“Okay,” I said. We gave each other a hug and he left my office. I didn’t have another serious or private conversation with him. That was the beginning of the end of our friendship.
My team of rivals were quite a special crew. We revamped the way the City approached workforce development, moving people from unemployment to focused, multi-industry training, to jobs. We saw a record number of building permits submitted to the City. This led to the city being regularly cleaned, mowed and shoveled. Through our efforts, the City hosted world-class events like the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, the Detroit Grand Prix, the Red Bull Air Races, and Super Bowl XL. We also added jobs and recruited several companies to relocate to Detroit.
Detroit was moving forward in ways people hadn’t seen in decades. Not just aesthetically, but internally, economically. Every area of City government had tremendously improved during the time we were in office. Though we started some good projects, I would have to win a second term before I could make the team fully operational. We also had to pass a budget, the one that was $100 million in the hole. Big-City mayors earn their keep during times like these.
The modern mayor is more like a public sector CEO. Gone are the days of surplus, inexhaustible revenue streams and tax increases to cover debt. Today, cities must exist within their means, and the Mayor’s job is as simple as it is profound: show growth while remaining fiscally solvent. You also have to maintain your customers’ (residents and taxpayers’) confidence. It’s a customer service job.
Budget balancing is, in fact, an exercise in revenue and expenditure management, and it calls for quality customer service. It takes smart, gifted people to be able to do that. Most private sector leaders miss the mark when they apply themselves to the public sector because they lack the charisma, people skills and pure game to pull this off. And most public sector leaders lack business acumen, financial expertise and, frankly, the balls to say “no” when they need to. It’s a blessing when a city has a leader who can strike that balance between worlds. Not to toot my own horn, but I fared well in this effort.
I was blessed with the opportunity to meet and study leaders from the public and private sectors. Ones who exemplified this leadership approach. In the private sector, I’m talking about people like Pete Karmanos, CEO of Karmanos Cancer Institute; Roger Penske of Penske Automotive Group; Jim Nicholson, head of PVS Chemicals; and adept public sector gurus like Richard Daley, Willie Brown and Maynard Jackson. These men gave me wisdom that still drives my passion for leadership, and fuels my intellectual curiosity.
So it was that, in April 2005, when I made some tough choices while putting together the budget, we did it. What made it huge was the fact that, facing re-election and sagging approval ratings, I proposed to lay off cops, firefighters and other City workers. I also proposed a new bulk trash pickup fee, something the citizens had never had. But what residents didn’t realize is that they were paying trash pickup fees through their taxes based on a thirty-year-old financial picture. They were underpaying the cost of service provision, and suffering with substandard service as a result.
Proposing this was like going one more round in a losing fight. But Detroit needed to live within its means. Businesses responded well. Residents went crazy. We held community meetings from churches to peoples’ homes. I met with any group, anywhere. If you wanted to talk to the mayor, I was there—I not only loved it, I thrived on it.
My supporters worried that I was addressing all these issues when I should have been campaigning. They feared I would further decrease my chances of winning. But I would never get anything done if I worked just to get re-elected. I never ran for the position to have it for a long time. You see, I loved the city more than the job, and this was my chance to prove it, face-to-face with people. We won a lot of people over with that road show, and many who remained opposed at least understood my position. We mended the budget. After a few typically misplaced and misguided shenanigans from the City Council, they passed it. They were up for re-election, too, and played their own brand of politics.
And I could move on to my re-election campaign. I was still tired, but I was willing.
chapter 17
Not This Negro
MY COMPETITIVE spirit was back by the time the re-election season arrived. Freman Hendrix had gone from offering me a job before my first term to placing me at the root of the city’s problems while, of course, promoting himself as the answer. He’d pushed me, and I thought, Hell naw, this dude ain’t about to beat me. I’m about to whup him.
What bothered me about Freman was what he represented. He was the alternative to what many metro Detroiters saw as this sorry, self-indulging Mayor, “King Kwame.” I could feel people thinking I was dumb, hip-hop and horrible. I’m smarter than this empty suit ever will be, I was thinking. This race was not about who was most qualified. It was about who you liked the most.
The thing is, Freman had come to fight, and he spent the majority of the campaign in the lead. He and Sharon McPhail were the biggest threats, prior to her joining my administration, so the primary campaign was energetic. Freman surfed a wave of scrutiny over my first-term mistakes. When stories emerged questioning whether I was attached to the murder of a stripper who was said to have danced at the supposed Manoogian Mansion party, I realized matters had gone from worse to ridiculous. They were actually hinting on TV that I was a murderer! Reporters chased me down to question me about it. It was crazy! And yet, I felt called to move beyond it all and keenly refocus.
I lost the primary. It was the first election I’d ever lost, and I was not gaining on him. But that was okay because my resolve was firm, and so was my team’s. Except Derrick. He disappeared after the primary. I didn’t see him again until election night.
We moved on. The campaign had been organized to achieve two goals: confront the issues of the first term, and refocus Detroiters on the city’s future. People needed to be reminded that their city was being rebuilt right before their eyes. Their streets were clean. Their parks were new. Their waterfront was undergoing a transformation.
