As a suburbanite outside of Detroit, the mayoral race between incumbant Kwame Kilpatrick (son of U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick) and challenger Freman Hendrix (former Deputy Mayor under Dennis Archer) has been something which I've followed only sporadically. I don't know much about either candidate, but everything that I've read about Kwame Kilpatrick has certainly painted him in a VERY bad light, as an irresponsible party boy with little or no sense of financial or personal discipline.
However, it wasn't until today that I saw anything which truly made my jaw drop:
DETROIT NEWS ARTICLE
" A newspaper advertisement likening media critiques of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to lynchings drew swift complaints from his opponent Thursday and reopened concerns that the mayor's re-election campaign was racially polarizing.
The Michigan Chronicle this week published a full-page ad headlined "Lynching is still legal in America." Beneath it is a faded image of black corpses dangling from trees with nooses around their necks."
Direct link to the ad in question
Bear in mind that not only are both candidates black, but the ad in question was published in the Rosa Parks commemorative edition.
Again, I'm a suburbanite, so my opinion doesn't count for a helluvalot here, but WOW.