By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 5, 2008
CHICAGO, Sept. 4 -- Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick (D) resigned Thursday after admitting that he lied to hide an affair with his chief of staff. After months when Kilpatrick's refusal to step aside paralyzed municipal government, City Council President Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr. prepared to take over.
In an agreement with prosecutors, Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two felonies and agreed to serve four months in jail, pay $1 million and resign the office that he won twice as one of Michigan's most dynamic young leaders. He also pledged not to run for office for at least five years.
"Yes, I lied under oath," a somber Kilpatrick, 38, told Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner, abandoning the bravado of his early denials and his promise of "full and complete vindication."
But in a televised address later, he vowed to make a triumphant return to politics.
"I know there's another day for me," Kilpatrick said. "I want to tell you, Detroit, that you have set me up for a comeback."
Kilpatrick delivered a campaign-like defense of his record during "the reawakening of our city" and said he is the victim of "many people's pursuit of their own ambitions," singling out Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D) by name. "I take full responsibility for my own actions and for the poor judgment that they reflected," Kilpatrick said, in the clearest reference to his failures. "I wish we could turn back the hands of time and tell that young man to make better choices, but we can't."
Kilpatrick's stunning fall became a public spectacle in a city that can little afford the distraction. His guilty plea was broadcast live on a day when Granholm was scheduled to hear a second day of evidence on the city council's demand to remove him.
After Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and said he would resign, Granholm suspended the hearings, calling it a "sad but historic day."
"Commentators and historians, I expect, will use the lessons of these difficult months to teach those young future public servants about the importance of integrity and honor and duty to the public," she said. "When a public official violates that sacred trust, the violation and its consequences affect more than that individual. It affects us all."
Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy, who launched an investigation after the Detroit Free Press uncovered e-mails that contradicted the sworn testimony of Kilpatrick and his former lover, Christine Beatty, said it is essential that the former mayor serve jail time and pay restitution to the city.
"You don't just lose your job and walk away," Worthy said.
Kilpatrick also pleaded no contest to a charge of assaulting a police officer. He shoved a sheriff's deputy who was trying to serve a subpoena on one of the mayor's friends.
For Detroit and its 915,000 residents, Kilpatrick's departure means an end to a standoff that has lasted since the council called on him to resign for misleading lawmakers about an $8.4 million legal settlement he had authorized.
Yet the negative national publicity and the disruption at City Hall, where about 150 Kilpatrick political appointees are awaiting word on their professional futures, is a reminder of the persistent setbacks for a city that has hemorrhaged more than a million residents since its industrial heyday.
Detroit is now one of the poorest cities in the nation at a time when the U.S. auto industry, which once ruled the city, is struggling to stay afloat.
Kilpatrick, elected to the Michigan legislature at 25 and the mayor's office at 31, helped attract downtown investment. During his tenure, Detroit hosted a Super Bowl, Major League Baseball's All-Star Game and an unlikely World Series. At times, things seemed to be looking up, but scandal marred his tenure from the early days.
Kilpatrick cultivated his image as "the hip-hop mayor," wore a diamond stud in his ear and rang up $210,000 on his city credit card during his three years. Even as he was laying off workers to reduce the budget deficit, he kept an 18-person security entourage and leased a cherry-red Lincoln Navigator for his wife for $1,000 a month.
When he ran for reelection in August 2005, voters seemed in a mood to punish him, pushing him back to a second-place primary finish against Freman Hendrix. But Kilpatrick, who said he was on "an assignment from God" to be mayor, promised to change -- and won the runoff.
The felony charges that led to his resignation emerged from a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by police officers. They said they were fired partly because they were conducting investigations that could have led them to discover Kilpatrick's illicit romance.
In court last year, Kilpatrick and Beatty denied having an affair.
"My mother is a congresswoman," Kilpatrick testified, referring to Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.). "There have always been strong women around me. My aunt is a state legislator. I think it's absurd to assert that every woman that works with a man is a whore. I think it's disrespectful, not just to Christine Beatty but to women who do the professional job that they do every single day."
After a jury awarded the officers $6.5 million, Kilpatrick vowed to appeal. But he changed his mind when a lawyer for the officers said he would reveal text messages sent by Kilpatrick and Beatty on their city-owned pagers.
Kilpatrick signed off on an $8.4 million settlement -- a figure higher than the jury award -- that required the plaintiff not to reveal the steamy messages.
In January, the Free Press obtained and published messages showing that Kilpatrick and Beatty had ordered the firing of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown and had engaged in an affair.
After months of assertions that he had done nothing wrong, Kilpatrick told Groner that he lied under oath, "with the intent to mislead the court and jury, to impede and obstruct the disposition of justice."
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