Kwame Kilpatrick voting for Donald Trump, says 'he's the best candidate'

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said the nation is in peril and it's time to move past who is the nicest presidential candidate.

"We have come to a place where this is not about warm and fuzzy feelings anymore," Kilpatrick said, to about 300 people gathered in Novi for a Lincoln Day dinner hosted by the Oakland County Republican Party. "I want Donald Trump in the room when Vladimir Putin shows up."

Kilpatrick said he's impressed with Trump.

"I'm definitely voting for President Trump," Kilpatrick said. "I just think he's the best candidate. I mean, it's not even close to me. I know there's a lot of bright lights and a lot of stuff propping Vice President (Kamala) Harris up, but as a former executive in a political job, it matters who you send into those rooms."

Kilpatrick credited Trump with rescuing him from prison by commuting his sentence and compared the former president to a firefighter who pulled his family out of a burning home. He said he is grateful for his freedom.

Kilpatrick said he became a changed man after a religious conversion on the concrete floor of a solitary confinement cell. That was followed up by a janitor job in the prison chapel that deepened his faith.

Kilpatrick was greeted with polite applause when Michigan GOP Chair Pete Hoekstra first mentioned him.

Hoekstra noted the need to expand the party base, saying Trump did that by inviting the president of the Teamsters Union to the Republican National Convention. He said the Oakland County Republican Party was doing the same thing by inviting Kilpatrick.

"Kwame, thanks for being here," Hoekstra said.

Kilpatrick wore a blue suit with a salmon-colored tie. He skipped the meatloaf and mashed potatoes to spend the dinner hour glad-handing guests and smiling for photos. Some guests came up to introduce themselves while others stood at a distance snapping photos on their phones.

Kilpatrick didn't run from his past but said he was a changed man.

He said he had prayed to God to turn Trump's heart toward him and said it was Alice Johnson, another prisoner freed by Trump, who convinced Trump to commute Kilpatrick's sentence.

Kilpatrick said Johnson was in the Oval Office with Trump in the closing days of his presidency when she suggested the former mayor as a good candidate for commutation. The next morning, Trump signed the paperwork freeing Kilpatrick.

"The president said, 'OK Alice, I'll help the guy,'" Kilpatrick said. "This was six in the evening on Jan. 12. My commutation was signed at 8:41 on January 13."

Kilpatrick said he'd never met Trump or even spoken with him before the commutation but afterward was invited to Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort where the two men met.

"One of the things I love about him is that he never asked me for anything, he was happy to do it," Kilpatrick said.

Kilpatrick said that his release forced him to challenge his old ways of thinking including his stance on abortion and other moral issues. He said he is no longer a Democrat, but he's not a Republican either. He considers himself "radically independent".

He predicted a Trump win in November.

Kilpatrick said that years ago, the late Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara told him: "Politics is about three things; timing, timing and timing and the times that we live in right now, we need somebody with the personality, the vigor, the business acumen and the strength of Donald Trump."

The crowd gave Kilpatrick a standing ovation when he finished speaking and people hurried to shake his hand as he was leaving the room.

Dorothy Day, 71, of Independence Township, said afterward that it was a good speech.

"It was very moving, but I would expect nothing less from somebody as polished a politician as he had been for many years," she said. "I was a little leery. I've seen too many prison conversions that don't really remain but I have hope."

The speech was quite a turnabout from Kilpatrick's exit from the public stage.

In March 2013, a federal jury in Detroit convicted the former mayor of 24 counts, including racketeering, extortion, bribery and fraud. U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmonds sentenced Kilpatrick to 28 years in prison.

But in January 2021, shortly before leaving office, Trump commuted Kilpatrick's sentence to time served. Within 24 hours, Kilpatrick was released from a federal prison in Louisiana.

Trump's grant of clemency noted that "Whereas it has been made to appear that the ends of justice do not require the said Kwame Malik Kilpatrick to remain confined until his currently projected release date of Jan. 18, 2037 and the safety of the community will not be compromised if he is released."

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Trump left in place the $4.7 million restitution order against Kilpatrick as well as a 3-year term of supervised release.

Detroiters elected Kilpatrick mayor in 2001 and again in 2005. He resigned from office in 2008 in the wake of a text message scandal uncovered by the Free Press that showed he lied under oath in a whistleblower lawsuit about a romance with his chief of staff.

Guests at the dinner were divided on Kilpatrick's presence.

"It's very controversial, some people did stay away," said Aaron Tobin, 63, of Oak Park. "It's not that they didn't want to hear him speak, they just didn't feel like paying $150 or $200 to hear him."

Tobin, an Orthodox Jew who is running for Oakland County Commission was scheduled to speak just before Kilpatrick. He said beforehand that he would listen with an open mind.

"A lot of people think that Kwame Kilpatrick deserves a second chance, but I'm not convinced," Tobin said. "I'm going to be very polite."

Shirley Perryman, 75, of Livonia, is a Black woman who attended the dinner to support the Republican party and because she admires former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, the keynote speaker.

She said she's heard Kilpatrick speak recently and he's a changed man.

"I truly believe that he is a man of God now," said Perryman.

She said she understands that most Black voters have traditionally voted Democratic but said there is a chance to change that.

"He could potentially bring in those who have a Biblical perspective," she said. "Those who don't have a Biblical perspective, I don't know."

Contact John Wisely: jwisely@freepress.com on X @jwisely

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kwame Kilpatrick voting for Donald Trump, says 'he's the best candidate'