Friends Like These

Long before sex, lies and texting caused Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felonies and resign on Thursday, he and Barack Obama shared a warm man-hug before a huge Motown crowd. It came 16 months ago, as Obama was launching his campaign for president with a scalding speech to the Detroit Economic Club upbraiding Detroit's automakers for not building more fuel-efficient cars. But while that speech gave Obama "green" street-cred, his praise of Kilpatrick as a "great mayor" who will do "astounding things for many years to come" backfired. As Kilpatrick now heads to jail for four months, for obstruction of justice, two attack  ads have already appeared on the Web replaying Obama's Kwame moment. One, produced by the conservative Freedom's Defense Fund, shows Kilpatrick's mug shot, as the 10 felonies he faced scroll down the screen while Obama says, "I'm grateful to call him a friend." The ad ends ominously with the line: "You should know who Obama's friends are."

Even with Kwame Kilpatrick in the slammer, Barack Obama will be dogged by the scandal that brought down Detroit's mayor. For starters, Kilpatrick won't be around to lead the get-out-the-vote effort in dependably Democratic Detroit, which could be decisive in the toss-up state of Michigan, where Obama clings to a slim lead over John McCain. But beyond the mechanical breakdown, Kilpatrick's salacious, headline-commandeering controversy has inflamed the racial tensions that have rived this region. Detroit is 81 percent black and the poorest city in America, according to new census data, while the surrounding suburbs are 81 percent white and include some of the most affluent enclaves in the country. Ever since the riots of 1967, Detroiters have divided themselves along racial lines, and politicians on both sides of the city's cultural fault line—the 8 Mile Road made famous by Eminem—have stoked racial fears to get elected. "This Kwame Kilpatrick mess has splattered over onto the Obama campaign at the worst possible time," says veteran Detroit political consultant Sam Riddle. "Kilpatrick's brand of leadership has fed into the worst stereotypes that white voters have about black leaders."

That could explain why Obama has worked so hard lately to stiff-arm the mayor he once embraced. First, he asked him to stay away from the Democratic National Convention--which was no problem, since the mayor was wearing an electronic tether at the time and had been ordered by a judge not to travel beyond metropolitan Detroit. Then on Wednesday evening, a few hours after the prosecutor announced Kilpatrick was copping a plea, Obama issued a statement saying, "It is time for the mayor to step aside so that the city can move forward."

The next morning, Kilpatrick, 38, stepped before a judge and admitted: "I lied under oath" in a whistleblower trial last summer, where he hotly denied he had an affair with his then chief of staff, Christine Beatty. Steamy text messages from Beatty's city-issued pager, first published in the Detroit Free Press in January, contradicted that testimony and led to charges against both. (Beatty is also being offered a deal by the prosecutor, but hasn't indicated whether she will accept yet). To end his eight-month sex saga, the mayor agreed to cop to two counts of obstruction of justice in a deal that cost him his job, his law license, $1 million in restitution, his pension, his liberty for 120 days and the ability to run for office for the next five years while he is on probation. Kilpatrick also pleaded no contest to charges that he assaulted a police officer, who was trying to serve a subpoena on a friend of the mayor.

The Obama camp followed up with another statement that echoed what they'd said the night before: "The serious charges against the mayor were a distraction the city could not afford and his immediate resignation is the only way for the city to move forward." McCain, who will be campaigning in suburban Detroit Friday, remained silent.

Obama's attempts to distance himself might help, but he risks siding with the forces that some Detroiters see as enemies out to disenfranchise them. After all, Kilpatrick only agreed to his plea deal after Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm began historic hearings Wednesday to consider forcibly removing him from office. It's no coincidence that on the day before Granholm's hearing, a graffiti artist scribbled this on the limestone walls of Detroit's city hall: "The white man wants Kwame gone to take the rest of Detroit's money." Among the Kilpatrick die-hards in Detroit—still a significant minority—Obama could be viewed as a traitor. "People are upset he waited until the last minute and then piled on," says political consultant and Kilpatrick supporter Adolph Mongo.

To comfortably keep Michigan Blue, as it has been since 1992, Mongo contends Obama needs a near-record turnout in the city of Detroit, on the order of 60 percent of the registered voters. By comparison, when John Kerry took Michigan by 3 points in 2004, just more than 40 percent of Detroit's registered voters showed up at the polls. Without Kilpatrick around to oil Detroit's political machine, getting out the vote will be difficult, says Mongo. And campaigning with Granholm won't help. "The governor can't come in here and get anybody to vote for Obama," says Mongo. "She's the 800-pound gorilla that made this resignation possible."