To break the silence, I asked her if she wanted me to seek re-election.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s up to you.” She didn’t even look at me—she just grabbed a washcloth and wiped down the oven area and adjacent counters. I needed to say something to get her attention.
“I don’t want to do anything without you,” I said. “I don’t want to be mayor. I don’t want to run for re-election. I don’t want to do anything without you. I need you all the way in, or I’m out.” And then, I shouted, with an honesty and passion that surprised even myself, “I want my family back!”
Carlita abruptly stopped what she was doing and looked me right in my eyes. And with all the pain, anger, passion and courage she could muster, she said, “Your family hasn’t gone anywhere! You left us! You chose everything else over us! The job! The ‘people!’ The movement! The so-called mission! Over us! And I’m so damned tired of it. I don’t like this job, this city, these bloodsucking people, or you! I don’t like you anymore! I do still love you, but I don’t like you!”
It wasn’t the first time that I’d heard some of those things. But on this day, at that moment, there was a certain air of finality and decisiveness in her tone that made this conversation more serious than any other. I could tell she had more to say, so I measured myself carefully. I was scared—truly afraid that my wife would decide to leave me. “You’re right,” I replied. I told her that I was tired, and that I needed her to help me. She said that she was tired as well, and that she just didn’t know if she could.
We talked a lot more that day, and the more we did, the layers of fatigue and years of bad communication began to melt away. We talked more and more about everything, even Christine. She told me how much I hurt her by apparently choosing Christine over her, by taking her side in disagreements, and by spending entirely too much time with her. I told her that my relationship with Christine had gone too far, and that I was definitely going to change. She didn’t ask me if we were having an affair, and I didn’t offer that information. I was still trying to save my own ass.
She did say that she thought it would be best if I would let Christine go, and I agreed. But I wanted to make sure she had somewhere to go, and that she would be financially secure. Carlita agreed.
Carlita then got behind me. She said I should be the man and the mayor I was destined to be, and that she was with me 100 percent. That is a moment I will never forget, because after our long discussion that evening, she became a real force in the next campaign. She held meetings, made speeches, joined community boards, raised a little money and even did radio and television commercials. She… did… her… thing!
I knew that Carlita always supported my aspirations, but that was the only reason she supported the first campaign. She got behind the re-election idea because she didn’t like the way I was portrayed in the media. In fact, she was outdone. She fought to show the people who the Kilpatricks really were.
Conversations about Christine’s exit didn’t come up again until 2006. She moved over to manage the campaign. By then, Carlita and I were back in like, and in love. We laughed, joked, went over strategy and even hung out together. The Bible says a husband and wife should not be unevenly yoked in the presence of unbelievers. In other words, Carlita and I needed to come together through our misery and help each other shoulder our burdens. I’d stopped doing that, and before I knew it, she was bearing her own cross. Neither of us wanted that to happen again. I found the time to dedicate to Carlita and the boys. But I had to take care of one more thing before I could fully mature into the man I knew I should be. It was an absolute necessity to reconcile my relationship with God.
The City of Detroit comprises 139 square miles, and boasts more than 3,000 churches. I believe I visited about half of them during my tenure. But one pastor was always a little different to me. His name is J. Drew Sheard, and he pastors the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ. Bishop Sheard is a strong, confident man, the kind of guy who can walk with kings, yet never lose the common touch. He was always positive, always had an uplifting word to offer, and was always very honest with me. I decided to talk with him not long after Carlita and I had our reconciliatory conversation. I actually visited him more than once, but during our first conversation, he read me like a book. He seemed to have a direct line into my thoughts. I seriously wondered if he had talked to my wife before talking to me. He was open, and real. He told me things I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. It was the first time that I felt pastored by a real man of God, but also by a brother who’d lived and experienced bumps and blows in his own life. I connected with him immediately.
I spoke with him again about a week later and told him about my intention to attend church with my family. We also discussed other matters, and he kept calling me out! So I just gave up, and decided I would really talk to him. And I did. And he told me something I remind myself of, even today. He told me I needed to move Christine out of my administration. He didn’t want to know any details, but he told me that her presence there was a problem for me, and that my wife was hurting because of it. He appreciated her talent and intelligence, but implored me to make a spiritual decision.
Of course, since you know where I ended up, you can surmise that I didn’t take his godly advice. In fact, I lied to him, telling him that everything was fine. He knew I was lying, too, but he never stopped praying for me.
Bishop Sheard is too young to be my father, but he supported me like one from the first day we talked. Even today, he supports me. Although my family now lives in Dallas, and attends the Potter’s House, where Bishop T.D. Jakes is my current pastor (he has truly been a godsend for my family, as well), Bishop Sheard is the man who truly helped me begin my walk back Home. I and my family joined Greater Emmanuel the following Sunday. Our new church family welcomed us with open arms, and Karen Clarke-Sheard, Bishop Sheard’s wife and a famed gospel singer, reached out and pulled Carlita close.
