Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, the matriarch of a Detroit political family whose power was dimmed by her son's corruption scandal, died Tuesday following a long illness, family and friends said. She was 80.

The mother of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick served seven terms in Congress and nine terms in the Michigan House of Representatives. She was denied an eighth term in Congress in 2010, losing a Democratic primary to then-state Sen. Hansen Clarke, two years after Kwame Kilpatrick left office in a scandal that would send him to prison.

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