PROSECUTOR CANDIDATE MIKE DUGGAN WANTS TO ATTACK VIOLENCE, DRUG DEALING

Second in a series of profiles on the Wayne County prosecutor's race.

In his campaign literature, Wayne County Deputy Executive Mike Duggan is
described as a pit bull and a visionary.

However he is perceived, Duggan has a simple approach to his job of
overseeing 10 county departments and 5,000 employees.

"Basically I fight with the bad guys," Duggan said last week over
breakfast. Bad guys, in Duggan terminology, are those who don't have the
public's interests at heart.

But critics claim he's the bad guy, potentially compromising the office
with his fund-raising and his political connections.

Duggan scoffs at those claims. In his drive to become Wayne County
prosecutor, the troublemakers he's focused in on include sellers of guns to
minors and owners of drug houses, two types of criminals he says have been
overlooked by the Prosecutor's Office.

"In terms of quality of life, I think Wayne County prosecutor is the second
most important job in Michigan, behind the Detroit schools CEO," Duggan
said. "The level of violence and drug dealing is a terrible blight on the
entire state."

Duggan, a Democrat, said the task of cleaning up the mess "is more
important than being governor." Even so, he admits he decided to run for
prosecutor only after he was passed over for his dream job -- head of the
Detroit Medical Center -- about 18 months ago. At about the same time,
Duggan said he learned that longtime Prosecutor John O'Hair would not seek
re-election.

Duggan has been devising an election strategy and raising money ever since.
How much money? He won't say, claiming he wants to keep his competition
guessing. Political pollster Ed Sarpolus estimates the Duggan war chest at
$500,000 to $750,000. His TV commercials -- part of a planned monthlong
media blitz -- began airing Tuesday night during prime-time programming.

Duggan's well-documented feats in government have helped him hobnob with
area power brokers. He helped arrange the agreement to build side-by-side
sports stadiums in downtown Detroit; started a health-care program for
people whose employers did not provide health coverage; led a campaign to
raise tax dollars for a regional bus system, and managed an emergency
repair program for Detroit public schools.

Duggan is the darling of the establishment. Nearly 300 elected officials,
including McNamara, Attorney General Jennifer Granholm and more than 30
mayors, have endorsed him. So have 110 of 150 assistant Wayne County
prosecutors, the metro Detroit AFL-CIO and most police labor unions.

Downriver industrialist Heinz Prechter, U.S. Rep. John Dingell and Ilitch
empire President Denise Ilitch have helped sponsor Duggan fund-raisers.

"He's a deal-maker," Tom Wilson, president of Palace Sports and
Entertainment, said during a recent fund-raiser at Comerica Park. "I think
he's a street fighter, a very competitive negotiator who wants to win."

Wilson was among about 200 people who paid at least $100 to tour the
ballpark and clubhouse, eat a meal of hot dogs, baked beans and corn on the
cob and bid on sports memorabilia like autographed jerseys of Steve
Yzerman, Grant Hill and Juan Gonzalez. The event, sponsored by the four
Detroit professional sports franchises, netted $25,000.

Critics like George Ward, the county's chief assistant prosecutor and the
prosecutor candidate with O'Hair's backing, say Duggan's strong political
connections and intense fund-raising do not mesh with the need for an
independent prosecutor.

Ward claims Duggan's financial support from county contractors raises
questions about his ability to separate himself from the County Executive's
Office. Duggan also can't avoid the taint of a controversial no-bid APCOA
parking contract at Metro Airport, Ward said. APCOA Inc. is the company
that has been the parking contractor at Metro.

Electing Duggan prosecutor would be like putting "the fox in charge of the
chicken coop," Ward has said.

Duggan bristles at the criticism, claiming voters are more concerned about
drugs and guns and local law enforcement issues than airport contracts and
financing. He said he favors public financing of campaigns and has never
participated in the selection of a county contractor.

"The system is wrong" but those are the rules, he said. Duggan said he
would not handle cases if he had a conflict of interest, a standard policy
for prosecutors.

With less than a month to go until the Aug. 8 primary, Duggan's biggest
challenge is to let voters know who he is. A Free Press poll in May showed
him trailing Sharon McPhail by more than a 3-1 margin.

Duggan is the 41-year-old son of U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan, a
Republican appointed by Ronald Reagan, and Joan Duggan, a former chief
administrator for McNamara when he was Livonia mayor.

In the eighth-grade, he remembers watching his four younger brothers while
his mother returned to college. In high school, Duggan was a nationally
ranked debater, but didn't do that well in high school academics or athletics.

Throughout his county career, Duggan has adhered to a family-first
philosophy. The father of four has coached baseball, basketball and soccer
for youth teams and is a scorekeeper for 12-year-old son Eddie's baseball
squad.

On Saturday, he took a break from campaigning to coach an under-10 girls
soccer team at a tournament.

Sometimes the pace of racing between multiple work assignments and family
outings has led to trouble. Police have cited him 10 times since 1991 for
speeding and other violations, most recently for speeding in Detroit in
October of 1998 and June of 1999. District court judges suspended his
license twice for failure to pay two of the tickets in the early 1990s. His
license has been reinstated.

Although a candidate for the first time, Duggan is an experienced political
strategist, having helped mastermind campaigns for McNamara and Granholm.

In the next few weeks, the Duggan campaign will feature TV spots, mailings,
appearances at Detroit churches and more than 100,000 phone calls from
2,000 campaign volunteers.

"I need 60,000 votes to win," Duggan said matter-of-factly.

But waiting until the last month of the campaign for a publicity blitz is a
risky move, said pollster Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC/MRA of
Lansing. He said voters usually don't pay attention to election news in
July. "If he loses, he can only blame himself" for not starting to campaign
sooner, Sarpolus said. "Insiders only know him."

Former Northville Township Supervisor Karen Woodside is one of those
insiders. She and Canton Township Supervisor Tom Yack are among suburban
Republicans supporting Duggan.

Woodside experienced Duggan's hard-nosed tactics when they were on opposite
sides of the negotiating table for a proposed development of 900 acres of
county-owned land in the township. They were adversaries at first, but
Woodside says she came to admire him.

"Neither of us backed down but we compromised," said Woodside, an appellate
attorney in the prosecutor's office. "He has an electric personality."

For other stories about the race, visit www.freep.com/index/locway.htm.

Contact DENNIS NIEMIEC at 734-432-6503 or niemiec@freepress.com.

(SIDEBARS)

MIKE DUGGAN

Age: 41.

Residence: Livonia.

Education: Law degree, University of Michigan Law School, 1983; bachelor's
in philosophy from U-M in 1979.

Occupation: Wayne County Deputy Executive.

Background: Oversees daily operations of 10 county departments and 5,000
employees, since 1987; attorney for Prosecutor John O'Hair, 1984; private
practice, 1983-84. Personal: Married to Lori Maher, owner of Kid Kingdom in
Canton Township; two sons and two daughters.

GUN SELLERS, DRUG HOUSES KEY ISSUES

Mike Duggan's platform for Wayne County prosecutor is centered on two issues:

Aggressive prosecution of those who sell guns to kids. There have been
6,000 cases of kids younger than age 16 convicted of carrying concealed
weapons in Wayne County since 1990, including 2,000 suburban incidents,
Duggan said. He said none of the gun sellers was prosecuted.

Seizure of homes that are used repeatedly for drug transactions. Duggan
said in the last four years, drug busts have occurred more than once in
more than 990 houses in Detroit. About 25 percent of the drug purchasers
lived in the suburbs. Although those houses could have been seized under
state forfeiture laws, only two were. In Oakland County, 45 houses were
seized during the same time, Duggan said.