Kilpatrick fights for his political life
Mayor still trails challenger Hendrix, but his approval ratings are up
When Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was elected four years ago at age 31, his youth and energy were seen as assets.
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DETROIT -- The embroidered French cuffs on Kwame Kilpatrick's suit shirts say it all: "Mayor."
When Kilpatrick was elected four years ago at age 31, his youth and energy were seen as assets. The stylish 6-foot-4 former college football player, legislator and lawyer with a diamond earring was heralded as the city's next great hope -- able to speak both to Detroit's poor residents and entrepreneurs contemplating investment in the city.
Now he finds himself in the political fight of his life after a first term that included a $300 million budget deficit, hundreds of layoffs, scrutiny over his use of a city credit card, city lease of a luxury SUV for his family and feud with a television reporter.
"I don't think that we can combat the legend of Kwame Kilpatrick. No matter what I say, people are going to believe that I'm a certain way," he said in an interview. "It's the image that you got. You have to deal with it and move to the next thing."
With less than three weeks until the nonpartisan Aug. 2 primary, polls show Kilpatrick trailing challenger Freman Hendrix, an even-keeled career civil servant and Navy man who was deputy to former Mayor Dennis Archer and is seen as a less flashy alternative to Kilpatrick.
Hendrix campaigns on themes like residents' obligations to maintain their property, the importance of cooperating with the suburbs and the federal government's obligation to fund Head Start. He has the endorsement of Archer, the two main daily papers and local Teamsters.
The most recent poll, which surveyed 400 likely voters earlier this month, gives Hendrix 34 percent, Kilpatrick 23 percent and City Councilwoman Sharon McPhail 16 percent, with a margin of error of five percent.
But it also shows a bump in the mayor's job approval numbers, to 35 percent from 27 percent in May. And Hendrix has lost some of his lead in a head-to-head contest with Kilpatrick.
Pollster Ed Sarpolus, whose EPIC/MRA firm conducted the survey, attributes Kilpatrick's boost to advertising -- billboards, TV and newspaper spots -- and grass-roots work.
"The mayor is getting at the hip-hop generation in their 30s and the super-senior vote. Those are his strengths," Sarpolus said.
"We know from the job approval rating that people are looking for an alternative to Kilpatrick, but we see that some people say that when it comes down to the lesser of two evils, they're not necessarily ready to abandon the mayor."
The top two primary vote-getters face off in November.
Kilpatrick ran last time on a determination to turn the city around. Some say he's made a good start on an impossibly tough assignment.
In a half-century, the city has lost about half its population. With it went business and tax bases, leaving an urban core of the less-mobile who were dependent on city services but unable to support them.
Residents remember years in which snow stayed unplowed for weeks and girls were being sexually assaulted in dangerously tall grass on the many unmowed vacant lots.
The grass in parks gets cut now on a more-or-less regular basis and the streets usually get plowed. Kilpatrick launched new projects to eliminate or fix junk buildings left behind and jump-started a riverfront development plan. Several big companies have established offices in the city instead of the suburbs.
Crime is down, and the city is proud of itself for winning major sports events like the 2006 Super Bowl and last Tuesday's baseball All-Star game.
But Detroit is in a financial crisis and on the edge of a state takeover. Streets still have potholes and broken lights. As of mid-June about 600 city workers had been laid off and more pink slips are coming.
Budget cuts are expected to eliminate up to a third of the police department and 120 firefighters -- two of the services residents consistently rate as most important. Bulk trash pickup has been cut back, and Kilpatrick slashed bus service in a city where there is no other public transportation and chronic unemployment.
Yet tax and insurance rates are still some of the highest around, and the mayor has proposed levying yet another fee -- on fast food.
Hendrix talks about restoring integrity and changing the culture. McPhail, a former prosecutor, says Detroit needs a mother's nurturing touch.
"They're wonderful, handsome guys," McPhail said during a televised debate this month. "But if you could fix it, why didn't ya?"
The mayor recently took out a radio spot again denying old rumors of a wild party at the mayoral mansion, and apologizing for what he called mistakes: the city's $24,995 lease of a luxury SUV for his wife and three young sons, and thousands of dollars in questionable credit card spending -- much of it on luxuries while traveling.
He's personally paid back nearly $9,000 of the charges and says many of them are being disputed.
"If the stories didn't focus on him and the champagne and the SUV, people would blame the state and the general economy," Sarpolus said. "But when it happens on your watch and you look like you're not watching, you get blamed."
The city's cable commission also has taken to the television airwaves to combat criticism.
It helped produce a piece attacking in-your-face investigative reporter Steve Wilson of WXYZ-TV, who has dogged the mayor. In January, Wilson set off a sensation by breaking the story of the leased red Lincoln Navigator, right around the time the mayor announced big bus service cuts.
Kilpatrick initially denied that the vehicle was for his wife, and police said it was for undercover use. But Wilson pointed to the police lights mounted inside, and the city eventually admitted it was for the mayor's wife and three young sons.
Wilson has followed the mayor across the country, and the feud has become physical. A mayoral bodyguard shoved him. Wilson even bought a first-class plane ticket so he could sit near Kilpatrick and interview him with a handheld camera.
The mayor has called it harassment and implied that the media is out to get him. And his father had to apologize in May after comparing the media's treatment of his son to Nazi propaganda.
Wilson says most of the feedback he gets from viewers is supportive.
Some others are more forgiving of Kilpatrick.
Yelling over construction on a downtown street, 62-year-old retiree George Bruse pointed to the orange caution barrels in the road and said the mayor has his vote.
"He's OK. You look around, things are getting built, at least. That's something," Bruse said.
And at a recent health fair for senior citizens, people squeezed past each other to kiss Kilpatrick, wag fingers about dark streets or bad bus service or thank him for fixing their water.
Some just seemed to want to touch him -- or his embroidered shirt cuffs.
"He looks just like my boy," one older woman whispered to a girlfriend as she watched Kilpatrick work the crowd. "Just like him."
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The Detroit News.
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