(upbeat music) - Okay, Nolan, Stephen, what's the headline from the speech?

Nolan, start with you.

- The mayor billed it as a chance to introduce Detroit to the nation through this NFL draft that's coming up next week.

That this would be a chance to show the nation how far Detroit has come over these last years of his leadership.

I think it was also though a chance to introduce Mike Duggan and his new ambitions to a bigger audience, to a Michigan audience.

I think that speech was, just as the interview we did with him a couple of weeks ago was sort of the opening salvos of his run for Governor that he very clearly has planned.

- Stephen, I wanna get to that and just sort of the political machinations that go into a speech like this.

But what was the headline for you?

- Yeah, I think it was a pretty standard State of the City, county, nation kind of speech.

You take credit for the things you think you can take credit for, you promise a couple things to get people excited.

I think the draft gave them a really wonderful peg to start talking about the things that are different than they were 11 years ago.

If you would've imagined us hosting the draft 11 years ago, how different that would've been.

I think he's got a lot to be proud of.

I give him credit also for pointing out the things that we still need to work on, the things that are not finished.

He talked a lot about neighborhoods, about housing, about policing crime.

Those things aren't solved, but he's making some progress and talking about how he's gonna make more,.

Nothing terribly surprising here.

And I agree that it is kind of that opening salvo in his case to be made to the state that he ought to get a bigger job in two years.

- And so, I mean, he focused so much on neighborhoods, neighborhood revitalization.

Does that work though in terms of if he's trying to take this message statewide or nationwide?

- I do think it does, Zoe, because I mean, that's where the problems were, and that's where he can demonstrate his ability to come up with solutions and execute them.

I mean, Detroit was headed in a very bad direction for 60 years.

And now we've gone through this decade or so of stabilization, more or less, but still not growing the way it needs to grow.

And if it's gonna grow, that's gonna come from the neighborhoods, that's where you're gonna see the population, people, families come back.

You get the neighborhoods right and everything else sort of falls into place.

- Well, that's really what his critics, I mean, for years and years have said, that it's focused too much on downtown or pro business.

And leaving out the rest of the city.

- So I mean, he had some real direct answers for that during the speech.

I mean, he said, look, if you look at the overall investment outside of downtown Detroit totals about $4 billion.

That's not a little bit.

The problem is that we have probably $20 billion worth of problems in our neighborhoods.

And as somebody who's working in the neighborhood where I was born to try to turn things around and make them better, I can attest it is really hard work.

There are so many layered problems that have existed for such a long time that even the largest investment or gesture takes some time to make a difference, and things move slowly.

That's not an excuse.

He's the mayor of the city.

He's accountable for all of the things that happen.

But I think he did a good job explaining why things aren't fixed in the neighborhoods, but that they are better.

I also think that that's a huge part of his sell to the state, and even from a cynical standpoint, most people in the state still have a really negative view of Detroit, especially historically.

They have a really negative view of Detroiters historically as somehow having ruined the state's largest city.

Part of his sell cynically is, "Hey, look, I came in here and I straightened this out.

This was a mess and I fixed it.

And I do the same for Michigan."

So I don't think it's a bad thing for him to focus on the ways in which he's done that.

I'm not saying he's doing that cynically, but I do think there is a cynical sell to be made around that.

- And Zoe, part of his message, or the big part of his message to a broader electorate, to a broader audience, is his ability to put coalitions together, to bring people together from divergent places and different philosophies to work together to solve problems.

And I just came from moderating a session with John Rakolta who headed the Growing Michigan Commission, the Governor's Commission.

He very much talked about Michigan's inability to work together, to bring groups together, as being the major impediment to the state's growth.

And so I think Duggan seized an opportunity there to tout his ability to work across lines.

And I think that's gonna be his message to Michigan voters over the next couple years.

- So the fact that he announced that they're naming this rec center, this community center over on the west side after Helen Moore, who is one of the harshest critics of every public official in the city and has been for 30 or 40 years.

I've never seen her kind of hold hands with a public official and be like, "Hey, yeah, this is great.

Things are going in the right direction."

He got her to do that by naming that center after her.

I mean, that's a masterful stroke politically.

- We'll see what the next speech is from this mayor, whether they're about Detroit or the state as a whole in terms of a possible run for Governor as Nolan was talking about.

Thanks guys.