talk about his wife hereafter in barrooms and other public places, as he had been doing." William G. Thompson died in 1904 of injuries received after being knocked down by a bicycle. He served as president of the Detroit City Council before being elected mayor. He later built similar plants in other cities.
|-
| 43
| 100px|Mayor Pingree
| Hazen S. Pingree
| 1890–1897
| Republican Following the war, Pingree moved to Detroit and there established the Pingree and Smith Shoe Co., which eventually had sales of over $1,000,000 per year. Pingree was elected mayor of Detroit in 1889 on a platform of exposing and ending corruption in city paving contracts, sewer contracts, and the school board.
|-
| 44
| 100px
| William Richert
| March 22, 1897 – April 5, 1897
| Republican
| William Richert served on the Detroit City Council for eight years, and as president of the body in 1895 and 1897. Richert served as acting mayor from March 22 to April 5, 1897, after Pingree was declared ineligible to serve as both mayor and governor. He was elected mayor of Detroit in 1897 to complete Hazen S. Pingree's term, and was elected twice thereafter. In 1900, Maybury ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Michigan. He was assistant city attorney from 1894 to 1897, a member of the board of aldermen from 1902 to 1904, mayor of Detroit from 1905 to 1906, a regent of the University of Michigan in 1910 and 1911, circuit judge of Wayne County from 1911 to 1921 and 1924 to 1927, and a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1921 to 1923. He resigned his seat as an alderman in 1897 after being elected city treasurer, and served as mayor for two terms, in 1907–1908 and 1911–1912. The business grew rapidly, and Breitmeyer was one of the organizers, and served as president, of Florists' Telegraph Delivery (now Florists' Transworld Delivery, or FTD). So well did he perform that he was nominated as the candidate for mayor, and was elected for a term in 1909–1910.
|-
| 49
| 100px
| William Barlum Thompson
| 1911–1912
| Democratic As Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan grew, the encroaching cities swallowed the Marx farm; when Oscar Marx's father sold the farm, he gave Oscar several thousand dollars, which he used to buy into a bankrupt optical firm, the Michigan Optical Company. In 1910, he was appointed City Assessor, and two years later saw his first of three terms as Detroit's mayor.
|}
Non-partisan elections
A new city charter went into effect in 1918, which required that all city offices be non-partisan. The following mayors were elected in non-partisan elections with no party designations on the ballot, and served on a non-partisan basis with no official party affiliation: This provision has been repeated in the subsequent city charters of 1974, 1997, and 2012: So, the party affiliations shown below are based on information from each mayor's personal and/or political history and do not represent any official status.
{| class="wikitable"
! #
! colspan="2"| Mayor
! Term
! Party
! Notes
|-
| 51
| 100px|Mayor Couzens
| James J. Couzens
| 1919–1922
| Republican In 1903, Malcomson helped bankroll Henry Ford in his new venture, the Ford Motor Company. Couzens borrowed heavily and invested $2500 in the new firm, and took over the business side of the operation. In 1919, he took the step to elected office, being twice elected mayor of Detroit. In that, capacity, Lodge served as acting mayor twice: once after James J. Couzens's resignation in 1922 and once after Joseph A. Martin's resignation in 1924.
|-
| 53
| 100px
| Frank Ellsworth Doremus
| April 9, 1923 – June 10, 1924
| Democratic He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1911 to 1921, Doremus was elected mayor in 1923, but resigned on June 10, 1924, due to ill-health.
|-
| 54
| 100px
| Joseph A. Martin
| June 10, 1924 – August 2, 1924
| Republican
| Joseph A. Martin was Commissioner of Public Works for Detroit from 1920 to 1923. He served as acting mayor in 1924 after Frank Ellsworth Doremus resigned for health reasons. Joseph A. Martin died in 1928.
|-
| 55
| 100px
| John C. Lodge
| August 2, 1924 – November 21, 1924
| Republican He was elected to the Michigan State Senate in 1920, and was appointed postmaster of Detroit by Warren G. Harding in 1922.
