Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick

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by Kwame Kilpatrick


  Stefani finally moved on to questions about Brown and Nelthrope, but the underhanded and tangential tone had been established. Stefani had cornered us with irrelevant, and supposedly protected, information.

  Sam and Valerie tried to reposition our argument in cross-examination. They asked questions about Internal Affairs, Gary Brown, and Harold Nelthrope. I regained my composure and reiterated my original position, focusing on my core concerns about Brown and the reason I removed him.

  At the end of it all, the jury made a decision in just over twenty minutes. They awarded Brown, Nelthrope and Stefani $8 million, much more than they had demanded. We were shocked that they won, and that Stefani’s strategy worked. I immediately vowed to file an appeal as I believed—and still believe— that we’d done nothing wrong to those officers.

  Stefani, meanwhile, agreed to have a settlement conference to prevent a costly, and possibly protracted, appellate process. All the attorneys agreed on a mediator, and my attorneys kept me abreast of the progress. In the meantime, I went back to work and allowed the City’s legal process to run its course. After a week or so, the story disappeared from the newspapers and newscasts. The holidays were approaching, and the city began gearing up for its annual festivities.

  I was thankful to get back to mayoring. I’d begun serious talks with the City of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, to consummate a lease deal on the tunnel between our two cities, which would bring the City of Detroit $75 million. Dan Gilbert, owner of Quicken Loans, had also closed a deal to move their headquarters to downtown Detroit from the suburbs. We were also working with General Motors and the NCAA to create a great visitor experience for the upcoming NCAA Regional Final, which was set to be held at Ford Field that following March. The Final Four was coming to the same venue the following year. The City was moving forward, downtown and in the neighborhoods. It wasn’t too long before I forgot about Brown, Nelthrope and Stefani…

  …until I got a call from my attorney, Sam McCargo, just weeks later while traveling back from Washington, D.C. He told me that Stefani had just shown him several text messages Christine and I had exchanged, messages “of a very personal nature.”

  “Damn!” I shouted, cutting him off. Stefani used a subpoena that Judge Callahan had not approved, which made it illegal (he would later admit this), and retrieved about 6,000 texts, purportedly pulled from a Skytel pager Christine used. We’d learn later, by Skytel Corp’s admission, that they came directly from the company’s server. Skytel would also admit to violating at least one federal law by giving them to Stefani. We’d have to deal with that later because, presently, Stefani had them. That was bad news.

  We were 24-hour employees and, for that reason, the City allowed us to use the pagers for business and personal purposes. The majority of the messages were about City business, but exchanges with spouses, children, physicians, parents, pastors, friends and lovers were considered private. Even the messages between Christine and me qualified. There were, however, some pretty lewd messages.

  I met with Sam, and then we spoke with Carlita and the boys. Next, we huddled in a small room to talk privately, where Sam proceeded to describe what he read in detail. He suggested that Stefani didn’t want to release the texts, because of the way he’d gotten them. He suggested we settle the case, include Walt Harris in the agreement, and put it all behind us. My concern was the settlement cost, and whether I could be certain the messages wouldn’t go public. Sam suggested a confidentiality agreement in which both parties would exchange private documents as part of a trial and settlement strategy. In other words, we’d have something on them, and they’d have something on us. Wilson Copeland and Billy Mitchell, two conferring attorneys, echoed the sentiment as standard practice. So I thought about it overnight and decided to go with it. The attorneys exchanged private documents that could prove damaging to both sides. We were given the texts, and we gave up Harold Nelthrope’s incredible mental health history, as well as Gary Brown’s history as a narcotics officer. The Detroit Free Press soon referred to this as a “secret deal” that I negotiated, as if I acted alone, and did something illegal.

  With that, I put it behind us. I reasoned that they hadn’t won, but just cornered me. My job was to get Detroit past it. Detroit’s Risk Management fund would pay the settlement, so the City’s budget wouldn’t be affected. And though I was pissed at having to pay for something so illegal, I was comfortable with the decision. Stefani got $2.2 million, Nelthrope $2.6 million, and Gary Brown $3.2 million. Walt Harris got $400,000. It was robbery, a jack move, and both sides knew it. Of course, my critics were giddy to see me lose.

  One caveat that really bothered me, enough that I shouldn’t have signed that version of the agreement, was the wording in the agreement that categorically released all attorneys involved from any liability if any other contents exchanged in the agreement became public. They covered themselves. My attorneys advised me that this was standard practice and, despite a sinking feeling that I shouldn’t do it, I did. I still kick myself for that.

  Stefani also signed a statement claiming that we had the only copy of the texts but, with no liability to be concerned about, he was able to confidently sign off on an untrue declaration.

  I knew I’d see those messages again. So did Christine. She came to my office in December 2007 and implored me to come forward and tell the truth about everything. Brown and Stefani were both snakes in our eyes. The thought of “coming clean” was daunting, and I wanted time to think about it. A few weeks later, we talked and started planning how we would break it all to our families. We also planned her exit from the administration. We’d replace Christine with Kandia Milton as chief of staff. Kandia didn’t know why she was leaving, but worked with her to effect a smooth transition.