They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Well, the short steps toward the altar at Greater Emmanuel were quantum leaps for me. I didn’t know it then, but that simple gesture immediately positioned me to stand in the midst of whatever would come next. I marvel at how awesome a visionary God is, because I believe He knew that strife was on its way to meet me. I needed years to prepare for it, because the guy I was before would have crumbled under that international pressure. As a weed does a rose, that Kwame dug some deep roots, and wrapped some ugly habits around my spirit. It would take fertilizer, donkey dung and a good tug from God to rid me of him.
chapter 16
The Do-over
THE LAST problem to fix was the City. I was making final preparations on the City’s budget. I also needed to restructure my team. I hired Anthony Adams to be deputy mayor, and moved several City departments under his immediate supervision, including Police and Fire.
Anthony was a Detroit political veteran. He worked in the Coleman Young administration before opening his own law firm in the 1980s. After Dennis Archer became mayor, his successful practice took a financial hit because of his longstanding relationship with the Young regime. Politics is truly a contact sport in that regard. I saw Anthony a lot on the campaign trail, and I really liked his style. He was serious, yet funny. Polished, yet he had street cred. A real Detroiter, yet as conservative on policy as Newt Gingrich. Perfect for my new team! He came over to the City from the Detroit Board of Education, leaving a post as general counsel to the school board. He is now back there as president. Anthony stays in the mix.
After the election, I also added former Detroit City Councilwoman Sharon McPhail. She replaced Ruth Carter, who received a judicial appointment, as my general counsel. I split Ruth’s job in two. Sharon handled the counsel aspect, generally serving as my lawyer, while attorney John Johnson was appointed to handle the day-to-day management of the Law Department. Interesting histories preceded both appointments.
John’s wife is a District Court judg
e, and at the time, he was chairman of the Fannie Lou Hamer Political Action Committee. The committee was founded by the Reverend Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit Branch of the NAACP, and a pillar in Detroit’s activist community.
Reverend Anthony and I had a hot and cold relationship. He supported me in my first election, but believed that he never received any benefit for that support. He voiced his concern to several individuals, including me, when I sought the organization’s support in my re-election bid. As a matter of fact, many of the traditional politicos and their organizations felt this way.
I was extremely independent. I was never into political payoffs or the typical wash-my-back-I’ll-wash-yours style of politics. I just worked hard. That’s why all the media-driven rumors and speculation about my being corrupt bothered me so much. I truly believed, with all my heart, that if you work hard on a creative and focused strategy that produced positive results, everyone would benefit. The traditional political organizations didn’t operate that way. They saw it as me shunning them and ignoring their so-called political power.
One thing was definitely true—not issuing consistent perks to political organizations and catering to the inflected egos of political leaders in Detroit—unions, clergy, and political action committees—left me open to attack, because very few community leaders were willing to stand by me during my most difficult times. I appointed John to mend some of these fences, but unfortunately, he was overmatched by the demands of the job from the first day, and many knew it.
Sharon’s appointment came from an altogether different place. Before President Roosevelt’s concept of a “team of rivals” was re-introduced to the American political population in Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign rhetoric, I had already fully bought into the theory. The best political decisions come from strong people who bring ideas and philosophies to the table through debate, deliberation and passion. A consensus of decision makers boasts the collective concept mastery necessary to make an informed decision. Anthony Adams’s conservative ideals matched Christine’s fiercely liberal ones, and Sean Werdlow, our chief financial officer, matched wits with Chief Ella Bully-Cummings.
Sharon was just the catalyst we needed to take debate, strategic planning and consensus building to the next level. She’d worked her way up the Detroit political ladder from the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office and, at one point, lost a close race for mayor to Dennis Archer. She ran for two other Wayne County posts and ultimately won a City Council seat in 2001, before running once more for mayor, against me!
Sharon was the most active and dominant personality on the Council. She championed causes like wars against topless bars, and was a consistent thorn in my side. She forced us to work. She was focused, aggressive and very intentional. She is also very smart, and a very sweet person, but only if she likes you. And back then, she didn’t like me.
When Sharon ran against me, I listened to many of her ideas throughout the campaign, particularly the ones that focused on improved community outreach and citizen empowerment. She put to rest any preconceived notions I had about her. I found her to be bright, tenacious and determined, attributes that I wanted on my team. I wanted her support for my run-off campaign. I also wanted to incorporate some of her ideas into my own administration. She gave me her unequivocal support, ideas, and even some camera footage that we used for our final, and finest, campaign television commercial. The footage showed a woman who was older than seventy being dragged out of a school board meeting by a small gang of cops as board President, Freman Hendrix, ferociously yelled, “Get her out of here now! NOW!” It was political mettle at its best, and it shredded Freman’s golden image. Sharon joined the team and later fought to protect me when we began to suspect that business and governmental powers were coming for me. I’m grateful for her help to this day.
