Christine Beatty: The Woman Behind The Textual Seduction

The fall of Detroit's much maligned mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick has been long, ugly, and uncomfortably dragged out for many months in the public eye. At one point, Kilpatrick's sordid case of textual seduction with his former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, dominated the headlines. Already suspected of a variety of shady dealings, Kilpatrick's actions throughout the whole proceedings pushed him out of office when other cases couldn't.

Between the revelations about Kilpatrick's background, his larger than life presence, and the details of his intensely personal text messages, lies Christine Beatty. She was without a doubt, the centerpiece of Kwame's house of cards.

So who is she and why don't we know more about her?

In a strange sequence, typical of the outwardly stodgy political realm, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was brought down by charges of infidelity, similar to Kilpatrick. There are definite differences between the cases, but there were dalliances involved in each instance. In Spitzer's case, the woman was a $1,000 dollar-an-hour call girl named Ashley Dupre (Ashley DiPietro).

For all intents and purposes Dupre became a star of sorts as the media's fascination for more fluff knew no bounds for several months. Beatty, on the other hand, flew largely under the radar, at least on a national scale. The 38-year-old mother of two has been surprisingly absent from the fray.

A graduate of Howard University and Wayne State University, Beatty once had a promising career as the Chief of Staff to the mayor of Detroit, pulling down a healthy $140,000 salary before things went south. So how did she manage to get entangled in this whole mess, you ask? You'd be surprised at how much of it was her fault.

Ric Bohy from the Detroit Metro Times wrote in 2004, in reference the notorious traffic stop which set things in motion:

A few Detroit cops learned exactly who Beatty is when she was stopped for speeding one night on rain-slick Livernois. She made sure of it with a foul-mouthed tirade at the officers who offended her, then got off the hook by calling the police chief on her cell phone. Taking the ticket would've only hurt her already miserable driving record. Kwame's reaction to this, when pressed for one? Chrissy must've been set up by the cops, no two ways about it. He sullied an entire, already morale-parched city department for the sake of one girlfr, er, appointee. Now all cops know exactly who Beatty is.

So here are the extremely brief cliff notes in this scandal that lead to Beatty.

It began with the federal lawsuit filed by his former body guard, Harold Nelthrope and the former Deputy Chief Police Gary Brown, as a violation of the whistleblower law. The investigation inevitably lead to the discovery of the explicit text message exchanges between Beatty and Kilpatrick. The "ish" hit the fan when the Detroit Free Press got their hands on the over 14,000 text messages sent in January. The denials started to fly.

The officers in the case eventually received a $25,000 settlement in the 2007, wanting nothing to do with impending text-gate.

Beatty was the right hand of the mayor and used and or abused her authority whenever she could, which is why she was always fair game. She obviously pushed to have Gary Brown fired, even writing in one text message:

"I'm sorry that we are going through this mess because of a decision that we made to fire Gary Brown. I will make sure that the next decision is much more thought out. Not regretting what was done at all. But thinking about how we can do things smarter."

Initially, Beatty took her lead from Kilpatrick, denying everything till the cows came home. But of course, with the prospect of doing some time, they both cracked and confessed to their obvious piccadillos.

Of course no action on Beatty's part could excuse the abyss of stupidity embodied by Kilpatrick, but she should be held accountable as well in this situation.

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