“I really messed up,” I said. I told them that I’d been lying to their mother, and that I’d cheated on her. Jalil then broke his silence by asking if I’d done something with “Auntie Chris.”
Damn! Auntie Chris, I thought. I was utterly disgusted with myself. I was my sons’ hero, and I’d disgraced myself, and their name. I hated myself. I explained that I got caught in a horrible lie, and now the press had exposed it, only they were sensationalizing their reporting. I told them that Carlita and I were talking and working things out. Jelani asked if we would be getting divorced.
“No!” I said, emphatically, although I wasn’t really sure about anything at that point. I pulled them closer and tried to be as honest as possible.
“Fellas,” I said, “I know you both thought of me as a hero, and that I never messed up. But guys, I am human, and I still mess up. Although I am an adult, I still make bad choices. And I feel so bad that my choices have now hurt you. I feel like crap! And I would understand if you both don’t like me much right now.”
They looked at me, and then at each other—they have that twin telepathy thing going—before speaking. “Dad,” Jalil said, “we are upset, but we forgive you. But you need to be real nice to Mama.”
Jelani followed. “Because there is no way we are letting you all get a divorce. So you better fix it.” I gave them my word. We gave each other big hugs, and then went home.
I then had to accept Christine’s resignation, which wasn’t easy either. It was time to change things, but it was hard. Resignation from her post also meant her resignation from my life. My mother had warned me about this. She said I would lose a lot of friends. I just never thought that Christine would be one of them. But we set that exact course, and brought more than twenty years of friendship to an abrupt and tragic end. What a painful lesson to learn.
Carlita and I appeared on television a week after the story broke, exhausted and in turmoil, as we went live from our home church. It felt like we were holding on to the last threads of our sanity, and our relationship. We were shells of ourselves.
I spoke from the heart, knowing that my apology to the citizens of Detroit would be heavily scrutinized.
Good evening, Detroit. I want to start tonight by saying I’m sorry. To all of you who have believed in what we’ve been doing here since 2002, to all of you who have believed in me and my leadership, to all of you who have stuck with me through very difficult times, to all of you who’ve prayed for me, I’m sorry.
I’d embarrassed the people of Detroit. I wanted them to know that I realized that, and that I was determined to make it right. I apologized to Carlita, but almost broke down when I looked her in the eye. I try to reserve my emotions for private moments, but it was impossible to make eye contact with her without seeing the pain she was feeling.
Carlita impressed me by speaking on her own behalf during the telecast. She said that she was hurt, that we weren’t perfect, and that she was angry, hurt and disappointed, but without a doubt, she loved me. She then asked the citizens of Detroit to remain committed to me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible a woman she was.
The last request I made was for people to leave my family alone. I asked the news cameras not to follow them around, to allow them their privacy. That would not happen.
News coverage of City affairs shifted to my affairs. My political career was mortally wounded, and my detractors moved to hasten its death. The Free Press inaccurately reported that I approved the Whistleblower settlements as a knee-jerk reaction to prevent the text messages from being released. They kept inferring that I settled for more money in order to hide the messages. What they were really doing was going into overdrive to cover their own asses—protect Judge Callahan, the Free Press, and Michael Stefani—and distract people from their complicity in reporting illegally obtained documents. They ran editorials on the front page of the paper instead of the normal Op/Ed page; and they partnered with local news affiliates to have editorial writers conduct live interviews, regularly using key phrases like “alleged” and “secret” to describe the nature of the agreement. I must say, it was masterful, so much so that it rendered nearly every community leader who’d supported me silent. Fear of media retribution rose. The press also told people I knew and respected, like Wendell Anthony, Sharon McPhail and the Council of Baptist Pastors, that they shouldn’t help me because I’d spoken negatively about them.
I tried to explain the nature of the agreement to seal the texts, but the Free Press had a much bigger platform, and had filed suit to obtain the rest of the messages, which hadn’t been released. They also called for my resignation. It was a lopsided fight; a Mayor’s administration vs. the Internet, blogs, television cameras, YouTube, smartphones, talk show hosts, and editorials. Several people tried to broker conversations with the press on my behalf. Bob Berg, the PR legend who’d aided me years before, even tried in vain. I couldn’t temper the voracious editorial campaign.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy soon entered the fray, and brought with her an intense personal disdain for me and my family. While the press wanted me out, Worthy wanted me imprisoned. Sharon had warned me about her intent. For the first time in Michigan legal history, criminal charges were levied against someone for an infraction committed in a civil case. Though it was unprecedented, it wasn’t impossible. She and the press executed the most coordinated effort since the Super Bowl. Soon, reporting about the affair morphed into widespread stories about mine being a corrupt administration. New stories were pounded out, weaving threads between the party rumor, the texts and the inquiries about how various funds were managed. No evidence of wrongdoing appeared in the now 140,000 text messages that were published, but it made for good news, and better TV.
