On day two of damage control, unannounced mayoral hopeful Benny Napoleon did everything short of singing "We are the World" to try and smooth over his divisive statement on Tuesday: "Palmer Woods is not Detroit."
Napoleon, appearing Thursday on the Craig Fahle show on WDET-FM, was asked to define a Detroiter. He responded by saying just about everybody who works, invests or lives in the city or enjoys something about it.
Napoleon, currently the Wayne County sheriff, mentioned business folks like Dan Gilbert, Peter Karmanos and Mike Illitch and his friend "Joe" who lives in the northern reaches of Macomb County "who spends every weekend in downtown in Greektown." He included Tigers, Lions and Red Wing fans and people who go to the DIA and the opera.
"The Detroit loyalist, those are the people, that when I talk about Detroiters, those are the people who I mean," he said. "Let's not forget the 700,000-plus, people who also live here, who have endured the hardships and the tribulations."
His back-peddling came after he made the Palmer Woods statement in an attempt to minimize the Detroit cred of Mike Duggan, who moved last year from Livonia to Palmer Woods. Both Napoleon and Duggan have yet to officially declare their candidacy.
Napoleon quickly got flack for the statement and started to back peddle. First, on Wednesday, he clarified and said he was misquoted. On Thursday, he told Fahle the statement was taken out of context.
He said he meant to say that Palmer Woods is a gem of a neighborhood that others aspire to be, but residents haven't had to face some of the pressing problems of drive-by shootings and drug houses.
Napoleon insists he has no intention of creating divisiveness.
"I'm not going to inject at any point in time race into this campaign," he said.
[Program transcript is here.]