I continued to make key changes in numerous City departments. There were individuals who were on the team, but not committed to the mission, and after lightening so much of my personal and professional baggage, it was easier to see why I’d been working so hard. People were just going through the motions on my watch. I was serious about creating change, and that meant it was time for everyone to crap or get off the pot. Some left willingly. Others were encouraged to leave, fired or relieved of their appointments.
It was a new day. I began to be the mayor I’d intended to become in 2005—focused, experienced, and engaged with my personal life in order. I was ready to lead the greatest turnaround in the country, and I had no need for anyone who did not share that belief. The re-election campaign seemed to parallel the renewal that Carlita and I were undergoing at home. The team now had energy, experience and attitude. Unfortunately, some relationships withered during this process, the most important of which was my twenty-year friendship with Derrick “Zeke” Miller.
Other than my wife and Christine, I trusted no one more than Zeke. Unfortunately, that trust, and our friendship, waned after I became mayor. It happened early in the first term. I appointed Derrick Chief Administrative Officer and charged him with honing the City’s outdated administrative processes. He was good at his job, and generated some innovative ideas. He also worked on an as-needed basis on special needs projects, like the casino development agreements, the Port Authority, and the Cobo Hall Convention Center expansion. I saw Derrick’s other role as the nice guy who could politically corral business and elected officials and forge elusive relationships. You know, political reconnaissance.
Derrick and I often talked on a daily basis during my first two years in office, and usually several times each day. But the frequency of his conversations with me and the rest of my cabinet members decreased. The cabinet developed a running joke that no one knew what Zeke was doing, or many times, where he was. He became a mystery man. I’d raise this issue at cabinet meetings and Derrick would defend himself vehemently, often enough to make others back down. Everyone, that is, except Christine and, later, Anthony. Their clashes fit the team dynamic, because we encouraged a hard defense of each person’s opinions. The process produced some of our most progressive policies, and the most sound financial decisions and community strategies. We came up with the first property tax cuts in the city’s history, modernized communications for the police department, and sold pension obligation certificates to infuse more than $80 million in cash into the City’s budget. And we built more recreation centers and parks. We were working with limited resources and abundant need, so everyone had to bring their “A” game to the table.
That’s why it stood out so much when Derrick began to deliver weak reports from his area. It was odd because Derrick always believed he was the smartest person in the room. He always had an opinion, even if he chose not to share it at a given time, so his silence spoke volumes. I knew he was distancing himself. I’d seen it as a political practice before, and I was seeing it in him. It pricked me, though, because Derrick wasn’t a random politico. This was my friend since age fourteen, the one I met in Mrs. Cunningham’s ninth grade English class at Cass Tech. This was the guy who got drunk at a gathering of high school students at my mother’s house, and broke the glass pane from an antique door in Mom’s dining room. She’s still pissed at me about that, and I still owe Derrick for it! This is the guy who traveled the State of Michigan with me as we worked to lead the State House of Representatives. For God’s sake, he was in my wedding, and I was in his. And now, he was strategically and meticulously distancing himself from me. I knew it, because I knew him.
After one cabinet meeting, I asked Christine and Derrick to step into my office for a quick conversation. She’d suggested the day before that I speak with Derrick because she’d picked up on his strange vibe, too. He was cold upon entry. I’d never seen him like that.
“What’s on your mind, man?” I said. “What’s the problem?”
An uncomfortable silence and some jittery body movements seemed to last forever before Zeke launched into a lament. He was tired of being tied to Christine in newspapers, and tired of
being packaged as part of my crew of buddies from high school. He believed he brought skill and professionalism to the job, and that was being overshadowed. He wanted to be judged on his own merit, he said.
I appreciated his honesty, and understood his position. But I was surprised that he’d kept all that bottled up inside. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me. He and I had far more serious conversations. He, Christine and I had overcome bigger obstacles. This was like the scene in the movie New Jack City where G. Money gets mad because Nino Brown’s attention is diverted away from him by some random chick. Trivial. And bitchy!
Derrick wasn’t telling me everything. Maybe he thought the grass was greener on the other side, or outside of the administration. Maybe he felt he’d find the kind of acceptance and recognition he desired by being elsewhere.
Christine remained quiet during the discussion. She was as close to him as I was, but she’d just taken a beating on the Navigator story, and thought he was angry with her about it. So when she walked out of the room, I asked him what was going on for real. He began to tell me about the word on the street, that I was going to lose the next election. He also suggested that I should sever my relationships with several people both on and off the staff. He’d received some information from Sheila Cockrel, a City councilwoman who fraternized with a lot of the folks who despised me. Derrick had begun to socialize with that group. It never bothered me because the places they hung out, like certain bars in the area, were great places for information. Drunk people don’t lie. I told him that while I appreciated the insight, I was concerned about him. His mindset. His whereabouts. His focus. He said he was well, and ready to move forward.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 15