The strain this caused Carlita and me was palpable. But as the months passed, we began to do a better job of working through it together. I thank God to this day for my wife’s sense of defiance. We’d decided months earlier that our family was worth fighting for. We’d already embarked on the healing process, and that including dealing with my philandering, and our mutual expulsion of one another from our lives. The public crisis galvanized us, and Carlita decided that if there was going to be a fight, she was going to wage war with me, spiritually and physically. I was so happy because I really needed her. The months between January and October 2008 became a firestorm of nasty headlines and editorials, court hearings, heinous violations of my family’s personal space and legal run-ins of historic proportions.
chapter 22
Selfish Ambition
If you keep on biting and devouring each other, take care that you are not the cause of destruction of one another.
~GALATIANS 5:15
THE MESSAGE to the Galatians is thought to have been written between 53 and 57 A.D., but it was also highly appropriate for the people of Detroit, circa 2008. The city was hot, literally and figuratively. The Wayne County prosecutor did indeed charge me with multiple felonies, all stemming from my lying under oath about the affair, and it seemed like half of every newscast and newspaper were all about me. It was an absolute circus. How the newshounds found new stories to write is beyond me.
To help restore some order and attempt to assuage the storm developing around me, I hired Judy Smith, a crisis communications specialist. Judy worked on huge cases, and she had a talented team, but she was no match for the Detroit press. Their assault was highly organized, and Judy admitted to me that its personal nature and voracity was new territory for her. She put up a good fight, though, and I appreciated her.
It wasn’t long before business leaders joined the chorus of hoofbeats. Pandering to cameras and microphones, Tony Early, CEO of DTE Energy, Detroit’s leading energy company, became the first to give his on-air opinion. His words, as I recall, had to do with “not believing that I sat there and lied like that.” When asked if he thought I should step down, he said I should.
I believe there’s a difference between corporate leaders who built their compan
ies, and those who were promoted into executive management positions. The builders were tough self-thinkers, while the managers tended to be little more than corporate politicians. Tony Early was the latter. I thought we had a pretty good working relationship until he made his remarks without so much as a conversation with me. Instead, he scrambled for a position. Tony had formerly chaired the Detroit Renaissance Board, the City’s Corporate Roundtable, and was a member of—Cl-cloomp!—the Comerica Bank Board. But the last conversation he and I had took place before I took that money out of his bank.
Tony’s ability to throw a rock and hide his hand was emblematic of all the business community members who shifted against me. But he’d gotten a head start hating me years earlier. We had both served on the Host Committee, which traveled to five Super Bowls. We studied how the community prepared and carried out its strategy to host this huge event, attending meetings and events. We did everything we could to prepare ourselves to host Super Bowl XL when it came to Detroit.
Once, in Houston, after finishing a long day of meetings and heading back to our hotel, the rapper LL Cool J invited me to attend the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and party, which he was hosting. We had met when he conducted business in Detroit and I took him to a boxing match at Joe Louis Arena. I accepted, excited to hang out with him, and at a good party, without a doubt. I probably gave someone fodder for another joke with that last sentence, but anyone familiar with Super Bowl Week festivities knows that dozens of parties take place. So I went, telling Roger Penske and Susan Sherer where I was headed, and promising to catch up to them in the morning. “Have fun,” they both said. The next day, at breakfast, I gave Roger the typical description of the event, and we went about our business.
Days later, Detroit News reporter Daniel Howes wrote a story that ran the day we returned from Houston, saying that I was partying in Houston while my colleagues spent serious time working and attending meetings. Imagine my surprise. I never missed a meeting, nor was I even late! It’s not my style. The story played up the “Hip-Hop Mayor” image, which was still maddeningly easy for people to believe. He even threw in a line about me partying with LL Cool J. I called Daniel Howes and asked him why he would write such a thing. Of course, I told him how wrong his information was. He apologized, and then said that he got his info from Tony Early.
The next day I gave a speech on business development and the Super Bowl progress at the Detroit Athletic Club, a Downtown Detroit club that caters to the city’s business elite. Roger and Susan also spoke. Since we were all there, I showed Roger the Detroit News article. He got pissed, fast.
“Where did this information come from?” he asked. I told him what I knew, and he said, “We didn’t need this. I’ll put an end to it right away.”
Tony appeared at that moment, walking toward us as if a movie director had timed his entrance. I fingered him as soon as I saw him. Yes, I snitched! And Roger went at him immediately. They were just far enough away that I couldn’t hear the discussion, but it looked like Roger was verbally undressing him, standing inches from his nose, finger wagging in front of his face, which reddened rather quickly. Tony’s palms pushed up in the air, and his shoulders lurched up. He was playing dumb, and it wasn’t working. I eased closer, thoroughly enjoying it as Conrad Mallett, my former campaign director and current president of a Detroit area hospital, approached and watched with me. He seemed to get a kick out of it, too. The confrontation ended soon, and Roger headed back toward me, handing me the paper and saying, “We won’t have any more problems like this.” And we didn’t. I glanced at Tony, who was busy picking his face off the ground.
When Tony later voiced his opinion about me stepping down, I thought it would open the proverbial floodgates for voices of dissent. But it didn’t. An attempted recall effort never got off the ground. And I was still holding my own in my daily activity until the day Doug Rothwell, CEO of the Detroit Renaissance, and Dave Bing, a retired Detroit Pistons player, businessman and current Detroit mayor, visited my office for a meeting.
