Kilpatrick on the Ropes

New York's sex scandal involving Gov. Eliot Spitzer came to its predicted end this week with his resignation. Ironically, there's been another sex scandal that's gone on a lot longer than the one in New York. This one involves the mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick. He, like Spitzer, was once considered the future of the Democratic Party. And just like the outgoing Governor of New York, sex is at the root of his troubles.

For Kilpatrick, the issue is whether he lied under oath about an affair with his then chief of staff Christine Beatty. During a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two Detroit cops, both Kilpatrick and Beatty denied they were lovers. Then, the Detroit Free Press got ahold of some steamy text messages that seemed to indicate otherwise. Worse yet, Kilpatrick made a secret deal to settle the lawsuit in exchange for destroying the text messages.

The settlement cost the city $9 million dollars. For his part, Kilpatrick has fought back. At first, he issued a vague apology, with his wife at his side (sound familiar?). Then, this week, during his state-of-the-city speech, he took the gloves off. He referred to being called the "N" word, to threats against his wife and children, and called his situation a lynch mob mentality.

All this would seem to be aimed at eliciting sympathy from Detroit's black community. In fact, there is no excuse for this kind of racial abuse. Just ask Hank Aaron, who got racist death threats for daring to break Babe Ruth's home run record. Yet Kwame Kilpatrick is no Henry Aaron. Just ask one guy who worked on his 2005 re-election campaign. Sam Riddle says the mayor ought to "man up like Eliot Spitzer and resign".

So what is Kwame Kilpatrick's situation? Are he and his family victims of race hatred, or is he cynically using race to save his own skin? The answer lies somewhere in between. He is a politician desperate to stay in office in the face of mounting evidence he lied. Still, racism, America's intractable problem, throws him a lifeline. That part of Kwame Kilpatrick's travails won't be acknowledged by mainstream media.
But the bottom line is pretty clear. Kilpatrick brought a lot of this on himself. "Man up and resign" sound like the honorable thing to do.