With Carlita in full support of the effort, we hit the streets. We visited barbershops and senior residences. I sat in families’ living rooms and backyards. We rode buses, taking the conversation away from the news cameras, and directly to the people. Many gained clarity. Others expressed frustration. And I made apologies for some of my first-term decisions. My contrition created the atmosphere for balanced perspectives. It was a very, very tall order, but people slowly returned to discussing our record. We still faced an onslaught on my character, and it looked grim. The television stations, The Detroit News and Free Press endorsed my opponent. It was the first time that I had seen the television media endorse a candidate. Still, we were undeterred.
The momentum started to build once we got a good group of young, energetic people who saw our vision to start walking the neighborhoods. Working that closely with us gave them a chance to see firsthand that I was working. I wasn’t at the club, like the rumors said. I was at community meetings. They sucked up this truth, bought in and decided to get me re-elected. They were bright and driven, and did much more working than talking, neighborhood by neighborhood. And people responded. People may have heard the rumors, but they could see their grass being cut. They could see consistent trash pick-up. And they could see that people weren’t attacking my job, but me. Fortunately, enough people were willing to stand up that they energized the campaign. It was amazing to hear people say, “That’s our guy. They’re not going to run him out of here.”
Home visits became one of our strongest driving forces. Once again, we sat in people’s living rooms and discussed their concerns about me, their mayor. My sister Ayanna and many others did a magnificent job of pulling the volunteers together to make these kinds of events successful. We’d ask people to assemble their loved ones, and I would go to their house and sit and talk. The gatherings grew, and we didn’t filter conversations or duck questions. People asked me to explain t
he various controversies, or Gary Brown’s removal from his appointment, which took place earlier in my first term. But they also asked about common City issues, like, “Why y’all so heavy with the parking meters?” Our goal was to elicit those kinds of questions. All of Detroit’s people had concerns, and we addressed them at well over 100 such meetings.
In fact, the meetings worked so well that we began hosting evening conversations—open to the public—at the Manoogian Mansion. We held gatherings for artists, for business and civic leaders, and for barber and beauty shop owners and their employees. Despite our efforts, Freman Hendrix was still considered a shoe-in by the press. But we kept our sleeves rolled up and did what we had to do.
At one point, to drive the sentiment in the neighborhoods, we ordered green wristbands and stuck them inside a mailer. The mailer had printed quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., noting similarities between their causes and ours. People could read the mailer and wear the wristbands as a show of support. Thousands went out to likely and unlikely voters. The reaction was immediate, and we were re-energized even more. It was a timely outreach project, because it happened just as the campaign was getting ready to head to the polls. I was hungry, and we had momentum.
I fasted for eleven days just after the primary, and was on my seventh day when the first debate took place at Cobo Hall. My campaign team assembled and kept shouting at me, “You’ve gotta eat! This is ridiculous! You look tired!”
“I’m fine,” I told them. “I’m just focused.” I was ready. Not ready to run, but ready to be mayor. My strength was renewed. From that point, even being down in the polls, I sensed that we were going to win. “Campaign Mode” was back.
The deeper thing I had was a relationship with the people of Detroit. I was family. And nobody messes with family. There was a connection between me and the citizens of Detroit that I call Detroit Love. It’s the love of everything that defines us. The Bad Boys. Belle Isle. The Joe Louis Fist. The old Boblo Boats. Coney Island restaurants. Coleman Young. Motown. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. This city defined itself through it, and looked to me to uphold it through my service.
My opponent didn’t fit into any part of this image, and had no relationship with the people beyond the City’s aristocracy. I, on the other hand, embodied it. I was a true son of the city. And the race was about community pride and active participation in revolutionary change. It was about kinship and action. In the final analysis, spirit and connectivity would decide the race. After that, the guy with those connections had better have the chops for the job. I did.
Freman attacked my mistakes in the debates. His strategy was to hammer in all of the things that had run in the news. But hammering an already-driven nail just creates noise. The attacks were just that… attacks. I deflected them by apologizing and admitting I could have done some things differently. I also made it clear that we had accomplished a great deal despite the controversies, and that I deserved a chance to finish what my administration had started. Freman, meanwhile, couldn’t articulate a clearer vision than ours. He was too vested in the past, my past, when the people wanted forward-thinking leadership. By the time he outlined his own plan, I’d driven ours home.
I killed Freman in the debates. They were not even close, plus, his cognitive skills were questioned for the first time. I relished opportunities to not only outsmart so-called socially acceptable negroes whenever I had the opportunity, but to also leave them appearing cognitively deficient. Freman lost credibility, and the press couldn’t rescue him. He was simply underwhelming. His supporters wavered a bit in the aftermath, swayed by the hole we’d poked in the proverbial hot air balloon.
Election day was intense. We were confident that we’d reached enough people to get the vote out and win. We had the Fruit of Islam, the Nation of Islam’s security detail, come out to help at the polls, because there was some tension at the locations. We wanted to ensure that no tampering took place, and their well-groomed, stern presence said a lot.
