PATTERSON, HENDRIX FIRE BACK AT KILPATRICK

Oakland Exec Demands Apology For Drug Remark; Mayoral Candidate Denies His
Wife Was Arrested

Detroit mayoral challenger Freman Hendrix angrily denied that his wife,
Elaine, had any brush with the law while she was employed at Michigan Blue
Cross Blue Shield, and got support from that statement from the health care
provider itself as Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's remarks in a sharp
debate Thursday continued to reverberate around Metro Detroit.

Equally angry, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and leaders
from the Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills school districts on Friday fired
back at Kilpatrick for comments he made about drug use in the two affluent
suburbs during the debate between the two candidates before members of the
Detroit Economic Club.

"I was insulted by the remarks," said Patterson. "I think this is a
candidate who is behind in the polls who will do anything to gain the edge
in the debate."

Kilpatrick said certain illicit drugs were used more in Bloomfield Hills
and Birmingham schools than in Detroit schools.

"But in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills and all these places they do more
(methamphetamine), they do more ecstasy and they do more acid than all the
schools in Detroit put together," he said during the debate. He later
clarified his comments and said he meant to emphasize that drugs are a
problem in the suburbs as well as in the city.

But Patterson and school leaders said the mayor's clarification is not
enough and doesn't undo the damage. They demanded a full apology from
Kilpatrick.

"That statement is irresponsible. It is slanderous," Patterson said. "We
got a clarification, but that's not good enough. That's not an apology."

Kilpatrick had also insinuated in the debate that if reporters looked at
Hendrix' past in depth - and at the challenger's family - they might find
some arrest record, and members of his administration were quoted as saying
the mayor referred to Elaine Hendrix' work at the Blues.

"He's has crossed the line," Hendrix said at a news conference, repeating
that no one in his family had ever run afoul of the law.

When asked why he didn't immediately respond to Kilpatrick at the debate,
Hendrix said he was stunned by the allegation. "It was so unbelievable and
absurd I didn't know what he was talking about," Hendrix said. "I thought
it was beyond reality."

Elaine Hendrix left Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in the 1990's after
the area in which she worked lost business, Blues spokeswoman Helen Stojic
said. The separation involved no criminal charges, she said.

Superintendents from the two suburban districts said the mayor's comments
are unsubstantiated.

"We have no idea in the world where he got that information," said John
Hoeffler, superintendent for the Birmingham district. "It's just an
inaccurate statement. The youth in our community have experimented with the
drugs referenced by Mr. Kilpatrick in very low levels."

According to a survey conducted by the Birmingham Bloomfield Community
Coalition, drug use in the two communities is 25 percent lower than the
national average for methamphetamines and 14 percent lower for ecstacy. .

The comments were politically motivated, Patterson said, and appear to be
an attempt to pull the suburbs into the contentious mayoral race.

Demanding an apology did not mean he was taking the political "bait" from
Kilpatrick, he said.

"The citizens of my county expect me to defend them," he said.

Bloomfield Hills Superintendent Steve Gaynor agreed.

"What would that say about us as leaders if we let school children take it
on the chin?" he asked.

Though their own research shows drug use in those suburbs is lower than the
national average, other studies have shown that drug use nationally is
higher among white teens than it is blacks.

"I think what he (Kilpatrick) said is probably an exaggeration, but there's
an element of truth to it," said Lloyd Johnston, a research scientist at
the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. He has studied
drug use among children for 30 years as part of a national survey called
Monitoring the Future.

The results, he said, show that use of methamphetamine, ecstacy and acid
are higher among whites than blacks, though the survey isn't detailed
enough to look specifically at Detroit compared to its suburbs. He said
that overall, use of almost every kind of drug, including alcohol and
cigarettes, is lower among black secondary-school students than among
whites, a pattern that has remained largely unchanged for more than a decade.

"It occurs," Gaynor said. "We're sad that it occurs."

Patterson also noted that drug use is a universal problem and that he would
not have had a problem with the mayor stating that rather than singling out
communities.

Regarding Kilpatrick's remark about Hendrix and his family, The Detroit
News checked records in 36th District Court in Detroit and Wayne County
Circuit Courts for four immediate Hendrix family members and found none
were ever arrested or charged with any criminal activity.

At the same time, The News ran the names of Mayor Kilpatrick's family
members through the same process with negative results for all but a
Kilpatrick step-brother, Ajene Johnson.

Johnson was charged with misdemeanor aggravated assault in Detroit in an
incident involving a girlfriend on May 5, 2003. Details of the incident
were not available in 36th District Court because the file could not be
located on Friday. The court's docket sheet showed Johnson pleaded guilty
in August 2003. He was to return to court a year later, in August 2004 but
failed to show up and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

The warrant is still outstanding and Johnson forfeited the $3,000 bond he
had posted.