At the time, Curtis Hertel was the Speaker of the House. He had served in the legislature for nearly twenty years. He had been Speaker before, then lost the majority and regained it. He was a native Detroiter with a long and rich political history on the East Side. His older brother, John, was chair of the Macomb County Board of Commissioners (a suburban county east of Detroit) and is the director of the Michigan State Fair. Curtis appointed me as the only freshman legislator to chair a committee—Marine Affairs and Port Development, which wasn’t exactly a heavyweight group. As a matter of fact, only three bills were sent to my committee while I served as chairman, and two of them came from me. But I used that seat to hold hearings all over the state of Michigan, building relationships with truckers, shippers, road builders, environmentalists, port developers, elected officials, and most of all, my fellow legislators.
The Majority Floor Leader at that time was a man named Pat Gagliardi. I learned so much from him. He ran the Floor and House agenda with an iron fist. He was a yupper! (someone from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula). The yuppers were my kind of people. They talked a lot of trash, drank a lot (which always made the people around me more fun), partied a lot and worked hard. Men after my own heart!
Pat was always looking for someone’s ass to kick, but he would smile and talk nicely while he did it. I developed a relationship with him by sitting at his feet and learning the job of Floor Leader. I worked hard during that freshman year. I passed numerous bills, many of them becoming law. Most of all; however, I kept my mouth shut and learned. There was too much political and institutional knowledge not to take full advantage of the opportunity. I learned policy, appropriations processes, committee structure, procurement, statewide campaign strategy and fundraising, and most of all, how to position myself to help Detroit.
Many of the policies I supported or sponsored would later help me as mayor. In fact, I joined with Governor John Engler and Senator Spencer Abraham, both Republicans, to push a statewide ballot initiative that we called the Clean Michigan Initiative. For lending my support to this initiative, I was able to negotiate over $100 million in allocations from that money for Detroit, including $10 million that we later used to build the new Detroit Riverwalk, which we completed during my time as mayor.
The Riverwalk was a more than three-mile stretch of Detroit waterfront property that we redesigned beautifully. It became a tremendous example of cooperation and tenacity, truly a legacy project that rescued Detroit’s riverfront from industrial dinosaurs and gave it back to the citizens. To get it done, we in City government had to do some heavy lifting, such as negotiating land deals and legal settlements, moving old companies and straight up hustlin’, but it was truly a team effort that would only be topped by the Super Bowl. The City of Detroit, General Motors, the Kresge Foundation, and my mother, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, were the major players, and an array of members from Detroit’s business and philanthropic community lent their support as well.
Congresswoman Cheeks-Kilpatrick was a member of the United States House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. She sent significant dollars to the project, even reprogramming $5 million of unspent money and getting it to Detroit when we hit a funding snag. She’d done things like this for Detroit before, bringing more than half a billion dollars to her home district over a ten-year period, more than any Congresswoman in Michigan history. I know I digress, but hey, that’s my Mama. The Riverwalk Project finished on time and on budget and Detroiters, for the first time, had an active place to engage in family fun. Skating, biking, running and walking became the norm. And the backdrop is the beautiful Detroit River and our Canadian neighbors across the waters.
We kept moving in a developmental direction, using more than $75 million of that money to clean up old brownfield environmental sites for new development. Brownfields are abandoned commercial and industrial facilities that are still available for use, and I later spent a lot of time at groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies made possible by the money directed to their redevelopment.
An interesting thought related to this achievement is the wave of sentiment across the country that has often sullied the images of career public officials. I submit that this movement, as it would later involve me, has had a tremendously negative effect on public policy in Detroit, and throughout Michigan. Continuity and consistency has suffered, and people wonder why so many are hurting under the regime of the latest business executive to be elected mayor or governor. The answer is simple: They don’t know what they are doing. It’s not their profession. As for me, I didn’t want to be the traditional black legislator from Detroit. I wanted to change the game. And that I did!
