The long-running political scandals of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick have ended his once touted career, as Kilpatrick pleaded guilty on Thursday to obstruction of justice in a plea agreement that will put him behind bars and require him to pay a million dollar fine. Sponsored Links: CNN reports that his guilty plea to two felony charges was a result of the city's $8.4-million settlement of a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two fired police officers. Kilpatrick's political skills were crushed by a series of ongoing scandals. Alleged Manoogian Mansion parties with strippers, and the $200,000+ spent on city credit cards for travel, expensive meals and nightclubs combined with the fact his wife drove a $25,000 lease car that the cash-strapped city was paying the bill for, as the city was laying off police officers. Sponsored Links: He filled his staff with friends and family members, and the ultimate coup de grace was the exposed affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, discovered in sometimes obscene text messages on their city-issued pagers. All of this contradicting the testimony of Beatty and Kilpatrick when they denied having an affair in a 2007 whistle-blower civil suit. Kilpatrick, 38, faced mounting pressure from his own party and Detroit civic leaders to step down as his legal issues and scandals threatened to taint the Democratic party as the presidential race is now in high gear.