|-
| 57
| 100px
| John C. Lodge
| January 10, 1928 – January 14, 1930
| Republican He ran third in the primary election behind John W. Smith and Joseph A. Martin, but continued his campaign as a write-in candidate, and narrowly lost only after 15,000 write-in ballots were disqualified. Bowles had campaigned as an anti-crime reformer, but when he fired Police Commissioner Harold Emmons after the latter had ordered a series of raids, he was accused of "tolerating lawlessness" and a recall election was instituted barely six months after he had entered office. The recall was successful,
|-
| 59
| 100px|Mayor Murphy
| Frank Murphy
| September 23, 1930 – May 10, 1933
| Democratic He ran against Charles Bowles after the latter was recalled in 1930 and was elected, and was re-elected for a full term the following year. Frank Murphy resigned the mayorship in 1933 when Franklin D. Roosevelt named him Governor-General of the Philippines. He later went on to become Governor of Michigan, Attorney General of the United States, and finished his career as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. After a stint on the Detroit Street Railways Commission, Couzens ran for a seat on the Detroit City Council, and garnered enough votes to become council president. He was then elected mayor twice, filling out four years in office. He stayed in the office of clerk until 1939, when he ran for mayor, ultimately defeating Patrick H. O'Brien by nearly two-to-one. However, once in the office, Reading engaged in graft, selling protection to numbers racketeers and promotions to police officers. This corruption was exposed as the campaign for the next mayoral election was gearing up,
|-
| 64
| 100px
| Edward Jeffries
| January 2, 1940 – January 5, 1948
| Republican The younger Jeffries ran for Detroit City Council in 1932, and served on that body for four terms, from 1932 to 1940, serving the last two as City Council president. He served in the Detroit City Council from 1932 to 1948, when he moved to the mayor's office. Van Antwerp served a single term as mayor, moving back to the council in a special election in 1950 and remaining on the council until his death in 1962. Cobo never returned to Burroughs, instead running for the position of city treasurer in 1935, and serving seven consecutive terms. He declined to run for a fourth term as mayor, but died in office near the end of his term. Miriani was again elected to the City Council in 1965. He retired from politics after his conviction. Gribbs served a single term as mayor, declining to seek re-election. After leaving office, he served as a circuit court judge from 1975 to 1982 and on the Michigan Court of Appeals from 1982 until his retirement in 2000. During World War II, Young served as one of the Tuskegee Airmen, and returned to Detroit at the end of the war. The following year, Archer was elected to a full eight-year term. Archer declined to seek a third term. The younger Kilpatrick began his political career by running for the Michigan House seat his mother vacated in 1996, and was minority leader in the state house by 2001.
|-
| 73
| 100px|Mayor Cockrel
| Kenneth Cockrel Jr.
| September 18, 2008 – May 11, 2009
| Democratic. The younger Cockrel also ran for city council, and was first elected in 1997. However, Cockrel lost the ensuing special election to Dave Bing, and returned to his seat on the city council. Cockrel was re-elected to the city council later in the year.
|-
| 74
| 100px|Mayor Bing
| Dave Bing
| May 11, 2009 – December 31, 2013
| Democratic He moved to Detroit specifically to run for mayor,
|-
| 75
| 100px|Mayor Duggan
| Mike Duggan
| January 1, 2014 – December 31, 2025
| Democratic
| Mike Duggan served as the deputy County Executive and prosecutor for Wayne County, and was president and CEO of the Detroit Medical Center from 2004 to 2012. He resigned to run for Detroit mayor; after failing to qualify for the primary ballot, he waged a successful write-in campaign to qualify for the run-off election, where he beat Benny Napoleon. Duggan is the first white mayor since Roman Gribbs, who served when the city was still predominantly white.
|-
| 76
| 100px|Mayor Sheffield
| Mary Sheffield
| January 1, 2026 – present
| Democratic
| Mary Sheffield is the daughter of civil rights activist and pastor Horace Sheffield III. She won election to the Detroit city council in 2013, becoming the youngest person to hold that office at 26. She was re-elected twice, and became city council president in 2022. She was elected mayor in 2025, becoming the first woman mayor of the city.
|}
See also
- Timeline of Detroit
- History of Detroit
- Decline of Detroit
References
External links
- The Early Government of Detroit