When I ran for Leader of the State House, my colleagues had to vote for me, so I literally had to travel across the state to get their votes. And I had a strategy: if I’m sitting in your living room, it’s hard to say no to me. So I traveled, criss-crossing all these counties that sat on opposite sides of the Michigan mitten. I’d go from Houghton to Alpena, to Escanaba to Standish. My opponent was Mark Shauer, from Battle Creek. He later ran for Congress and won. Mark was and is a good guy. We were seatmates during our freshman year in the State House.
Mark was in for one hell of a race, although I don’t think he knew it. I went to places where I’d be the only black person for 600 miles, but I’d be in people’s living rooms, talking to their wives. Often, these occasions would mark the first time many people had ever had a black man in their homes, but the camaraderie was nearly instant, almost all the time. They couldn’t believe I’d travel all the way from Detroit to meet them. I went to an annual dogsled race in Escanaba, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The race goes through their streets, over a lake. People have died in this race, because the terrain is treacherous. I stood on stage and helped kick off the race. Getting in a car and driving to Alpena because I knew three representatives would mean everything, but it felt like second nature to me. I’d go deer hunting—hunting nothing—just to sit down and talk to them, and tell them how important an election was. And people truly appreciated it. They knew I wanted their votes. Mark began doing that toward the end, but it was already too late. I’d already been to all the homes!
I was the first black man to even run for this position. In fact, most people told me I’d lose on that fact alone. But again, that was nothing to me, because I’ve never run for an office that people thought I’d win. I love that! If anyone ever tells me at the beginning of a race that I’m predicted to win, I wouldn’t know how to work.
I was the first African-American and youngest person to ever hold the position in the more than 175-year history of the institution. As Leader, I still had my northwest Detroit district, but my job description expanded considerably. I chose the Democrats I wanted to serve on committees, as well as the chairs for the Democratic side of the House. Managing the budget for the Democratic Caucus was also my responsibility, and travel came out of my office as well. We set policy direction, deciding what bills would be introduced. I led all negotiations with the governor and the Republicans on behalf of my Caucus. Essentially, I chose who got what, when. The Leader position in the Michigan House of Representatives carried a lot of responsibility, but it was so much fun, and a truly great experience.
chapter 6
The Pre-Season
CARLITA WAS excited, too, and very proud of me. She’d also begun to enjoy motherhood soon after the boys’ first birthday. I say that because the first nine months with the twins was torture on us both! They were born while I was still teaching and attending law school, and they never slept through the night. Not once. They didn’t sleep through the night until they turned three years old. It was unreal! For the first nine months, they would sleep in thirty- to forty-five-minute spurts, each twin waking up at a different time. One guy could be yelling at full decibel level while the other slept like, well, a baby. I’m talking deep sleep here. Carlita or I would get up and get milk or diapers. It was absolutely amazing. Then, thirty- to
forty-five minutes after getting that twin to doze off, the sleeping twin would start.
We were both tired as hell, and we tried all the tricks. We put cereal in their milk and gave them “pot liquor,” the juice that comes from cornbread and greens. Everything. Nothing worked. Just let them cry? We tried that, too. They would cry until we had to go in there to make sure they were okay. Man, it was such a rough nine months.
I still remind Jelani and Jalil, teenagers now, about how they were as babies. Of course, they find it hilarious. And it is kind of funny now, but it was not funny then at all. Carlita was miserable during this time. She was stressed and totally exhausted. She also experienced postpartum depression. I taught by day, attended school in the evening and came home to do baby work after that. My wife was usually exhausted by the time I arrived home at 9:30 p.m., so we would immediately bathe the boys and put them to bed. She’d then take a nap while I washed the bottles and prepared them for the night and the next day. Occasionally, I’d do some reading, but after bottle duty I usually fell asleep because the first shift for the twins’ awakening was mine. Sometimes, I’d just stay awake until I heard the first loud cry, hurry and get whoever woke up first back down, and then go to sleep. Carlita would then take the second shift. Our system worked, but it just wore us out.
