Detroit voters will take a key step toward choosing a new mayor in the municipal primary on Tuesday, when nine candidates will appear on the ballot in the city’s first open-seat mayoral race in a dozen years.

The top two vote-getters in the nonpartisan primary will advance to the November general election.

The winner will replace outgoing three-term Mayor Mike Duggan, who is running for governor of Michigan as an independent.

The crowded field includes former police Chief James Craig, City Council member Fred Durhal, former City Council President Saunteel Jenkins, Triumph Church pastor Solomon Kinloch, attorney Todd Perkins and current City Council President Mary Sheffield. Also in the running are businessmen Jonathan Barlow and Joel Haashiim and three-time mayoral hopeful DaNetta Simpson.

Sheffield leads the field in campaign fundraising.

Although Michigan voters do not register by party and candidates for mayor do not run on a party label, most candidates in the field identify with the Democratic Party. Craig, on the other hand, is a Republican, having sought the GOP nomination for governor in 2022 and the U.S. Senate in 2024.

The Detroit electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2024, voters in the city supported Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over Republican Donald Trump by about a 9-1 ratio.

The city faces a vastly different situation than it did when Duggan first was elected in 2013. In July of that year, it became the largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy. The city now has a budget surplus, 12 years of balanced budgets under its belt and projected economic growth for the next five years. Homicides and violent crimes are down, while the city’s population is up for the second consecutive year.

Still, Oakland University political science professor Nicole Mathew said the next mayor will face numerous challenges.

“The candidates are talking about how to take the successes that Duggan has had, especially in the downtown core, and bring it to the rest of Detroit, to the neighborhoods that still are plagued with high crime and failing schools,” Mathew said.

“And whoever wins in Detroit is going to have an impact on economic policies for the whole region,” she said. “When Detroit does well, its suburbs tend to do well and the state tends to do well. So, it could have a big impact.”

Polls close Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET.