Edwards, an activist for the United Automobile Workers (UAW), public housing administrator and democratic proponent of the New Deal represented Cobo’s antithesis.

Cobo embodied a Republican, corporate executive, real estate investor who adamantly focused his campaign on race and public housing.

[5] Cobo, a fiscal conservative, translated his past career as a utility company executive into politics through a strong mistrust of government, economic intervention and deep confidence in the unhindered operation of a free market.

I WILL NOT APPROVE Federal Housing Projects in the outlying single home areas.”[7] Cobo justified his staunch opposition by rationalizing it as protecting the rights and consideration of people that move and invest in single-family areas.

[8] Twelve proposals for public housing in Detroit were under consideration when Cobo was elected mayor, and he adamantly opposed the construction of all but four sites—all in city centers with a large black population.

Cobo appointed Harry J. Durbin, former president of the National Association of Home Builders and successful developer, as Inglis's replacement along with Walter Gessell, a real estate giant, and George Isabell, a property manager.

The restructuring occurred in response to MIC’s vilification by white Detroiters for its advocacy for civil rights and desegregation of public housing and opposition to restrictive covenants and discrimination.

Cobo rejected Beulah Whitby, because of her opposition to segregated public housing, and John Field, the director of the Toledo Human Relations Board.

Cobo’s stopping of plans for the Schoolcraft Gardens Cooperative on Detroit’s far Northwest Side represented a racially fueled and crushing blow to improving housing equality.

This construction contrasted the mute, sterile towers of other public housing projects and was backed by the UAW who resisted pressure from community groups to restrict the development to whites.

Cobo ran on the Republican ticket in 1956 for governor of Michigan, but was handily beaten by G. Mennen Williams, his first loss after ten successful citywide campaigns.