Category Archives: Council Elections

The allegation, the denial and the missing link

Feb. 7, 20076:03 p.m.

Carl Brewer, a city council member and candidate to unseat Mayor Carlos Mayans in this year’s election, claims the mayor apparently forged a paragraph into a Brewer campaign letter that calls on Democrats to run against another city council member.

It was a move to make council member Paul Gray, who is facing four challengers in the Feb. 27 primary, angry with Brewer, Brewer said.

But the allegation, like so many that have arisen in recent months, couldn’t be proven true or false in interviews Wednesday.

“When Mr. Brewer says something that is credible, I will answer that,” Mayans said.

Mayans said no such document exists to his knowledge and that there is no reason to address baseless allegations.

In a campaign interview on Wednesday with The Wichita Eagle’s publisher and editorial board, Brewer explained the sequence of events that led to his accusation against Mayans.

He said he recently asked three prominent local Democrats — Tom Docking, Randy Rathbun and Kelly Johnston — to help him raise money for his campaign.

The four men wrote a letter in which they asked 400 local Democrats to contribute to Brewer’s campaign. The letter, Brewer said, was written on his own letterhead, and signed by Docking, Rathbun, and Johnston.

Last week, Brewer said, he got a call from fellow city council member Paul Gray, “a man I consider to be a friend.” Brewer said Gray was upset, and demanded to know “why I was putting out a letter attacking him.”

“I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said he had seen a letter, signed by those three men, and that the letter said that ‘we are looking for good Democrats to run against Paul Gray.’”

“I told Paul that we never wrote that, and that I had the original letter and could show it to him.”

“I asked Paul ‘Where did you get this?’ And Paul said he did not have the letter, but that someone had shown it to him (without giving it to him.)

“I asked Paul ‘who showed it to you?’

“Paul said ‘It was Carlos.’”

A copy of the letter supplied by Brewer’s campaign has no reference to Gray or any other council seats at all.The letter has Brewer’s campaign letterhead and has the standard “paid for by Carl Brewer for Mayor, Sheryl Wohlford, Treasurer” at the bottom.

Johnston, chairman of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party, confirmed that he had not written anything about Gray or anyone except Brewer. (Johnston is also loosely related to Brewer. The two mens’ wives are sisters and they live about 1/4 mile away from each other.)

Brewer said Gray asked him not to tell anyone about this story. But Brewer, at the meeting with the Eagle editorial board, decided to tell the story about the letter to explain why he thinks he’s a better choice for mayor than Mayans.

Brewer said this was an example of what he called Mayans’ “sometimes untruthful” way of dealing with people that Mayans doesn’t like.

Gray wouldn’t confirm or deny that the letter exists.

“I’m running my own race right now, which is a district seat,” he said. “I’m not running for mayor. What happens with those men and their campaigns is between them.”

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Council Elections | Comments (0)

Non-partisan in name only

Feb. 3, 20072:06 p.m.

If you check out Sedgwick County’s election policies, city council elections are non-partisan races where candidates don’t have to duke it out for their party’s nomination or support.

But read through campaign finance reports or attend a few speaking engagements and it’s clear that some of the Ds and Rs are picking sides.

Carl Brewer, a democrat, for example, has several donations from county democratic leaders like Kelly Johnston. Democrats even note which candidates are Dems on their website. Brewer’s campaign has distributed letters from Johnston and former Lt. Governor Tom Docking and Randy Rathbun to local Democrats.

Mayor Carlos Mayans, a Republican, meanwhile, used the county Republicans’ weekly Pachyderm Club meeting last week to highlight his campaign message. Mayoral candidate Larry White also used the Pachyderm forum and next week District 5 candidate Paul Tobia will speak, followed the next week by Jeff Longwell.

In his unscripted speech, Mayans was quick to point out that many of his accomplishments have depended on Democratic support.

For example, he recently said that many of Kansas’ mayors are democrats, yet the League of Kansas Municipalities picked Mayans as their vice-president, which will put him in line to be president of the state’s organization for cities.

That gives him some legislative pull — on top of the access he already has. But, as someone pointed out at the Pachyderm Club, it doesn’t always work.

LMK is pushing this year for protection of eminent domain rights, which allow government to take properties for economic development, a right supported by the much-publicized Kelo decision.

Mayans noted to the room of republicans, most of whom oppose eminent domain for economic development, that he isn’t going to bat for that issue.

All told 14 of 26 — or 54 percent — of the city candidates are registered as republicans and eight are democrats. The rest either didn’t vote in the primary or updated their address in the past three months.