By January 1997, the boys were walking and sleeping more regularly, and they also began to go to daycare. Carlita found a job teaching non-violence and peer mediation courses in the Detroit Public Schools. She also wrote a column in the Michigan Chronicle for St. Johns Hospital’s Community Affairs department.
I drove to Lansing, leaving at 6:30 a.m., but we only worked in Lansing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That gave Carlita and I more time to be together, to go to movies, hang out with the boys and travel. Carlita loved my schedule then. Our lives were well balanced during that time.
My commute from Detroit was ninety minutes each way. I spent the night in hotels if we ran late, or during budget proceedings and negotiations. I never had an apartment or house in Lansing. Many reps do. Some come from as many as eight hours away. Others move their families to Lansing and travel back home on weekends.
Christine and I usually drove back and forth to Lansing together. As you may suspect, Carlita became more and more concerned about these times between Christine and me. She wasn’t at all concerned for the first few years, but she definitely was toward the end of my time there, around 2000. She never said anything directly, but you know when your woman has a problem. I picked up on her body language, her facial expressions and that very suspicious silence that comes when certain subjects are brought up. I knew I had to make a change, because Christine was truly my friend. Heck, she was really my road dawg. Like we say in the ‘hood, we were down like four flats and a spare. Plus, she did excellent work. But her name was becoming a buzzword to my wife.
Neither Christine nor I wanted any problems with our spouses, so we opened a district office in Detroit and decided that she would work there, in the community we served. It was a perfect arrangement for many reasons. First, she was pregnant with her second child, and the travel would have been too much for her. Plus, I needed someone on the ground in Detroit to help me raise my recognition in other parts of the city. And two, without Carlita having to say a word, I created the separation that she wanted. Zeke, who was then working in my mother’s Congressional Office, came over to take Christine’s place in Lansing.
Things were great! I graduated from law school in 1999 and took my seat as Leader in 2000. It was nice to put school behind me, because balancing my duties as Leader of the House with family and my education was grueling. But I had that hustle, and I got it done. In fact, I had fun doing all of that stuff, so much so that it wasn’t hard to manage. These newlywed/rookie years revealed my true capabilities, and I was eager to continue to test my own limits. Adding to this self-discovery was the feeling that my work was helping people in the city that raised me. And though Carlita was still not happy living in Detroit, she was making the best out of the situation. It was the best of both worlds.
I was a member of AAMO, the African-American Men’s Organization, a group of influential and dedicated Detroiters. My father and millionaire cable and casino magnate Don Barden were also members. During one of our meetings in 2001, a conversation arose regarding who should run for mayor. The members were dissatisfied with the job that the current Mayor, Dennis Archer, was doing, and sought to identify someone who would excite them enough to lend their support.
Specifically, they didn’t like the way that deals for three new casinos built in downtown Detroit were handled. There was no substantial African-American ownership. In a city comprised of more than eighty percent African-Americans, black people had less than a five percent ownership stake. Barden, in particular, had been primed for ownership because of his track record, but he didn’t obtain it.
At that time, many people also took umbrage with a mayoral candidate who hadn’t been born and/or raised in the city. That has since changed with the election of Dave Bing, after my resignation in 2008, but Dennis Archer had to contend with it. Originally from Cassopolis, Michigan, he moved to the Detroit area after graduating from Western Michigan University to attend law school at the Detroit College of Law.
Dennis was the first mayor after the twenty-year reign of the City’s legendary first African-American Mayor, Coleman Alexander Young. Mayor Young was truly one of the most brilliant political figures in American history. He was a public sector giant and also a polarizing figure. He exuded the spirit of an old-world statesman while using modern political theory to marshal support for a cause. And in the next moment, he could look you dead between your eyes with a sinister grin, and use the same eloquent language to call you a “motherfucker.” He was celebrated and adored by most of the African-American community, just as he was vilified and despised by most of the white community. But overall, Detroiters felt an unbelievably strong bond and connection to him. He was our family. He was our leader. And like it or not, everyone who steps into the mayor’s position in Detroit is immediately compared to him, seemingly by all.