  Stefani, meanwhile, slithered as expected. He’d given the texts to a Detroit Free Press reporter weeks earlier. A thread in my life’s fabric was being secretly tugged. And a yank was coming.

  chapter 20

  Hoofbeats

  I LOVE WHEN horses prance. Clydesdales are my favorite, with the whisking, powerful cl-cloomp-cl-cloomp-cl-cloomp of their hooves. They move with force, power and direction, and their hoofbeats serve as a symbolic clarion.

  I’m convinced that hoofbeats of a political nature mobilized and barreled toward me as early as my first term. Unseen, unreported tangents to my public controversies, they possessed disdain for my administration, our vision for Detroit, and for me. Warnings about growing loathing, of certain forces that wanted me out of the way, came my way soon after my re-election. Hoofbeats in City and State politics; in business, in the media.

  “They’re coming to get you,” were Sharon’s exact words, spoken privately in my office one day. I probably didn’t take her as seriously as I should have. I believed I had solid relationships with key people, at least solid enough to ward off any detractors with malicious intent. I believed my work would be my voice. I believed in my team. I was wrong.

  At the beginning of term two, we sought to change the way the City of Detroit brought new dollars in, created jobs and encouraged tourism. We wanted to reintroduce Detroit to the world and put Detroiters to work. The people needed employment. I even created an Executive Order to expedite it.

  This order protected workers from any ulterior motives by businesspeople, because it wasn’t racially driven, and it was mandatory. It reinforced requirements that were previously too flexible to have an impact to grant Detroiters access to economic activity in the city. My focus was clear, and my objectives were known. If you wanted to participate in the hundreds of millions of dollars in construction and development projects that were going on in the City at that time, then you’d better hire Detroiters.

  Employment is priceless. It breeds self-determination, confidence and hope. The community deserved to see their dollars exchanged among residents and commercial business in their backyards.

  Members of the business community received this move like a punch in the face. Detroit is full
of old-school economic thinking and traditional business dinosaurs who relish control. But the younger business culture brimmed with innovative ideas and a twenty-first century vision. A new undercurrent of positive energy and activity brewed in the mid-market and small business area, but it hadn’t impressed most of Detroit’s business fixtures.

  We were simultaneously mobilizing community outreach efforts, and one of our biggest opportunities lay with the then-new Workforce Development Initiative. This department funded well over 100 community organizations and mandated them to educate and train Detroiters to enter the workforce. We’d long known that Detroiters had few opportunities to find work outside the city limits. So, Workforce Development, as an organization and a philosophy, was critical. Yet most of the organizations getting money from the initiative possessed a grotesque lack of urgency. Their collective job placement rate of five percent fell well below the mandated fifty percent average.

  Sharon presented a concept to me, and I granted her permission to implement it. She notified 135 of the funded service providers that their contracts would end in eighteen months, and that they’d have to not only reapply for their funding, but would also have to include a detailed strategy to improve their placement rates. Several organizations, including one called Jewish Vocational Services, railed against the notice. JVS received about $25 million from the City, and their placement rate was two percent. I was told that their leadership, when challenged, actually admitted to feeling that they couldn’t prepare the people they served to enter the workforce. That was their argument, to blame it on the people. It was also an admission that they couldn’t do their jobs, but expected to get their $25 million. Well, we were no longer in the business of pouring money down the toilet. Everyone was accountable.

  The Workforce Development initiative ultimately proved as divisive as it was noble. I was offended by these organizations’ willingness to pretend to help Detroit communities. People languished in poverty while those with money and a mandate to develop their resources shunned them. We started to change that. The initiatives we launched drove increases in medical and dental assistance programs and other skills. Students gained clinical experience by working in state-of-the-art labs and classrooms. It was gratifying to see people go from struggling to donning scrubs and white jackets, while learning to draw blood or clean teeth.

  We were creating household educational environments, and our data suggested that the children of parents enrolled in Workforce Development programs improved their own grades. Today, career education is growing exponentially across the country. Well, we foresaw this day coming, and took advantage of it, and it was exciting! But the consensus among funding recipients was that we were endangering their bottom line. Prominent board members on some of those organizations began to whisper.

  I starting getting phone calls and visits from individuals imploring me to reconsider my strategy. One visit came from Reggie Turner, a Detroit attorney who seemed to be involved in a great deal of Detroit activity. He told me, “Sharon and her Workforce Development moves are causing major problems for you, Mr. Mayor.” He suggested that my administration was enjoying its first real peace, its first absence of negative press in a while, and that I should get Sharon to “chill out.” Cl-cloomp.

  Gary Torgow, a very influential member of the Jewish community, and a supporter since I’d been in the State House, also visited me. He and I had a great business and personal relationship. I even attended his son’s wedding and purchased my infamous earring from his brother-in-law, a New York jeweler. Gary came to talk to me about the concerns in the Jewish community about Sharon’s apparent “attack” on JVC. He also wanted to let me know about the growing concern regarding my relationship with the Nation of Islam and, particularly, Min. Louis Farrakhan. Cl-cloomp.

