Feeling our cam-pain

Speaking of the mayoral race, News Hits can’t help but notice how entertaining the contest has become. You have the campaign commercial featuring non-Detroiter Geoffrey Fieger endorsing Gil Hill, who’s sitting there grinning like a goof as the famed attorney vows support for the potential leader of a city he won’t live in. Then there are those ads attacking Kwame Kilpatrick and being paid for by Detroiters for Full Disclosure, a group that’s refusing to identify anything about itself, including who’s supplying the considerable cash needed to pay for television time, mass mailing and phone banks.

On the other side, the Kilpatrick camp had to go all the way back to a 1987 article appearing in the long-defunct Detroit Monthly magazine to find a suitable stick to whack Hill with. In an ominously low voice whose tones hint at something truly sinister, the announcer reveals that former cop Hill told the magazine, “I was a mediocre inspector, at best.” Is that the best they can do, a 14-year-old quote?

And what about those campaign-finance statements? The preprimary documents from both candidates were reviewed by Metro Times, and both were rife with omissions. But Kilpatrick’s report was almost completely void of residence and employer information from contributors, making meaningful analysis virtually impossible. Even more ludicrous was that the reports from Kilpatrick — who insists that he has the technological savvy to lead Detroit at the dawn of a new millennium — was filled out in pencil. In all our years of reviewing such reports, we have never seen a more amateurish piece of work.

News Hits has only one question at this point: Isn’t there a third choice?