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Adolph Mongo (left) and Kwame Kilpatrick
Adolph Mongo, co-host of the “Detroit and Black and White” podcast, recounted the challenges he faced as a political consultant for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who served in office from 2002-2008.
Mongo, on a livestream podcast Wednesday, said he liked Kilpatrick but “he never told me the truth." He said he began working for him in 2005.
Mongo said he would ask Kilpatrick if anything bad was about to come out, and the mayor would emphatically say “no.” Shortly after, something troubling would emerge.
Mongo said Kilpatrick and his staff would seldom listen to his advice, resulting in political headaches. In one instance, Mongo said Kilpatrick and his staff ignored his advice that Kilpatrick resign as mayor to avoid getting criminally charged by Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. (See Mongo's comments in the video below)
In another instance, he said Kilpatrick ignored his advice on what to say publicly about the controversial lease of a Lincoln Navigator for his wife, Carlita. As a result, he said, Kilpatrick turned a one- or two-day story into one that dragged on.
Mongo explained that he helped Gil Hill when he ran against Kilpatrick in 2001 and was a vocal critic of Kilpatrick.
At some point after, he said Kilpatrick started calling him, sometimes at 3 a.m., saying “I need you bro.”
Wife's Advice
Mongo said his wife advised against getting involved with the Kilpatrick administration, saying she didn’t care for the people.
"She was right,” Mongo said.
Kilpatrick, 55, who is an ordained minister, has a virtual ministry, Movemental Ministries, and is invited, according to court filings, to preach, teach, and speak throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Caribbean. He lives in Novi with his wife and children.
He declined to comment on Mongo's comments.
After finally agreeing to work for the administration as a consultant in 2005, Mongo said he had a sit-down at City Hall.
He said when he walked into the City Hall office, he got dirty looks from Kilpatrick’s staff.
“People looked at me, they wanted to kill me because” I had “beaten him up.”
Mongo said staffers essentially said, “we don’t want this guy.”
But he said one person, Jamaine Dickens, a spokesman for Kilpatrick, spoke up and said “we need him.”
After coming on board, there came a time when the text messaging scandal was brewing.
A whistleblower lawsuit was filed against Kilpatrick by his ex-bodyguard, Harold Nelthorpe, and former Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown, who alleged they were fired for conducting an internal affairs investigation that Kilpatrick feared would expose his extramarital affair with Chief of Staff Christine Beatty.
Lied During Testimony
During the trial in 2007, both Kilpatrick and Beatty lied about having an affair and plotting to fire Brown.
The Detroit Free Press in January of 2008 published text messages showing Kilpatrick and Beatty lied about the affair and their denial about plotting to fire Brown and Nelthorpe. It's not clear at what point Prosecutor Worthy got hold of those texts.
Whatever the case, Mongo said he met in 2008 with Worthy at Mario’s restaurant on Second Avenue in Midtown Detroit for lunch. She said she had damaging text messages and that Mongo needed to tell Kilpatrick "if resigns I’m not gonna" charge him.
Mongo said he went back to Kilpatrick and the staff and conveyed the deal requiring Kilpatrick to resign. Mongo said it was a good outcome for Kilpatrick who could still run for re-election and win.
He said someone in the room said, “fuck Kym Worthy, we’re talking to her people.”
Mongo said he shot back, “but I’m talking to the prosecutor.”
He said they weren’t listening to him “because I guess I wasn’t shit.”
In March 2008, Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty with perjury, misconduct in office, and obstruction of justice.
On September 4, 2008, Kilpatrick announced his resignation as mayor and pleaded guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice and no contest to assaulting a sheriff’s deputy who was trying to deliver a subpoena. No contest means a defendant accepts a conviction and sentencing without formally admitting guilt.
Kilpatrick was sentenced to four months in jail and served 99 days. Beatty ended up serving 69 days.
The Lincoln Navigator
Mongo, who had previously worked for Mayor Coleman A. Young, said Kilpatrick and staff also ignored his advice after a controversy erupted in 2005 over the city leasing a $57,000 red Lincoln Navigator that was supposed to be for police undercover work. Instead, it was really for Kilpatrick's wife, Carlita, at a time the city was facing financial difficulties.
“They didn’t listen to me,” he said. “I said I already went through this shit before with Coleman Young,” who got a limousine from General Motors.
“Coleman Young said, 'what y’all want me to have a Pinto?'" He said because Young addressed it head-on, the story lasted for a day or two.
He said Kilpatrick wasn’t forthright about the Navigator, including statements by his administration that it was an undercover police car.
Mongo said he advised Kilpatrick to tell the public he had three kids and a wife and they needed the vehicle to get around. Period. He said basically “that’s what you need to say.”
Instead, because Kilpatrick was never forthright about it, he said “the Navigator was a story for a whole fucking year" and haunted him during his 2005 campaign for re-election.
Mongo said Kilpatrick’s father, Bernard Kilpatrick, “made a lot of money" from his son being mayor. Bernard was a political consultant, and rumors had it that people paid him for a sit-down with the mayor.
“I hope the new mayor’s father doesn’t do that,” Mongo said.
