DETROIT -- You might say it was a bad week for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
But it wasn't a great week for those who live in his city, either, and who were slapped with new revelations about just who -- and what -- their flamboyant mayor is.
The week began with new revelations, thanks to the Detroit Free Press' mining of 14,000 text messages, that the mayor did city business in a way that would make the Sopranos proud.
He and his chief of staff and mistress, Christine Beatty, helped convicted criminal and longtime mayoral crony, the contractor Bobby Ferguson, land $45 million in city contracts.
They did this, the messages seem to show, by passing along illegal insider information.
The shameless Ferguson continually nagged them for confidential information about the rates one of his major competitors charged, so he could undercut his bids.
The contractor almost missed a chance to cash in on the Super Bowl. He pistol-whipped one of his own employees so badly in 2005 the man was left with permanent brain damage. The mayor loyally visited Ferguson in jail, however, and Ferguson was released early for the big game.
Detroiters had, of course, learned earlier this year that the mayor and his moll had lied under oath about their affair, and about their plotting to fire a deputy police chief investigating them. That ended up costing the city $9 million.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is investigating all this, and is widely expected to file charges the week of March 24.
Yet the 37-year-old mayor seemed defiantly determined to hang tough, even as New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned over a sex scandal that cost his taxpayers nothing.
Demands for the Detroit mayor's resignation were ignored -- or rejected with contempt. But something was clearly wrong with the picture on Tuesday night, when the mayor gave his annual "state of the city" address. Five of the nine council members refused to sit on the dais with Kwame Kilpatrick. The mayor talked for more than an hour, recounting his accomplishments and sketching out an ambitious program of new public works. Not a bad speech at all, even if delivered in an atmosphere of unreality.
But then, at the end, disaster.
The mayor went off script to address the scandal. "In the last 30 days I've been called a n----- more than any time in my entire life," he suddenly said. Orchestra Hall had been packed with his hand-picked supporters, but an audible gasp could be heard.
He then tried to make it all racial. "This unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality has to stop," he said. He made his stone-faced wife, Carlita, and their 12-year-old twins stand.
"We've never been in a situation like this before, where you can say anything, do anything, have no facts, no research, no nothing and you can launch a hate-driven bigoted assault on a family."
His hand-picked supporters dutifully clapped. But outside the hall, his attempt at demagogic race-baiting didn't work.
Nobody in the media has gone after the mayor's family, and there are plenty of facts. One of Detroit's TV stations had assembled a focus group to watch the speech. Valerie Burris, a middle-aged black Detroiter, grabbed the microphone -- and denounced the mayor.
"We do not have to put up with this nonsense. The mayor has been lying to us! There is no conspiracy. The mayor is the one who has been doing these things!"
Later the next day, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who had studiously avoided commenting on the scandal, finally spoke up.
"He is not fit to be mayor anymore. He is a very talented guy but ... I thought his statements were race-baiting on a par with David Duke and George Wallace, all to save his political career."
More bad news followed. For years, the mayor denied that an infamous, secret party at the Manoogian Mansion in 2002 ever happened. Now, both a former police clerk and a retired police officer have come forward to say yes, it did.
Yes, a bartender did arrange for strippers, said policeman and former Kilpatrick bodyguard Tony Davis. Yes, the mysteriously-vanished police report detailed how the mayor's wife did physically assault an "exotic dancer" after she saw her touching her husband, said clerk Joyce Rogers. (The same stripper, who went by the name of Strawberry, later turned up dead.)
What happens next isn't clear, but one thing is: You couldn't make this stuff up.
Contact Jack Lessenberry at Bucca@aol.com or write to him at 189 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 48202.
Print this story
E-mail this story