Young voters also turned out in impressive fashion. The eighteen-to-thirty-five bracket, historically Detroit’s largest and most evasive demographic, seemed to arrive in droves, and constituted the largest youth voter turnout in the city’s history up to that point. And man, were they colorful! Some were well mannered, but we did see a few blunt smokers and rolling twenty-two-inch rims. They cared enough to cast their ballots, and I was happy to see them all. The black bourgeoisie showed up right alongside the ‘hood. The Latino community, which was growing and thriving, voted in heavy numbers. The eyes of the state were focused on Detroit, and everyone picked a side.
The race was emotionally and racially charged, but I’m proud to say that my support base was very diverse from the first day. My supporters lived all over the metropolitan area, and came in all shapes, sizes and colors. Interestingly, I was blamed for stoking the flames of race throughout the campaign. Though I didn’t, it helped sell papers.
We gathered at our campaign headquarters at day’s end to watch the results. Freman’s numbers came in early and fast—so quickly, in fact, that Channel 4 (NBC) declared him the winner early in the evening, minutes after the polls closed.
“Wow!” Ayanna kept saying. “That is not the sentiment we got at the polls today. And we were all over the city.” The early reports threatened to dampen our spirits. But I called Ayanna before anyone got a chance to wallow in any bad news.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I know what they said, ‘Yann, but all the numbers aren’t in. Just hold tight.”
We moved to the hotel and sat around, waiting for news. The mood went from low to tentative. Out of nowhere, Derrick entered the room, wearing a sad expression that I’ll never forget. He thought we’d lost the election. I couldn’t blame him. The media had already reported it, and the pollsters on Channel 4 called to tell him we’d lost the race. They’d done live shots from his headquarters, proclaiming him victorious. And here was my old friend who, over the course of a few years, had become very good friends with people who couldn’t stand me, people who would later work to remove me from office and imprison me. Even now, it still stings.
I went to the hotel ballroom and talked to my supporters, who were actually ignoring the numbers and were in a festive mood. I told them we were still waiting for the rest of the numbers to roll in.
“Be patient and watch God work,” I said. “There is no way that we lost this election. The streets have not spoken yet.” The numbers finally came in well after midnight, and we won! I went back out elated and, in a speech that became famous, declared that “the streets spoke.”
In the end, the race wasn’t that close. People can tell you who they’re voting for, but you never know what they’ll do until they step in that voting booth. We’d worked and prayed, collectively and actively. Even today, I believe God is still responding to that prayer. Before the re-election campaign, my life had reached its true nadir. But I hadn’t seen anything yet. My saga was about to take on epic proportions.
chapter 18
The Calm Before
IT FELT LIKE life was beginning anew in 2006. Carlita and I were enjoying each other, reconnecting through the ability to communicate that has, historically, been one of our hallmarks. We strengthen each other when our rapport is strong. We were happy to move past the period between 2003 and 2005. I also began to spend more time with Jelani, Jalil and Jonas. All they ever wanted was to see their father in the morning and at night on a more regular basis. It was hard for them to go to bed so many nights before I got home, and I know they were disappointed whenever I failed to make a game, or an event.
The family thoroughly enjoyed attending church together, and Pastor Sheard and Karen’s consistency and connection with Godly living was huge for us. We needed that. Strong leadership spurs copycat behavior. We’d never experienced balanced living as a married couple until that point. The year 2006 was the closest we’d come to some semblance of it.
Unfortunatel
y, Carlita’s active support of my mayoral duties would be short-lived. She soon withdrew again because I did not fire Christine. Carlita knew what she didn’t know, that my connection to Christine was inappropriate. She didn’t need details to feel that my best friend was the bane of her existence. I hated everything about that, the torn sense of loyalty, the position I put Carlita in, not knowing how to handle it, and not being willing to make the right choice for my family. Christine had remained my most trusted advisor after we stopped seeing each other. Our friendship stood as intact as it had been before our affair. And it was critical now, because it was time for me to grow up in my position, to step it up even more. One could argue that I was again putting the city before my wife.
We’d overseen this immense corporation for four years, learned it inside and out, made allies and enemies, and now, we were ready to make it run efficiently. I’d begun to focus the City’s attention on the Super Bowl’s impending Detroit touchdown early in 2002, soon after I took office. With this being the most watched spectacle in the world, it meant the world was coming to Detroit. We had to be prepared to make a great impression, especially since history had stacked the deck against the city.
The NFL had brought the Super Bowl to the Pontiac Silverdome a little more than twenty years earlier, for Super Bowl XVI. It was an abysmal failure for our state. Horrible articles ran about how bad people’s experiences were, about dirty streets, dirty snow, a winter wasteland, crime and poverty. Many articles implored the NFL to leave Detroit and never return. Well, that pissed me off, because the press clippings roundly referred to Pontiac as Detroit. It was an unfair comparison. Plus, I was twelve years old when all of that happened. I pulled my cabinet members and appointees and made the message clear. For this thing to succeed, we had to first believe! I wanted people to see, feel and sense a new city, a renaissance city.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 16