LocalBlogger's view of the issues

This is one of the best articles about the events involving Kwame, past and present.
It is in the Metro Times paper and their web site.  It is a good read!

Here is the URL: http://metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=12522

Some excerpts:

In 2002, Kwame Kilpatrick, then 31, strode into office carrying a world of promise on his massive shoulders, a young, charismatic politician whose future seemed to have no bounds. The voice of a new generation, he vowed that a resurgence, which took wing under Mayor Dennis Archer's administration during the 1990s, would gain even more impetus under his youthful, energetic leadership.

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But there is an even greater tragedy under way — the tragedy of a city that has long struggled to lift itself from urban decay and disinvestment only to find yet another massive impediment on its uphill road to recovery. The tragedy of a city that suddenly finds its attention focused not on revival efforts but rather speculation about whether its mayor is going to be charged with perjury, speculation about court maneuvers, about investigations, about the morning's headlines and sound bites in the city's ongoing soap opera.

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When running against Gil Hill for mayor in 2001, Kilpatrick lambasted his rival for accepting campaign contributions from controversial attorney Geoffrey Fieger, a white suburbanite. That proved to be a mistake, because Fieger quickly responded by releasing a voice-mail message from Kilpatrick asking the lawyer to support his campaign.

During that same election, the mayor-to-be was asked about a $50,000 donation to one of his nonprofit entities from the operator of a homeless shelter himself under a legal cloud. Kilpatrick blithely responded that he would have asked Mother Teresa for a donation if she were still writing checks. Realizing afterward that it was probably a bad idea to be making that kind of crack about the sainted and deceased Nobel laureate, Kilpatrick, as The Detroit News reported at the time, then denied in a radio interview that he'd ever made so crass a comment.

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"Kwame Kilpatrick has consistently played three cards — the media card, the race card and the God card," says political consultant Sam Riddle. "And we can't let him get away with it anymore, because it is an insult to everybody."

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Riddle isn't alone when he speculates that one reason Kilpatrick's refusing to resign now is to hold a bargaining chip; if Kilpatrick is indicted for perjury, he could use his exit as a way to negotiate a lesser charge or lesser penalties, much the same way former Vice President Spiro Agnew did when accused of corruption during his days in Richard Nixon's administration. Others speculate he'd rather fight the potential charges as mayor than as a private citizen.