Detroit Mayor Bing after re-election: 'I can't do this alone'
Christine MacDonald and Leonard N. Fleming
The Detroit News
November 04, 2009 00:22 AM
Detroit -- Mayor Dave Bing easily won re-election tonight over challenger Tom Barrow.
With all precincts reporting, Bing garnered 56.2 percent (70,060 votes) to Barrow's 40.7 percent (50,757 votes).
"I've done some things that are unpopular," said Bing to cheers at his victory party at the Doubletree Fort-Shelby Hotel shortly before 11 p.m. that turned into "Bing Go, Bing Go!"
"But I know that it's the right thing," he said.
He warned that the city is about to go through some "very, very difficult times," and that he's called on supporters, faith-based leaders and the business people to help him turn around Detroit.
"I believe this is a defining moment in Detroit's history," Bing said.
"Let me say this: I can't do this alone."
For Bing, the former Detroit Pistons star and industrialist who moved into the city last year from Franklin, it was the second time Detroit voters elected him this year to run the city's government. He won a special election in May to complete the term of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Although coming up short again, for Barrow, a two-time mayoral challenger to former Mayor Coleman Young, he said he went down fighting.
"I'm only sad that we will not be able to make the changes that I really wanted to make," Barrow said. "While it wasn't my time, and I accept it wasn't my time, I want my city of Detroit to know that I will continue to care."
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(Image: Robin Buckson / The Detroit News)
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