  Our Workforce Development efforts paralleled other attempts to bring national events to the city. The Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau was working overtime. That’s how we got the Final Four and other events, like the Nation of Islam’s Saviour’s Day celebration. Saviour’s Day falls on the birthday of the religious organization’s founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad, February 26, and celebrates the organization’s history. The Nation of Islam’s leader usually delivers the keynote address, which meant Louis Farrakhan would be speaking in 2007, the year it came to Detroit. It was held at Ford Field, the home of the Detroit Lions, and it was huge.

  Minister Farrakhan is a master orator and defender of people of African descent whose rhetoric has been a thorn in mainstream’s society’s side for decades, and this event provided a very large platform. He’s also been publicly called “anti-Semitic” by organizations like the Anti-Defamation League for critical comments he made about Jewish people almost twenty years ago. But he is still considered a hero by African-Americans.

  I was truly excited to welcome the thousands of visitors who would come to eat, spend money and enjoy our city during the Saviour’s Day event. But Gary told me that the Jewish community viewed the event as a personal affront.

  Josh Opperer, another longtime supporter I had also known since my days in the Michigan House, expressed similar disdain. “Minister Farrakhan hates Jews,” he told me, adding that he didn’t see how he could be my friend if I had friends like that. Gary was less succinct and dramatic, but that was the last real communication I had with either of them. After his warning, he left my office and never returned. Josh resigned from a board to which I had appointed him, and never spoke to me again.

  I knew I was treading on thin ice with some powerful people, but I felt it was critical to ensure that our citizens were nurtured, and given access to their hometown. Further, the business community was a part of the citizenry, and their hotels, restaurants, shops, and so forth, needed patronage. These events serviced those needs, and helped brand the city. I believe our community’s diversity and tolerance must be celebrated and acknowledged. Especially after hosting the Super Bowl, it was important to continue to welcome the world to Detroit.

  We all benefit from that energy, and Saviour’s Day was only one contributor. No one was offended when I supported and the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) community’s “Hotter than July” event every year at Palmer Park, on Detroit’s Northwest Side, and spoke at a large sit-down dinner that the same community organized in conjunction with State and national groups. I participated every year in the Cinco De Mayo celebrations, and invested millions of dollars in a project called the Mexicantown Development. We did this to celebrate Detroit’s rich Hispanic and Latino population, culture and history. Recognizing this as a strong, diverse branch on Detroit’s family tree, I instructed an entire section of my staff to focus on this part of the population; one person for business outreach, another for community outreach, and one more for ecumenical outreach. In fact, Fred Feliciano, the president of the Hispanic Business Association, was on my staff.

  We didn’t stop there. I also worked with Bishop Andrew Merritt, pastor of Straight Gate, a West Side church, when he hosted the “One in Worship” celebration, a global Christian event that brought in nationally known pastors, ministers and gospel artists. When I say we wanted to reintroduce Detroit to the world, we meant it literally, and we didn’t just expect the world to come to us.

  I also traveled to Dubai on a trip sponsored by the Arab-American Chamber of Commerce to market Detroit as a destination place for Arab business and commerce. While there, I courted leaders from their government to come to Detroit for the American-Arab Summit. Delightfully, they accepted, and when the Summit was held at the Renaissance Center in Downtown Detroit, it became an international event covered extensively by international press outlets, including Al Jazeera. We’d trumpeted in Dubai that Detroit has the largest Middle-Eastern community in the world outside the Middle East. The Arab World was welcomed in Detroit. We also worked extensively with the Arab Community to raise money to build the National Arab Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Museum project was a big enough deal that Dubai lea
dership also supported it.

  Numerous Arab periodicals featured this connection in their cover stories, capturing my meeting with Dubai leader Sheik Hamdaan, when he spoke in Detroit at the Summit.

  In a perfect world, the people who hated me for supporting the Nation of Islam and Minister Farrakhan would have opened their eyes and ears enough to see that I gave a platform to people based on the fact that they had as much of a stake in Detroit’s vitality as I did. Some say I was naïve and idealistic. I say, okay! Nations are built on idealistic foundations. It’s better than hate! Unfortunately, my naiveté inspired an army, and my next move would give it urgency.

  Comerica Bank, Detroit’s homegrown, hometown depository for more than a century, decided to move its headquarters from Detroit to Texas in 2007. The bank didn’t inform me, the Governor, the press or its own workforce of this decision until the day of the announcement. They told everyone at a big press conference. In fact, Ralph Babb, Comerica’s chairman and CEO, made the announcement from Texas. He’d already moved. He called both me and the governor just minutes before the press event took place.

  That year was marked by changes in the banking industry. Banks were relocating, merging with other banks, and some went out of business. But Comerica had maintained its Downtown Detroit presence and prospered through all of the industry transitions. They were a Michigan success story. And they happened to be the City of Detroit’s primary banker. Hundreds of millions of the City’s dollars were kept in numerous Comerica accounts. That translated to hundreds of thousands of transactions, for which Comerica received millions in transaction fees. Most of the City of Detroit’s 15,000 employees kept their money in Comerica accounts and, although the bank charged us ridiculous amounts in fees, most people stuck with them. It was, after all, the hometown bank. Until they moved. Discreetly.

 

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