<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;" align="center">Half of the candidates running for mayor of Detroit have been convicted of felony crimes.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Detroit News</em>, three of the eight potential mayors were charged with gun charges, two for assault with intent to commit murder, and another candidate pleaded guilty to a non-gun charge years ago.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In Michigan, convicted felons can vote and run for office. Although this is alarming to hear, some are even defending them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Black marks on your record show you have lived a little and have overcome some challenges,&rdquo; said Bowens, a former press secretary to Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer and NAACP activist. &ldquo;They (candidates) deserve the opportunity to be heard, but they also deserve to have the kind of scrutiny that comes along with trying to get an important elected position.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All the candidates have been open about their shady pasts and are even using their criminal histories as a reason for running.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t hide it. God has brought me out,&rdquo; said Donna Marie Pitts, one of candidates with multiple felony convictions to <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Detroit News</em>. &ldquo;I hope [voters] don&rsquo;t look at it as negative but as my experience, and I can help. I want to fight for them.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to a Target Insyght poll., Pitt has 1% of the support of the 410 voters who participated.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Pitts has the most detailed rap sheet with crimes in both Oakland and Wayne counties, <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Detroit News </em>said. In the 1987 shootout over the car repair bill, a jury convicted Pitts of a lesser offense of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than murder, and a firearms offense. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison and paroled in June 992, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections. Her most recent conviction was in 2003, when she pleaded guilty in Wayne County Circuit Court to carrying a concealed weapon,&rdquo; writes the <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Detroit Patch.</em>  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The other candidates include Danetta L. Simpson, who was convicted of assault with intent to commit murder back in 1996; Articia Bomer, who was convicted for carrying a concealed weapon in 2008; and Curtis Christopher Greene, who was charged with a marijuana crime in 2004 and for fleeing and eluding police at a traffic stop.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The other mayor candidates Mike Duggan, Sen. Coleman A. Young Jr., Angelo Brown</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and Edward Dean all have clean records. Duggan took a lead in the Target Insyght poll.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Michigan is also the home of the Flint water crisis. Filmmaker Michael Moore pointed out that Flint has voted for democratic leaders for 84 years.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Flint is indeed a Democratic Party bastion. Don&rsquo;t its decades of Democratic dominance deserve some of the blame? ;It&rsquo;s the city&rsquo;s &#8220;Democratic rulers,&#8221; Reason magazine&rsquo;s Robby Soave reminds us, who have ;&#8220;robbed city residents blind to pad the pockets of public sector unions.&#8221; They&rsquo;ve also been in charge as Flint has become one the country&rsquo;s poorest cities (the second poorest, says the Census Bureau, for a city of its size), and a haven for criminals &#8212; it&rsquo;s the ;most dangerous city in America, according to Business Insider,&rdquo; writes <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Investors.com.</em> &ldquo;Detroit last elected a Republican mayor in 1957. It is now the model of urban failure &#8212; it&rsquo;s recognized more for its poverty, crime, rot and bankruptcy than the great cars that it turned out into the early 1970s. It is the poorest big city in the nation, with almost 40% of the population living below the poverty line. The website Law Street actually ranks Detroit ahead of Flint as the ;country&#8217;s most dangerous city. Either way, it&rsquo;s clear that both cities have institutionalized crime ;problems.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Author&rsquo;s note:</strong> This is what comes from 50 years of Democratic rule. The Flint water crisis is a mess and Detroit&rsquo;s future leader could be a convicted felon.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Editor&#8217;s note:</strong> I&#8217;m speechless.</p>
<p> ;</p>