Craig Covey


Craig Covey is an American politician who served as Mayor of Ferndale, Michigan from 2008 to 2011. He was the first openly gay mayor elected in the state of Michigan. A Democrat, he resigned the office in 2010 to take a seat on the Oakland County Commission, where he served one term.

Biography

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Covey was an activist, and executive director of Stonewall Union in the 1980s. He lived in Michigan since moving to the state to become executive director of the Michigan Organization for Human Rights in 1985 and lived in Ferndale from 1989 until 2017.

Gay activism

Covey moved to Michigan from Ohio to head the Michigan Organization for Human Rights in 1985. He is credited with organizing Detroit's first Gay and Lesbian pride march, an event later known as Motor City Pride. He founded the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project. In 2001, he founded La Comunidad, a support group for gay Latino men in the metro Detroit area.
Covey was also CEO of the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project and Chief Operating Officer of the Michigan AIDS Coalition, the organization resulting from the merging of MAPP and the Michigan AIDS Fund in 2009. He left the Michigan AIDS Coalition the following year. He co-founded Ferndale Pride in 2011 when Motor City Pride moved from Ferndale to Detroit.

Political career

Covey lost his first race for Ferndale City Council in 1995 by a wide margin, but was elected on his second try and served from 1999 to 2008. He was Ferndale's first gay city councilor. As a city council member, Covey introduced Ferndale's human rights ordinance in 2006, which was approved by voters in November of that year.
Ferndale's first gay mayor, he was elected on November 6, 2007 for a two-year term, succeeding three-term mayor Robert Porter, by defeating Tom Gagne 54% - 46%. He was re-elected unopposed in November 2009. In 2010, he ran for the Oakland County Commission, winning a three-way Democratic primary on August 3, 2010 and besting a Republican in the November general election in a reliably Democratic district. After Republican redistricting, Covey faced fellow Democratic incumbent Commissioner Helaine Zack in a primary election, which he lost on August 7, 2012 by 54% to 46%. In early 2013, he began working as a special assistant to Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash.
He ran again for mayor of Ferndale, Michigan on November 5, 2013, challenging incumbent David Coulter, but was defeated. Covey unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard in 2016.