Someone give this guy Spitzer's phone number . . . .
Cox says Kilpatrick 'not fit to be mayor'54% of residents want him to step down, survey says
BY BILL McGRAW, M.L. ELRICK and BEN SCHMITT • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS • March 13, 2008
As state Attorney General Mike Cox became the highest-ranking public official to call for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to resign, the mayor also faced an ominous erosion of support Wednesday from local VIPs and regular Detroiters.
Criticism of varying degrees also came from Detroit's influential Baptist pastors; three business leaders; rarely outspoken anchorwoman Carmen Harlan; the black-owned Michigan Chronicle and, in a poll, everyday residents.
The developments follow Tuesday night's State of the City speech. The normally prosaic address became the talk of the town after Kilpatrick closed it by blistering the news media, critics and City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr., while using racially charged language to describe death threats and racial slurs he said have been directed at him and his family.
"He is not fit to be mayor anymore," said Cox, a Republican. "He should resign."
Cox noted Kilpatrick got involved with an employee, Christine Beatty, lied under oath and got Beatty to lie under oath. He said the last straw was the mayor's race-baiting Tuesday night. "I can't pretend to hide my head in the sand when his problem is becoming a regional problem," he said.
Critics over the past four years have called Cox a Kilpatrick apologist because the attorney general led an investigation of a long-rumored and never-proven Manoogian mansion party and concluded it had all the elements of an "urban legend."
Some State Police officials criticized Cox for ending the investigation too soon and for failing to interview the mayor's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick. Cox and Kilpatrick both have strong ties to Mike Duggan, the former Wayne County prosecutor.
Mayoral spokesman James Canning said, "Mayor Kilpatrick confirmed in his State of the City address, he will stay in office, he will stay focused on city business and he will continue to lead our city forward."
It also was revealed Wednesday that hours before Kilpatrick's speech on Tuesday, the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity was poised to call for the mayor's resignation.
In a letter obtained by the Free Press, the council's executive board wrote, "The issues which comprise the current crisis will not go away during this administration's tenure."
The letter said the city's leadership "failed to conduct city business affairs with transparency and moral integrity;" had "abused the office of mayor of the City of Detroit in ways that directly harm the well being of the citizens of our city," and that "the violation of the public trust by the current administration is deplorable and cannot be supported or endured."
The letter concluded that the council "states unequivocally the position of 'no confidence' in the current administration and its leadership."
But the letter, signed by Baptist council President Oscar King III, was not made public after Claude Cline, a member of the council who works for Kilpatrick, objected and the council's general assembly took a vote. By a 34-24 margin, the letter was not released.
On Wednesday, the group's lawyer, Bertram Marks, said King believes that he needs more information before he can make a statement that he can support with facts."
Cline said Kilpatrick is set to meet with the pastors Tuesday.
The council, which represents 400 clergy members, endorsed Kilpatrick's policies in his 2005 re-election bid.
Wednesday morning, in a previously arranged meeting, three of the city's best-known corporate leaders -- industrialist Dave Bing; Doug Rothwell, president of Detroit Renaissance, and Jim Nicholson, chief executive officer of PVS Chemicals -- came to see the mayor. Bing told Kilpatrick he was losing credibility and also chastised him for the way he concluded his speech.
One of the most surprising reactions to the mayor's speech came from longtime WDIV-TV (Channel 4) anchorwoman Harlan, who delivered a rare commentary Tuesday night after the mayor's speech. Directly addressing him, she scolded the mayor for the language he employed at the end of his speech.
"Using emotionally charged words like 'the N-word' and phrases like 'hate-driven' and 'bigoted assault,' even 'lynch-mob mentality,' stirs the core of even my emotions," said Harlan, who assured the mayor she loves Detroit as much as him.
Throughout the mayoral scandal, the Michigan Chronicle weekly newspaper has argued to let the judicial process take its course, but the edition that hit the street Wednesday took a more critical tone.
"We are witnessing the administration paying dearly for its severe mistakes," Senior Editor Bankole Thompson wrote. "Who are the mayor's advisers? How much are they getting paid? What advice have they been giving the mayor? Are they really advising him or mostly lining their pockets?"
Kilpatrick also drew criticism for using the N-word in his Tuesday speech after taking part in a rally last summer to symbolically bury the racial epithet. Kilpatrick, who reportedly planned the final moments of his Tuesday speech in advance, invoked the word as he described slurs he said he and his family have received.
"It most especially was not a place to use the same word that, supposedly, we buried last summer," the Rev. Edgar Vann, pastor of Second Ebenezer Baptist Church, told the Associated Press. "You can make references to it without using it."
Vann said he believed "people are tired of race being used as a tactic."
Eleanor Josaitis, cofounder of Focus:HOPE, told the AP she worried Kilpatrick's choice of words would further polarize the region.
"We've all worked very hard to bury the N-word," she said. "People are disappointed -- just disappointed in everything right now. Everybody is just praying we bring it to an end."
Canning, Kilpatrick's spokesman, told the Free Press that "the mayor used that word in describing what has been said to him in e-mails, letters and phone calls. That's how he used the word. It's a horrible word, no one denied that."
The poll of everyday Detroiters, conducted for a Lansing marketing and political consulting firm, showed an increase in Detroit residents who want Kilpatrick to resign.
Of the 300 Detroiters surveyed Monday and Tuesday, 54% said Kilpatrick should leave, while 34% said he should stay, and 12% were unsure what he should do. The poll had a margin of error of 5.8 percentage points.
In January, a week after the Free Press broke the text-messaging scandal, 45% of people surveyed said he should resign; 42% said he should stay.
The messages showed that Kilpatrick and his then-chief of staff, Christine Beatty, lied under oath about their relationship and gave misleading testimony about the firing of then-deputy police chief Gary Brown during a civil trial last summer.
"He has done nothing to improve his numbers in the past two months," said Kelly Rossman-McKinney, chief executive officer of the Rossman Group, which commissioned the poll.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080313/NEWS01/803130379/1007/NEWS05
