DETROIT ? A candidate for mayor of Detroit who has been campaigning to restore integrity to an office rocked by last year?s resignation and jailing of Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick on Wednesday admitted making false claims about his academic background.
Dave Bing has been campaigning to restore integrity.
The candidate, Dave Bing, has said for years that he received a bachelor?s degree in economics from Syracuse University in 1966. But on Wednesday he said he did not get that degree until 1995. Mr. Bing also admitted to claiming falsely to having a master?s degree in business administration.
The discrepancies in his résumé were first reported by The Detroit Free Press.
?It was an unfortunate statement,? said Clifford Russell, a spokesman for Mr. Bing, who is a former basketball star for the Detroit Pistons and a successful businessman. ?He knew he didn?t have an M.B.A., but given all the hard knocks he had gone through and the rigors of being an auto supplier, he felt he had an M.B.A. in terms of the amount of knowledge he had acquired. He was almost speaking metaphorically. He certainly was not attempting to misrepresent his degree. He wishes he hadn?t said it.?
In 2000, Mr. Bing received an honorary degree from Kettering University in Flint, Mich., formerly known as General Motors Institute. ?I got an M.B.A. from the General Motors Institute, after I got into business,? Mr. Bing said in a video posted on the National Basketball Association Web site.
After finishing first in the Feb. 24 mayoral primary, Mr. Bing, a Democrat, is to run against Mayor Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr., also a Democrat, in the general election on May 5.
Mr. Bing, 65, spent four years at Syracuse University before joining the Pistons. ?He thought he had completed all degree requirements, but one class was incomplete and he thought he had turned in a paper,? Mr. Russell said.
He added: ?But in 1995 a coach called and said he was putting together a list of Syracuse ballplayers who had graduated. He found out the paper had not been received, so he wrote it and turned it in in 1995.?
Mr. Russell said, ?There are much greater, deeper and more important issues than when Dave Bing got his bachelor?s degree.?
Anthony Neely, a spokesman for Mr. Cockrel, said, ?Mr. Bing?s lack of forthrightness on this issue is pretty amazing considering he presents himself as someone who would bring a new era of integrity and honesty to the city of Detroit.?
Mr. Kilpatrick recently spent three months behind bars for lying under oath about an affair with his former chief of staff.
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