By Joel Thurtell
Where were Bob and Kwame?
The scene couldn’t have been more Detroit, more Wayne County: I’m standing on a barge docked at the mouth of the Rouge River opposite Zug Island. The huge black blast furnaces of the U.S. Steel mill tower over us, billowing steam.
But the guy with the sunglasses that I’m listening to, holding forth in a press conference on the merits of an international bridge spanning between Windsor, Ontario in Canada to a spot a few hundred yards north of the Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry’s barge, is not from Wayne County, not from Detroit.
He’s the Oakland County executive, L. Brooks Patterson.
Wait a minute — Isn’t his base in Pontiac? Since when does Brooks speak for Detroit?
I didn’t come for a press conference. I came to hitch a ride on the Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry, whose dock these amateur thespians have commandeered. I’ll blog about my ride on the barge and tugboat later. Right now, I can’t help wondering, having stumbled into this show, why Brooks Patterson is waxing eloquent, as he always does, but why, oh why is he doing it here, in Detroit, in Wayne County?
He’s going on about how he’s bucking his own Republican party to support this international bridge so New York doesn’t build one that siphons truck traffic away from Michigan.
And I’m thinking, but this is Detroit, this is Wayne County.
So where’s Bob?
And where’s Kwame?
As in Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Brooks Patterson and Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis are taking turns yakking with reporters, but they’re only half of this regional equation. Hey, they don’t live or work in Detroit/Wayne County.
Later, I got an earful from Dennis Niemiec, an aide to Ficano.
The Wayne County exec was not invited to this dog and pony show, Niemiec told me. Today’s presser has not exactly been the high tide of regional cooperation, he said.
Nor was Kwame Kilpatrick asked to R.S.V.P.
What’s going on?
The top dogs in Wayne County and Detroit aren’t invited to a show being held on their own turf?
How dumb is that?
I understand this shindig was orchestrated from Washington, D.C.
I don’t know much about this bridge issue, haven’t covered it as a beat. But I know one thing — if you want a project to happen in Detroit/Wayne County, you don’t have somebody from tony Oakland County cruise into the poorest, dirtiest neighborhood in Detroit to hold a press conference and snub Detroit’s two top officials.
Somebody want to kill this bridge?
Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