Here’s a breakdown of all the candidates and their registered political affiliation:

Candidate
Sue Schlapp – R
Gordon Bakken – L
Fred Marrs – R
Elizabeth Bishop – D
David Grebenik – D
Jason Wenke – Unaffiliated
Michael O’Donnell II – NA
Paul Gray – R
Leslie Osterman – D
Virgil Marsolf – R
David Glover Jr. – D
Bryan Frye – R
Jeff Longwell – R
Patrick Quaney – D
David Dennis – R
Charles Thompson – R
Lowell Stukey – D
Marty Marshall – R
Paul Tobia – R
Darrell Leffew – R
King David Davis – R
Carl Brewer – D
Carlos Mayans – R
Larry White – R
Randy Pace – NA
James Mendenhall – D

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Council Elections | Comments (0)

Mayans: Against the grain .0085 percent of the time

Feb. 1, 20078:27 p.m.

Perhaps the sharpest jabs early on in this year’s city campaigns has been the assertion by councilman and mayoral candidate Carl Brewer that Mayor Carlos Mayans is divisive and that Mayans’ go-it-alone tactics hurt the city. Mayans, a polished politician with 10 years of battle experience in the Kansas House and experience defending himself during campaigns, took it upon himself to tally the Council minutes.

What he found was he voted against the majority .0085 percent of the time — or 11 out of 1,288 votes since 2003.

Read More »

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Carlos Mayans, Council Elections | Comments (0)

Closer eye on where big box stores go?

Feb. 1, 20075:28 p.m.

How do you win over College Hill voters’ hearts? (or at least the most vocal ones) Get tough on Wal-Mart.

That’s part of Elizabeth Bishop’s strategy as she takes on Sue Schlapp and several other candidates in northeast Wichita’s District 2.

Bishop proposes copying Lawrence, which now requires big box stores, like Wal-Mart, to conduct their own “retail market impact study.” In short, the company has to pay an independent consultant that they haven’t worked with in at least five years to find out how the big box will affect local retail shops.

It’s a clear pitch to appeal to hundreds of College Hill residents who came out strong against the now dead proposal for a Wal-Mart SuperCenter at Kellogg and Oliver. What’s unclear, at least in her initial candidacy announcement, is how that jives with the theme of the city elections this year: economic development.

The Wal-Mart would have added 300 jobs, after all. Of course, as Bishop alludes to, it’s not clear how many other jobs and ownerships would have been lost if the store would have won the Council’s approval.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Council Elections | Comments (0)

Police union: Council candidates wanted

Jan. 30, 20072:02 p.m.

Well, the deadline to file for mayor and city council has passed, but the police union is still looking.

Aside from incumbents on the council, who are well aware of the Fraternal Order of Police’s political clout, the union didn’t hear from many other candidates. So they took out an ad in today’s Eagle requesting a candidate who is “pro public safety, can prioritize the spending of tax dollars, and who believes the police deserve a fair contract.”

They’ve been getting calls all day.

“We’ve heard from a couple of the sitting council member and the mayor,” union president, Sgt. Chester Pinkston, said. “We haven’t heard near enough from the rest of them and we’re obviously looking at who we want to endorse for this.”

The FOP represents more than 600 employees — employees whose families have not been shy in supporting the department (as seen in their most recent protest, which included moms, dads, kids and dogs). Typically, the union endorses a candidate after the primary, but Pinkston says that members tonight will discuss an earlier endorsement this year.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Council Elections, Police Department | Comments (0)

A Place to Call Home

Jan. 25, 20074:43 p.m.

It looks like Michael O’Donnell II, the city’s youngest council candidate, may have to make a trip downtown before the campaigning begins. That’s because he’s still listed as a Bel Aire resident, Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Bill Gale confirmed after a Hall Monitor inquiry.

Gale says his office simply overlooked it. But they’re calling O’Donnell II up to let him know it’s time to update the address or be disqualified. Gale thanked The Hall Monitor for the catch but noted O’Donnell wasn’t the first wrong address candidate.

Turns out King David Davis, who winds up on almost every municipal ballot in recent memory, needed to update his address too.

It’s a tough start for both men, who have each lost bids for mayor in their last attempts.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Council Elections | Comments (0)

Big city money… and it ain’t from Wichita

Jan. 12, 20079:27 a.m.

Several Council members filed their campaign finance reports this week, and if addresses are any indication, Mayor Carlos Mayans has been looking beyond the city limits to corral support in 2006.

Among the donors are 24 out-of-town people, many of them with the same last name “Dugan.” Turns out Dugan, who owns USF Dugan, a big trucking company, has quite a big family, all of whom were willing to give Mayans the maximum $500 contribution. And that’s helped Mayans jump far ahead his most prominent challenger, Carl Brewer.

Brewer, meanwhile, has wowed the Minnesotan developers who have refurbished many downtown buildings and sparked something of a move back to folks living downtown…

The northerners and, ostensibly, their Twin Cities area families gave Brewer nearly half of his $8,100 jump start on this year’s race. (He says that his campaign fund has grown “substantially” since, but won’t say by how much.)

Meanwhile Council member Sue Schlapp surpassed everyone in the race. And she pointed out to Barely Eagle that if you subtract all the cash Mayans rolled over from his previous reports ($10,824) and all the money she rolled from her account ($3,000), she’s got more message power than the standing mayor and former state House rep.

By Brent Wistrom | Filed under Council Elections | Comments (0)