House of Kilpatrick Begins to Topple

Less than two years ago, Detroit’s Kilpatrick family was riding high. Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick had just been re-elected without a single challenger in either the primary or general election. Her son, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, was the golden boy and the comeback kid of Detroit politics. Weeks after the September 11 attacks, at barely 31, he had become the city’s youngest elected mayor. He had taken his mama’s seat in the legislature when she went to Congress when he was 27 and barely out of law school.