DETROIT — Twenty years ago, Kwame Kilpatrick was mayor of Detroit and a rising star in Democratic politics. Now he’s trying to send Republican Donald Trump, the man who freed him from prison, back to the White House.
In the time since he’s resigned from office, Kilpatrick has been divorced and imprisoned, and then set free. On Wednesday, Kilpatrick attempted to pay back the favor by speaking at a Republican dinner in suburban Detroit, with the aim of ginning up more votes for Trump.
“I’m not Democrat or Republican,” Kilpatrick said near the end of a 20-minute radio interview Monday. Kilpatrick spoke with 910AM radio host Justin Barclay. But throughout, Kilpatrick described himself as more aligned with conservative views these days.
The former “hip hop mayor,” whose tenure as mayor and career in politics was engulfed in a corruption scandal, invited people to come out Wednesday and meet the new Kwame Kilpatrick.
And the new Kwame Kilpatrick is there to re-elect Trump.
“I would love to have the opportunity to converse with you there,” Kilpatrick said. “I think it’s going to be a good opportunity for us to really have a shift of ideas, but also a putting down of our weapons to figure out how we elect Donald Trump to be president United States.”
Throughout the interview Kilpatrick indicated that Democrats have shifted left from the party he once knew. A Detroit News photo from 2007 shows a rising Kilpatrick beside a rising Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator from Illinois.
In the years that followed, Obama won the presidency and Kilpatrick went to federal prison.
Still, Kilpatrick couldn’t quite bring himself to say he leans Republican.
“The Democratic Party that I was a part of in the 1990s and 2000 — since 2004 there’s been a dramatic change there,” Kilpatrick said. “So I’m changing. The world is changing, and I find myself in a position where I’m more aligned —” he began, before cutting himself off.
“Even then I was in the DLC, which is the Democratic Leadership Conference, I was more of a conservative Democrat, but I see myself more aligned with ideas, with policies and with people,” Kilpatrick added.
This week Kilpatrick will skip the Democratic National Convention, just down I-94 from Detroit in Chicago, and speak to a room full of Republicans. He’ll also forgo a possible reunion with Obama to stump for Trump.
Oakland is Michigan’s wealthiest and second largest county. But the former Republican stronghold has voted blue in recent years, electing Democrats to county executive District Attorney offices, and a majority-blue county board of commissioners.
The Kilpatrick invite is meant to whip up enthusiasm and open new minds to the party.
“His speech will focus on his repentance and redemption, a message all would be well served to hear,” Oakland County Republican Party Chair Vance Patrick told the Detroit News. “The GOP is inclusive, not exclusive.”
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In 2013, Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in a federal corruption case. But in January 2021, in one of his final acts in office, then-President Donald Trump commuted Kilpatrick’s sentence, making him a free man once again.
Kilpatrick told Barclay he’s been through a “metamorphosis” since he was last in the public eye.
“Particularly if you do it with engaging and receiving the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ,” Kilpatrick added. “It’s impossible to be the same. I don’t believe that you could be the same as a dad or the same as a husband. You change also with your political views, your political outlook.”
“Just like everybody else I believe in the world, who actually wants to be better person, who wants to repent for the things that they’ve done in the past, who has looked guilt and condemnation, and I received it, and then tried to become more, not just for the world, but primarily for their children, for their family, their mom, their dad, you kind of go through a metamorphosis and and when you do that,” Kilpatrick said.
Kilpatrick was mayor of Detroit from 2001 to 2008. He resigned after pleading guilty in a state-level perjury case. Prior to that, Kilpatrick led the Democratic caucus in Lansing as a state representative.
Five years after leaving Detroit City Hall, Kilpatrick was sent to prison in a federal corruption case covering his time in the mayor’s office.