Dennis was the first post-Young era mayor. People felt that he, as mayor, hadn’t provided any significant opportunities for Detroiters to do business with the City of Detroit. This further exacerbated a feeling shared by many that their relationship with the mayor that they’d once perceived as good had deteriorated, or became nonexistent.
Bill Brooks, who’d recently retired as vice president of human resources for General Motors, had expressed his intent to run. Bill was a good guy with a great personality who’d helped many in the community while employed at GM. But the group and others felt that he couldn’t garner the support to become mayor.
The group didn’t identify a capable candidate during that meeting. Days later, I visited my father at his home. He’d been sitting with Archie Clark, one of his best friends who’d played in the NBA for eleven years, and was also a member of AMMO. They’d all rehashed the conversation about viable mayoral candidates. Among the names they considered was Dave Bing, the current mayor.
Jokes aside, my father then turned to me and said, “You know, you’re the one who should run.”
I looked at him as if I didn’t hear him. “Man, who?” I said.
“You!” he said.
“Man, you’re out your mind. Nobody knows me.”
“Man, it’s wide open. It’s time!”
And so it began. My father was the first person to suggest that I take this step. The thought hadn’t entered my mind. It even sounded crazy to me. But his initial suggestion became the first in a series of similar comments from random people. You know how a car you consider buying suddenly seems to pop up everywhere on the road, and it either strengthens or weakens your desire to go for it? That’s what happened to me. It seemed like people in my life, friends and associates alike, began saying in passing or in conversation, “Man, you should run for mayor.”
The comments moved fr
om interesting to intriguing when, back in Lansing, I got a call from Freman Hendrix while I was on the House floor. Freman was deputy mayor for the Archer administration at the time. He called to inform me that he’d decided to leave the position, and wanted to know if I’d consider replacing him. He hadn’t spoken to Archer about it, but he wanted to know if I was interested. I told him I was.
I drove to Detroit from Lansing that day, and talked to my father about it. He had a different take on the opportunity. “Man, that’s some bullshit,” he said. “Why would you take that? This guy’s [Archer’s] ship is sinking.” He had a point. The Archer administration was dealing with two issues at the time that had upset the community, and parts of his own constituency. One was the casino matter. The deal brokered between the City and the gaming authorities designated room for three gaming houses, and Mayor Archer had a say in determining who would own them. Barden, a native Detroiter, had waged a public campaign that included bringing Michael Jackson to town as a show of support. His rejected bid set off the biggest recall effort in the city’s history, amounting to well over 50,000 signatures. It failed by fewer than 500 but sent a clear message. It was a blow.
The second issue, slow response to a severe snowstorm a few months later, further tarnished his image, and his popularity declined from that point forward. He’d lost the people of the City of Detroit.
I actually think Dennis did a good job in some respects. I also feel there’s an old Dennis Archer vs. Kwame Kilpatrick discussion that deserves clarification. Dennis would later come to feel that I was his opponent. I really wasn’t. I think he labeled me as such because of my history with the Black Slate, a Detroit political action group. They were the ones who primarily pushed the recall effort. He was a different kind of cat, and a different kind of mayor than I would be. But we come from very different backgrounds, have different relationships with the city, and it with us. The city never did rise and fall with the personality, and the being, of Dennis Archer because he didn’t embody the spirit of Detroit. He didn’t embrace the ups, the downs, and the passion of the city. It just wasn’t his style, and that kind of thing is reserved for very few men. Coleman Young was one, for sure—in fact, the biggest. And damn sure, Kwame Kilpatrick was another. People felt us the way they feel Detroit; therefore, they love us and hate us. But I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dennis Archer to this day, regardless of how he feels about me. I respect anyone who serves in that position for eight years and comes out with all his teeth still rooted in his gums.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 7