Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Sen. Barack Obama shared a warm man-hug before a huge Motown crowd long before sex, lies and texting caused Kilpatrick to plead guilty to two felonies and resign on Thursday. This occurred 16 months ago as Obama was launching his campaign for president. He called Kilpatrick, a “great man” who will do “astounding things for many years to come.” But these words have backfired for Obama as Kilpatrick now heads to jail for four months.

Two attack ads have already appeared on the Internet replaying Obama’s Kwame moment. One, produced by the conservative Freedom’s Defense Fund, shows a mug shot of Kilpatrick, as the 10 felonies he faced scrolled down the screen while Obama proclaims, “I’m grateful to call him a friend.” Ominously, the ad ends with the line, “you should know who Obama’s friends are.”

“Even with Kwame Kilpatrick in the slammer,” Newsweek reports that, “Barack Obama will be dogged by the scandal that brought down Detroit’s mayor. For starters, Kilpatrick won’t be around to lead the get-out-the-vote effort in dependably Democratic Detroit, which could be decisive in the toss-up state of Michigan, where Obama clings to a slim lead over John McCain. But beyond the mechanical breakdown, Kilpatrick’s salacious, headline-comandeering controversy, has inflamed the racial tensions that have rived the region …”

Sam Riddle, a veteran Detroit political consultant, is quoted by Newsweek as saying, “this Kwame Kilpatrick mess has splattered over onto the Obama campaign at the worst possible time. Kilpatrick’s brand of leadership has fed into the worst stereotypes that white voters have about black leaders.”

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