Article published May 16, 2008
Kilpatrick's legal problems could hurt Democrats in November
DETROIT - Years ago, the time-honored tradition was that Democratic presidential candidates formally kicked off their fall election campaigns in Detroit, on Labor Day.
They rode in a motorcade up or down Woodward Avenue, the city's main drag. They embraced Detroit's mayor, almost always a Democrat, and addressed vast crowds in Cadillac Square.
Harry Truman did this. John F. Kennedy did this, as did Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.
But don't look for Barack Obama to show up in Detroit this fall, and let himself be embraced by Kwame Kilpatrick. He would probably rather pose in front of the reactor at Chernobyl.
Democrats have a nightmare scenario, and this is it:
Suppose the fall election turns out to be a very close race between Mr. Obama and the GOP standard-bearer, John McCain. Once the main event starts, most states are apt to settle in to their familiar red-and-blue patterns. Except the economy is likely to give Democrats an edge in a few marginal states that voted for President Bush, most of all Ohio, which turned deep blue two years ago.Yet to win the presidency, Mr. Obama is apt to need Michigan, and a huge turnout in Detroit. Yet the image of Detroit these days is Kwame Kilpatrick, the flamboyant, hip-hop mayor, now changed with eight felonies. You can just see the signs: "If you like having a black mayor, you'll love having a black President."
Republicans and the McCain campaign will deny responsibility for the signs. But they will be there. So will doctored pictures that will show Mr. Obama warmly embracing Mayor Kilpatrick, possibly with both men in dashikis.
"Soul Brothers," the caption will read. The last thing the young senator needs is anything tying him to the mayor. Nothing would be better calculated to lose him white and suburban votes.
That's partly why, when the candidate came to Michigan this week, he flew into an Oakland County airport, and then campaigned in Macomb County and Grand Rapids. He didn't come close to Detroit, where City Council was agonizing over whether and how they could blast their executive out of office.
Yet sooner or later, if he is the nominee, it is hard to see how Mr. Obama can avoid campaigning in Detroit. To win statewide, any Democrat has to have a strong turnout in the city.
Detroit votes as monolithically almost as much as Albania did in the days of Communist dictator Enver Hoxha. Al Gore got 94 percent of the vote here. Jennifer Granholm, 95 percent. Poor John Kerry trailed with an anemic … 93 percent; still enough to win the state by 165,000 votes.
But what matters more than the percentage is the turnout. With the mayor huddling with his lawyers, will the machinery be in place to remind people to turn out? To give senior citizens rides to the polls?
Perhaps pride that an African-American is on the ballot will do it. But how does Mr. Obama campaign in the city which many now know largely as a frequent subject of Jay Leno monologues?
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Detroit City Council is wrestling with even more profound questions. Specifically: How do you keep your town open for business, when its chief executive has disgraced the city and is regarded nationally as a criminal laughingstock?
If he won't go, you can try to remove him. That's what council has voted to try to do. Ken Cockrel, Jr., council president, played a leading role in crafting the narrowest of 5-4 majorities that voted A) to try and legally remove the mayor from office and B) to ask Gov. Jennifer Granholm to do so.
Legally, the governor could remove the mayor today. But few think that will happen - and even many who despise Mr. Kilpatrick think that would be a mistake. Especially, that is, with council so closely divided, and the mayor facing a criminal trial. (If he is convicted of any felony, he is automatically ousted.)
But whether City Council can in fact remove the mayor isn't at all clear. Detroit's Coleman Young-era city charter is vague, and was designed to concentrate all power in the mayor's office.
Council members are well-paid and have many perks. But they don't even have the power to order a street light turned on. Nor do they represent districts, so almost all tend to live within a few blocks of each other, in the city's best neighborhoods.
They are also all elected at large. This virtually guarantees a lot of famous, and sometimes famously incompetent, names.
The two best current council members are probably the wife and son of a famous radical lawyer. On the other hand, Martha Reeves, of the 1960s Motown group Martha and the Vandellas, seems way over her head. Barbara-Rose Collins landed on council after being called "the worst congressman in America" and losing her seat to Mayor Kilpatrick's mother.
If the mayor were to leave, Mr. Cockrel would take over until a special election was held. He is a sober, responsible man. But that would mean that Monica Conyers would head the City Council. She is the much younger wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers.
She is best known for irrational outbursts, calling Mr. Cockrel "Shrek," getting into a bar fight after being elected, and allegedly threatening an aide to the mayor with a gun. Curiously, she is Mr. Kilpatrick's most diehard supporter on council.
Detroit clearly faces difficult times ahead. What is less clear is whether its woes will impact the presidential race. Increasingly, however, Democrats worry that it will.
Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade's ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.
Contact him at: omblade@aol.com
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