Kilpatrick to speak to the city Wednesday night

Kilpatrick expected to break silence Wednesday night January 29, 2008 By ZACHARY GORCHOW FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick plans to emerge from seclusion Wednesday night and apologize to Detroiters from his church after a week of metastasizing controversy, expanding national coverage and a mounting circus atmosphere surrounding his possible perjury in the text message scandal. The mayor has no plans to quit, aides said Tuesday. In the speech, to be aired at 7:30 on television and radio radio from the Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ, the mayor will speak from a room before one pool camera. No audience will be present, nor will media members be allowed in the church on Schaefer at West 7 Mile. Asked why Kilpatrick needs to travel to Greater Emmanuel, given that the mayor is forgoing the sanctuary and a crowd, mayoral spokesman James Canning responded: “He chose to do it at his church.” The talk is expected to be a soul-baring apology, according to a person with knowledge of the mayor’s thinking. Aides snickered Tuesday when asked whether Kilpatrick would resign. “He’s the mayor,” Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams said after an early morning meeting at the Manoogian Mansion. “He’s anxious to speak to the people.” The speech will cap one of the strangest weeks in Detroit politics in decades, and it will put the usually ebullient Kilpatrick on public view after his escape to Florida turned a shadowy glimpse of the mayor back home Sunday night into front-page news. Kilpatrick mostly has been out of sight since the Free Press reported last Wednesday that he and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, lied under oath about having a romantic relationship and about firing Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown. The testimony took place last year in a police whistle-blower case that cost the city more than $9 million. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced last week that her office has launched an investigation. Beatty resigned Monday; Kilpatrick announced Tuesday he would replace her with Kandia Milton, a longtime lieutenant. The mayor’s last public appearance in Detroit was the auto show charity gala on Jan. 18. The next day, he traveled to Asheville, N.C., to deliver a speech at a prayer breakfast honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kilpatrick issued a brief statement to request privacy for his family after the Free Press report appeared, and was next spotted Thursday afternoon by photographers outside a home he owns in Tallahassee, Fla. He did not speak, but was photographed kissing his wife, Carlita Kilpatrick. The next mayoral sighting was Sunday evening, when cameras captured him briefly as he walked into his city-owned residence. Kilpatrick’s plight has touched off a frenzy among Detroit radio stations and other media outlets. The Los Angeles Times became the latest out-of-town paper to cover the crisis. Two staffers from the morning show of WKQI-FM (95.5) showed up Tuesday at the Manoogian. One knocked on the door of the mansion while the other shot video that aired live on the station’s Web site. No one answered, but a city official later called the station and asked it not to do that again, said the show’s host, who goes by the name Mojo. Also Tuesday, Tom Joyner, whose nationally syndicated radio show is heard on WDMK-FM (105.9) in Detroit, alternately poked fun at the mayor and apologized to him for the jokes. “This is the greatest thing to hit Detroit radio since Bill Bonds and Coleman Young were fighting with reach other,” said Mojo, whose station last week sent two listeners to the Madison Heights hotel room where Kilpatrick and Beatty met, according to their text messages. “The Detroit community seems to be consumed with” the story, said Mildred Gaddis, host of the morning show on WCHB-AM (1200). On WDVD-FM (96.3), morning host Blaine Fowler melded Fox 2 anchor Huel Perkins’ dramatic reading of the Kilpatrick-Beatty text messages to the beat of the theme song from “Debbie Does Dallas,” the famous 1978 porn film. Jeff Caponigro, a public relations executive in Southfield who specializes in crisis counseling, said it is important to be decisive and set the tone early, something Kilpatrick failed to do. “When there is a void in a situation, other people will step forward and fill it, whether you like it or not,” Caponigro said.