Welcome to Off Message. I'm Isaac Dover. Today's guest, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.

The first time I spent any time in Detroit was the summer of 2013. It looked like the end of America to me.

Abandoned skyscrapers downtown, an 18-story train station that's been vacant

since 1988 looming at the edge of the skyline, falling apart. I was staying with a friend who took

me up to the roof of his building, and I looked out at a city at night that was full of giant

patches of darkness. There were no lights. Next time I was back was November 2014, right before Election Day from the midterms that year.

The city had changed.

First thing, there were street lights.

But there was also a lot of activities, some new buildings.

A lot of renovations happening.

I had dinner at an interesting restaurant above a John Vorvadoes store right on the main drag, Woodward Avenue.

John Varvados in Detroit.

But most of the rest of the buildings on the block were still vacant.

Then the next night, I had dinner at Buddy's one of the famous Detroit pizza places.

Detroit Pizza's Square baked in a tin.

And the person who took me there told me that we had to park under

a street light because otherwise the car might not be there when we got out. It sort of captures

the contradictions of Detroit. And three years later, the city looks completely different again.

There's more construction going on than makes sense. The buildings are cleaner. The block with that John Vorvado store is hopping.

Four different construction projects going on just on that block.

If Detroit used to look like how America ends, now it looks like one possible answer to how it comes back.

And at the center of it is Duggan, a guy who shouldn't by the conventional rules of politics have been mayor in the first place and shouldn't be looking at what will likely be a landslide re-election in November.

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