For the first time in its 96-year history, the city of Dearborn will not have an August primary election for citywide races, because there are not enough candidates running, the clerk said.
There will only be a November general election for voters to chose their mayor, clerk and seven-member city council, City Clerk George Darany announced in an April 29 statement.
There are two candidates for mayor, two candidates for city clerk and 13 council candidates for seven council seats who are qualified to be on the ballot, according to Darany. The deadline to file to run was April 22 and the deadline to withdraw was April 25. Under Michigan election law, a nonpartisan primary election must have more than twice as many candidates as the seats they are running for. That means a city needs more than two candidates running for mayor and clerk, and more than 14 candidates running for a seven-member city council.
Dearborn Administrative Center, which is Dearborn’s city hall, contains city council chambers, mayor’s office and other departments for the city of Dearborn. Photo taken November 8, 2022.
“For a primary election to have been required, there would have needed to be more than two candidates for mayor, two for clerk and 14 for city council,” the statement from Darany said.
“This is certainly a surprise,” Darany said. “Over the years, there have always been plenty of residents who would seek City office and require a primary ballot in each election.”
Darany did not provide a list of the candidates on the ballot.
According to Wayne County campaign records, the race for mayor will probably be between Dearborn Mayor Abudllah Hammoud, a Democrat seeking his second four-year term, and challenger Nagi Almudhegi, a 50-year-old IT manager who backed President Donald Trump. Two other potential mayoral candidates, Hassan Aoun, a Republican activist, and Gus Tarraf were disqualified. Darany said earlier that Aoun’s three felony convictions disqualifies him for elected office, according to city charter rules. Wayne County Chief Judge Patricia Fresard on April 11 also ruled against Aoun, denying his motion for injunctive relief to get on the ballot.
The race for clerk will probably be between Darany and Sami Elhady. Elhady told the Free Press he qualified to be on the ballot.
“Our candidacy really is under one banner, and that’s one Dearborn, to provide the most optimized services possible for city residents and city guests at the clerk’s office,” Elhady said. “The city of Dearborn is just a wonderful city. It’s an amazing city. It is so multicultural, multi layered … It’s like a big city, but … has small town characteristics as well. It’s just a wonderful place to raise a family … I want to be part of that legacy.”
One of the incumbent city council members, City Council President Pro Tem Leslie Herrick, was planning to run for reelection, but was disqualified from the ballot by Darany over not paying $800 in outstanding fees from a previous campaign in 2017. Herrick, the only woman on the council, appealed to Wayne County, but appears to have lost her attempts to get reinstated.
A letter from Darany to Herrick on April 2 said that Herrick had signed an affidavit saying she has paid all late fees, but she had not. On April 17, Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett sent a letter to Herrick that told her “the time for reconsideration or reassessment has lapsed and I am without authority to retroactively void or reassess a late filing fee that has been acknowledged and paid.” Garrett said her office did receive $800 from Herrick on April 2 for the outstanding fees.
Dearborn City Clerk George Darany speaks during the City Council meeting at Dearborn City Hall on July 13, 2021.
“The payment of the late filing fee in some form acknowledges that the (Herrick campaign) committee owed the outstanding late filing fees,” Garrett wrote to Herrick.
Herrick told the Free Press that she is now “evaluating the logistics of a write-in campaign and will announce a decision in the coming weeks.”
She explained that “in 2017, a clerical error in which we put an incorrect date on a campaign report resulted in a fee being assessed by Wayne County. Despite believing that this was resolved long ago, it was recently brought to my attention that the fee was still outstanding.”
Herrick said she then immediately paid the fee, but was then told by Wayne County that her “name will not be on the 2025 pre-printed election ballot.”
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Darany explained that some candidates who were initially thinking of running either failed to qualify or withdrew.
Darany said “four candidates had filed petitions to run for mayor and 16 for city council, but two were disqualified for each of those offices due to insufficient petitions, charter or campaign finance qualifications. Another candidate for city council withdrew from the ballot after filing petitions.”
According to city and county records and a city official, the 13 council candidates are: six council incumbents; Devon O’Reilly, a son of former mayor John O’Reilly Jr. who was arrested and charged in 2016 in a drunk driving case that drew attention over allegations of special treatment, which the former mayor denied; Ahmad Othman, a businessman; Shadi Mawari, an administrative assistant; Mark Andrew, a firefighter; Othman Alaansi, a software engineer; Sharon Dulmage, a former Dearborn school board member and former charter commissioner; and Mubarek Hamed, a merchant Marine.
Over the past 40 years, there has been a decease in the number of people running for city office in Dearborn, Darany said.
“I recall when there would be about 30 candidates in city council primaries in the 1980s,” he said.
Herrick said the “record low number of candidates” in Dearborn is “disheartening to me because this seems to indicate people are burned out on politics, and don’t want to become involved.” She said she has “worked to make sure that our local government is a place of hope where … people can make positive change in our community.”
In 2009 and 2013, there were more than 20 candidates for city council, Darany said. In 2017, five candidates ran for mayor and in 2021, there were seven running to be mayor. Hammoud won in November 2021 with 54.6% of the vote, defeating Gary Woronchak, a former state House representative and former Wayne County commissioner. Hammoud this year faces a challenge from Almudhegi, who has the support of Republicans and conservatives who have expressed concerns about crime and LGBTQ+ books in schools.
Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or X @nwarikoo
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dearborn will not have a primary election due to lack of candidates