Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will be a featured speaker at a Republican fundraising dinner next week as the GOP seeks to make inroads with Black voters in a critical swing state in this year’s presidential election.
“We’re pulling out all the stops,” said Oakland County Republican Party Chair Vance Patrick. “We really, actually, have the opportunity to drive Michigan over the finish line, so whatever it takes to win Michigan is why we brought Kwame into our event next Wednesday.”
Dr. Ben Carson, who served as Health and Human Services secretary in then-President Donald Trump’s cabinet is also a featured speaker at the Oakland County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner – an important event on Michigan Republican calendar.
Oakland County is the state’s second-largest county by population and is in the metro Detroit television market. It will be a critical battleground in determining whether Michigan’s 15 electoral votes go to Trump or to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the November election.
As the Michigan House minority leader and then mayor of Detroit, Kilpatrick was one of the state’s most prominent Democrats. That was before he was sent to prison in 2013 on federal racketeering and corruption convictions. He earlier resigned as Detroit mayor after he was convicted of state charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
After his federal convictions, Kilpatrick was sent to a U.S. penitentiary in Oklahoma. As one of his final acts in office, then-President Donald Trump shaved 16 years off Kilpatrick’s federal prison sentence with a commutation decree. It was a move that some notable Democrats supported. Since the commutation, Kilpatrick has been supporting Trump.
The Michigan Democratic Party did not reply to a request for comment, but Democratic political consultant Adrian Hemond said the Oakland County Republican Party bringing in Kilpatrick “whiffs of desperation.”
Hemond said there are Black voters in Detroit who think Kilpatrick was treated unfairly, but they are in the minority.
“I don’t think it gets you much here on the upside and there’s some downside here, too,” he said. “They’re throwing some stuff at the wall trying to shake things up a bit because the current trajectory is not great.”
