Former City Councilman Michael Klinefelt led the race for Eastpointe mayor, collecting 57% of the votes, and will compete against retired educator Mary Hall-Rayford, who gained 17% of the votes, according to unofficial election results.
Both candidates will now advance to the general election in November, where they will compete for the mayoral seat.
Incumbent Mayor Monique Owens did not secure a spot for the November 7 general election, finishing third in a field of four candidates. Mayor Owens, who made history as Eastpointe’s first Black mayor, received 14% of the ballots cast, while City Council member Stacy Cobb-Muñiz trailed closely with 12%.
Owens faced a familiar rival, Klinefelt, a Wayne County assistant prosecutor and former City Council member. Klinefelt narrowly lost to Owens four years ago by just 19 votes in a field of five candidates.
Klinefelt’s political lineage includes his mother, State Sen. Veronica Klinefelt, who defeated Owens in the Democratic primary for state senate in August 2022. On the other side of the mayoral race, Mary Hall-Rayford, an Eastpointe Community Schools board member, was part of a group that sued Owens and the city, alleging abuse of power and suppression of public criticism. This legal action was spurred by a September meeting where Owens allegedly cut off critics, ending abruptly when other city council members departed. Meanwhile, Owens’ own political ambitions extended beyond Eastpointe, as she ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for state senate in August 2022, after initially filing to run in the Republican primary.
Mayor Owens, the youngest mayor in the county’s history, and the first Black woman to serve as Eastpointe’s mayor, has faced both triumphs and controversies during her tenure. Elected as the city’s first Black councilwoman in 2017, Owens previously worked for the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office. She ran for city council twice before becoming mayor.
Her mayoral seat, which carries a four-year term, is now challenged by three candidates, many of whom have focused their campaigns on LGBTQ+ rights. This comes after the city’s 2023 Pride Month resolution failed to pass.
However, many argue that the race has been overshadowed by Owens’ impending legal battle. Scheduled to be arraigned on August 14 in Circuit Court on false pretenses from $1,000 to less than $20,000, Owens faces a five-year felony after being accused of fraudulently applying for a grant under the CARES Act for her business, allegedly receiving $10,000 from money the county obtained from federal aid package. She is alleged to have misrepresented her business, Naturally Funny Talent Agency, by falsely claiming that it was veteran-owned and employed more than 100 people in an application for a CARES Act grant through the county in October 2020.
Eastpointe’s election process itself has been the subject of scrutiny. In 2017, the U.S. Justice Department argued that the city-wide vote for council seats prevented Black candidates from winning, as white voters could vote as a bloc, violating the Voting Rights Act. Mayor Owens supported the lawsuit filed by U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade against the city.
According to a spokesperson for FairVote, the city settled in 2019 and used the ranked choice system through 2021. Eastpointe became the first city in Michigan to adopt this system, allowing voters to rank council candidates from their first to fourth preference. While a report by FairVote and the New America Foundation found that racial minority populations prefer ranked-choice voting, the city’s first election using this method did not elect any Black councilmembers.
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