Bing had been to my office a few weeks earlier with George Jackson, my chief development officer after Walt Watkins’s retirement. He needed $5 million to help his residential development project, which was being built on the city’s Riverfront. The City had already invested in the project through our Downtown Development Authority. Bing needed additional funding to gain leverage from his bank. George and the DDA supported the request for more money, and he wanted mine, which I gave to him. Bing’s project has since failed, but it would have been the first of its kind for the Riverfront, and that meant momentum for Riverfront development. Doug Rothwell is a seasoned professional who worked with former Michigan Governor John Engler, and was recently appointed by newly elected Governor Rick Snyder.
I engaged the meeting as a friendly discussion. I worked with Doug in the State House, and enjoyed working with him as mayor. He was focused, organized and tough. He and Bing came to my office with pleasantries, asked how I was holding up, and even inquired about my family. I told them that I was well, all things considered, and that I was working and focused, myself. When Doug asked what message he should take back to the community, I gave it to him, and the rest of the conversation was light.
Imagine my surprise when, an hour later, breaking news on television announced that “business community representatives” had met with me and asked me to resign. I was aghast, because Dave was named as the source. I called his cell phone, and he lied to me, saying he was “shocked they would say that.” I told him to call the station and get it right. I also called Doug, who agreed that the report was false and promised to send a statement to the news saying that “no part of our discussion was about the mayor resigning.” Twenty minutes later, however, Dave was back on the news, saying that, although they hadn’t specifically talked about that in the meeting, he believed that I should resign.
Dave is a longtime friend of Tony Early, and a member of the DTE Executive Board. A few months after this episode, he announced plans to run for mayor, after being drafted by Tony Early. Bing never mentioned that all of his businesses were in financial trouble at that time. Today, they are all either bankrupt or operated by others, the Riverfront development included.
Now the mayor, Dave brought several DTE “loaned executives” to run the City’s demolition program. Of course, the press and business community celebrated the move, though it has produced poorer results than either my or Dennis Archer’s administration. DTE also received a reported $150 million no-bid contract from Mayor Bing to manage the City’s Public Lighting facility. Their move on me paid off, but not for the City.
It became apparent, not long after this, that the political folks also wanted a piece of me. People who came out against me were given primetime coverage. And Governor Jennifer Granholm, who was failing as head of the State thanks to a reputation for being unable to make a decision, seized a chance to prove that she was tough. She waited until the line of people calling for my head grew long enough, and then she took her cuts. That’s leadership, in her typical style!
chapter 23
Threads
AS KIDS, we grew up watching cartoons. The Looney Tunes crew—Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Road Runner, all those characters—were some of the funniest on TV. Their crazy antics, Yosemite Sam’s gun blowing up in his face, the Road Runner embarrassing Wile E. Coyote. We loved it.
I remember a bit where a ‘toon would pull the thread on someone’s garment, and it completely unraveled, leaving the person naked and embarrassed. The proverbial thread on my garment was pulled the day the text message story broke. By summer, I was naked, and the wind blew cold all around me. I longed for anonymity.
I was the news in Detroit. The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press had been operating in the red before the text story and subsequent scandal. They weren’t alone. Newspapers around the country, like The Boston Globe and The New York Times, had either closed or attempted to sell. A generation of tech-savvy readers preferred the Internet
over the newsstands. Now, the Detroit newspapers’ newsstand sales increased from seven percent to more than twenty percent every time my face or name appeared on the front page. From a business standpoint, it was in their best interest to keep this story sexy as long as they could. They probably appreciate that I, through my troubles, still managed to honor my duty by saving their jobs. Three cheers for me.
Their news crews camped outside the Manoogian Mansion for months. They knocked on my neighbors’ doors, asking if they knew anything about a party, or any suspicious activity. None of them did. We became prisoners in our home, and it was hell on my family. One night, a news copter shone a light right through Jonas’s bedroom window, then circled to the back of the house to pierce an illuminating light through that side. Multiple copters sometimes hovered. They would slowly circle, looking for any activity. The noise was deafening, so loud that it was impossible to hold conversation in the home without shouting. We’d retreat to the basement to escape. Though I had my press reps make several requests for the helicopters to cease, their requests were not granted.
I saw the worry and anxiety that gripped my wife after the release of the text messages change to a spirit of fierce protection, anger and courage. Our sons began to play games on the floor in the house so they couldn’t be seen by the news cameras, which hovered like loud, metallic, blood-sucking mosquitoes. My sons were confused and scared, and that sickened and enraged me. They were behaving like a lynch mob. No man can stand to see his family feel so threatened.
Carlita and I vowed to survive it all. The press smelled awards in our blood, and we knew they just might get their wish. But we were no less galvanized. The rap artist T.I. articulated our feelings in his song “No Matter What,” which I listened to often during this time. Our family would “conquer every obstacle, make the impossible possible; even when winning’s illogical, losing’s still far optional.” Whether we liked it or not, it was us against the world. No one outside of our family, my administration and our immediate community was even trying to hear my perspective. No one cared about my family’s sanctity, so we would care enough for the world.
Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revolution of Kwame Kilpatrick Page 20