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http://www.clickondetroit.com/politics/5282644/detail.html

Hendrix Leads In Early Race Results
Local 4 Exit Poll Shows Hendrix With 56 Percent, Kilpatrick With 44 Percent

POSTED: 8:53 pm EST November 8, 2005
UPDATED: 10:45 pm EST November 8, 2005

Challenger Freman Hendrix led incumbent Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick with nearly 40 percent of the ballots counted Tuesday, putting Kilpatrick at risk of becoming the first Detroit mayor since 1961 to be defeated for re-election.

With 38 percent of precincts reporting, Hendrix had 26,964 votes, or 58 percent, and Kilpatrick had 19,327 votes, or 42 percent.

A Local 4 exit poll shows Freman Hendrix leading incumbent Kwame Kilpatrick based on a telephone poll of people who said they voted.

The poll, by East Lansing-based Mitchell Research and Communications Inc. for WDIV and The Detroit News, showed Hendrix with 56 percent and Kilpatrick with 44 percent.

That survey interviewed 750 people by about 8:30 p.m. EST and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The drama of Election Day also included action in court as the FBI said it was investigating allegations of wrongdoing involving absentee ballots and obtained an order to preserve at least 42,000 absentee ballots, applications and ballot envelopes.

The election comes as the nation's 11th-largest city struggles with poverty and decades of population decline. The next mayor will inherit a city facing a multimillion-dollar budget deficit and the possibility of financial receivership.

Four years after becoming one of the city's youngest mayors, Kilpatrick found himself asking voters for forgiveness -- and another chance -- after a scandal-plagued first term. Still, he sees himself at the helm of a city dealing with its problems and heading in the right direction.

Hendrix, who was deputy mayor under Kilpatrick's predecessor, made it a campaign refrain that he wouldn't embarrass the city if elected. He has focused attention to the city's troubled finances, laying the blame for much of it on Kilpatrick.

Hendrix, who topped Kilpatrick 44 percent to 34 percent in the nonpartisan primary in August, led in recent polls, but Kilpatrick gained ground as the election neared.