Detroit mayor pressured to resign

The Washington Times reports:

Embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick continues to fight back against a growing chorus calling for his resignation by using race as an issue and blaming the media for his mounting legal and political problems.

Mr. Kilpatrick, giving the annual State of the City speech last night, used the last portion of his message to stray from prepared remarks and angrily bemoan a “lynch-mob mentality” that he said has attacked him and his family and is fueled by racial hatred.

The mayor is under investigation for lying in sworn testimony about an affair with his chief of staff in a police whistleblower trial as well as for a secret $8.4 settlement he brokered without the city council"s knowledge. Mr. Kilpatrick, who in 2001 at age 31 became Detroit"s youngest mayor, blamed the media for his ongoing woes and invoked the “n” word, saying he had been called that name more now than at any time in his life.

“I've heard these words before, but I've never heard people say them about my wife and my children," Mr. Kilpatrick said to an invited group of about 1,500 people even as about 200 mostly union-affiliated protestors gathered outside downtown"s Orchestra Hall to demand his resignation. "This unethical, illegal lynch-mob mentality has to stop."

Mr. Kilpatrick, who has apologized for hurting his family but has angered many by what they say is his hubris in a scandal that has shaken the blighted city, also signaled this week that he is preparing for a long fight. He hired high-profile Chicago lawyer Dan K. Webb, a former U.S. attorney, as well as D.C. public-relations crisis consultant Judy Smith of Impact Strategies, who represented Monica Lewinsky during the fallout from her affair with President Bill Clinton and more recently helped Sen. Larry Craig, Idaho Republican, in his bathroom-solicitation arrest scandal.

We wonder if Detroit taxpayers are going to pick up the tab on Dan Webb.