Let mayor be, see all it gets us
BY ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
April 24, 2008
Quit playing.
The mayor and his chief of staff, according to the county prosecutor, use a city two-way to discuss a fired cop and steamy hookups?
I know I've been gone for eight months, but stop me when I'm lying.
They both then take the stand when the officer sues and say they did not fire him and they never had an affair? And the mayor rejects calls to resign from residents and the Detroit City Council, but then declares that his chief of staff's resignation was appropriate? And he thinks he can still govern in the coming months while spending all day, every day, in court?
In the next week or so, the lawyer the council has hired to make heads or tails of this mess is to release his findings. Those findings could lead the council to try to remove the mayor or at least recover the $8.4-million cop trial settlement it was duped into OK'ing.
Meanwhile, the city sits in two paralyzed camps, its renaissance in jeopardy. What should the city do?
Leave the mayor alone.
Kwame Kilpatrick, facing the biggest scandal of his scandal-plagued administration, is the leader Detroit deserves. If a city of 900,000 people who have survived fire and national scorn and crushing poverty and bad leadership wants to be led by a man who finds it hard to admit that he has done something stupid, then leave the mayor alone.
If we crave a nationally televised trial -- and additional text messages we haven't seen -- that will damage lives and destroy progress, then leave the mayor alone. But during the trial, let us lament what might have been. Kwame Kilpatrick was Barack Obama before Barack Obama was Barack Obama. If Kilpatrick, the spirited and inspired young lawyer-teacher, had headed to Washington instead of trying to turn his hometown into a fiefdom, he might have become president one day. But instead of becoming Obama, he is O.J. Simpson with a legal Dream Team set for a trial where the glove will eventually fit.
The circus comes to town
The trial will be part of a traveling circus of dishonor that began with New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey standing with his wife to announce that his gender preference did not include her and continued with New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer standing with his wife to announce that his sexual preference did not include her. Both men dishonored their families, their positions and their states. And they quit. Kilpatrick also has dishonored his family, his position and his city. Then he appeared on TV to apologize without saying why and said he wouldn't leave even though his presence risks the progress he claims the city deserves.
And that is at the heart of the Kilpatrick Khaos that envelopes Detroit now. Six years ago, Kilpatrick became more than mayor. He became Detroit, its persona, its symbol. When he became the hip-hop mayor, Detroit became the hip-hop capital, a place that drew rap impresario Russell Simmons for summits with Eminem. When the mayor became a larger-than-life national star, even inspiring the performance of Chris Rock in a movie about the first black president, the mayor and the city became inseparable.
But here's the problem: When the mayor was pop star Britney Spears, the world loved him, wanted to hang with him, wanted to party with him, laud him, close deals with him. Detroit looked good. But when the mayor becomes panty-less dope fiend Britney Spears, the world shuns him, doesn't invite him to the same parties, won't defend him in public, and treats him, as the City Council did last week, like Bobo the Clown. Detroit looks bad.
And this isn't the time for Detroit to look bad, not when it is struggling with a renaissance that will mean the difference between its becoming a strong urban center or a large suburb of Southfield. Detroit's population has dropped 40% in 40 years; its tax revenues don't match its needs; its residents, according to surveys and education statistics, still believe that factory jobs trump education. And residents decry the loss of 1,000 police officers and having to pay a fee for trash pickup.
Despite that, Kilpatrick has scored touchdowns, from hosting the 2006 Super Bowl to overseeing an amazing waterfront redevelopment. And his greatest success so far is still intact. On Wednesday, Quicken Loans Chairman Dan Gilbert said that the relocation of his company and 4,000 employees to downtown Detroit remains "on schedule."
The victories make the mayor think the kind of Teflon that protects some U.S. presidents applies to him. It does not.
Detroit doesn't do well paralyzed, unsure or catatonic. At the peak of Detroit's comeback, the mayor has put us on the tracks, and the train is coming. Those for him and against him are pushing each other into the center of the tracks. No one relents. The train bears down. No savior is coming.
Leave the mayor alone.
If he feels he can get away with perjury, obstructing justice and making a mockery of Motown, it is only because he knows he can count on Detroiters to let him.
Cut up his race card
Leave the mayor alone.
Don't forget that he's black. What's that? Race is not an excuse to err? I didn't think so, either. But this mayor uses the race card like American Express. I know what a race card looks like. I have one, and I do not waste it. It is for extreme cases of bigotry and hatred, not for when you've been caught with your pants down. When the mayor turned his State of the City address into a pep rally with paid applause and blamed a lynch-mob mentality for his troubles, he went too far.
I wondered where his race card was when he kicked to the curb all the black attorneys who worked so hard to protect him and now may be charged with crimes. They were good enough for a rumored cover-up but not good enough to work on the big case, saving him from prison. He saved that for a white attorney from Illinois. We're taking the mayor's race card. Right here. Right now. Pulling out the scissors and cutting it up.
Leave the mayor alone.
Two weeks ago, sources say, he met with Detroit Renaissance, the powerful business group whose members have helped rebuild Detroit. He went as a man defeated but declared that he wouldn't quit. It is easier for a sitting mayor than a shamed politician to raise legal defense funds. If Detroit's most powerful won't speak out -- yet -- and its children who have spoken out are ignored, then why blame the mayor?
Leave the mayor alone. He will lose his job -- eventually -- and take down others with him. What's left to decide is whether he will be removed or will resign -- and like former Washington Mayor Marion Barry, rise from his own ashes.
If Kilpatrick quits before his trial -- you won't believe this -- Detroit's charter allows him to run again. Next year. As a matter of fact, any convicted felon could be mayor of Detroit -- unless he or she is convicted while in office. So the mayor better act quickly. If he quits now, he can be back in his office before an interim mayor can even get settled.
Remember, Detroit, this is America. We are innocent until proven guilty -- even when crimes seem evident. If Detroit is paralyzed and can do no better than sit and watch this numbing tragedy, then sit there. Leave the mayor alone -- and to the courts where he will be punished by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
