Anatomy of a Smear Campaign

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ANATOMY OF A SMEAR CAMPAIGN, PART 1

Who tried to smear Brandon Whipple with false election ad?

BY DION LEFLER AND CHANCE SWAIM

dlefler@wichitaeagle.com cswaim@wichitaeagle.com

Note: This is part 1 of a 3-part Wichita Eagle series, “Anatomy of Smear Campaign.”

The young women in an election attack ad targeting Brandon Whipple were filmed in darkened silhouette to hide their identities as they read from a script falsely accusing the mayoral candidate of sexual harassment.

But it was the men behind the scenes who went to extraordinary lengths to hide their identities and involvement in the fake

Protect Wichita Girls ad

ad that helped propel Whipple to Wichita mayor and prompted former Mayor Jeff Longwell to announce his retirement from politics.

The tangled interstate plot involved some of the bestknown names in Wichita-area government.

Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin, who originally denied involvement, now admit in interviews with The Eagle that they raised $10,000 that was ultimately used to create and promote the phony campaign video.

To do that, they tapped their

contacts in the real estate and construction industries, who were and are doing business with the county and city governments.

Donations they gathered went to a nonprofit sports charity run by state Rep. Michael Capps, R-Wichita, according to court records and donors.

A shell company was created in New Mexico to manage and promote the production by video entrepreneur Matthew Colborn, 22, whom Whipple is suing for defamation.

The situation has opened a rare window into Wichita poliSEE ELECTION AD, 7A

Much of US cautious for holiday – but not Trump

BY AAMER MADHANI

Associated Press WASHINGTON

As coronavirus cases spike, public health officials are pleading with Americans to avoid large crowds and hold more muted Independence Day celebrations, but subdued is not President Donald Trump’s style.

The president aimed to go big, promising a “special evening” in Washington that was expected to draw thousands to the National Mall.

In New York, people on Saturday were urged to avoid crowds and Nathan’s Famous July Fourth hot dog eating contest happened at an undisclosed location without spectators on hand, in advance of the evening’s televised fireworks spectacular over the SEE HOLIDAY, 7A

BO RADER Eagle Correspondent

Roman Ganta, professor and director of the Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Diseases, looks at a sample being studied in his lab at Kansas State University. Ganta and his team are closing in on a vaccine for the growing number of tick-borne diseases.

Efforts underway to fight rising tick-borne diseases

BY KATY DYNARSKI AND SARAH SPICER

kdynarski@wichitaeagle.com sspicer@wichitaeagle.com

NO PARADE MAGAZINE TODAY

Parade is off this week for a break but will return next Sunday.

With the warm arrival of summer, comes a less inviting reminder that tick season is back and the little bugs are bigger than ever. The number of tickborne illnesses have been steadily increasing for 20 years, according to a 2018 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kansas has experienced a similar trend, with 308 total

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cases of tick-borne illnesses reported in 2019 compared with 13 in 2004, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

There are several efforts in Kansas to prevent tick-borne diseases, including a vaccine being developed at K-State and the testing for two new products at a golf course in Overland Park.

Ticks spread a number of diseases that can cause hospitalization and even death. In Kansas the primary concerns are Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain

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spotted fever, ehrlichiosis and anaplasmosis, which all can all cause fever, chills, fatigue, nausea, or muscle aches within a week or two of being bitten by an infected tick. Also of concern is tularemia, a more rare illness, which typically causes an ulcer to form around the tick bite, accompanied by a high fever and swollen lymph glands in the armpits or groin.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever is the most common tick-borne disease in the state, with 209 cases reported last year, up from zero in 2004.

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SEVERE FATIGUE AND FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS Tim Wines, a self described avid outdoorsman from Eskridge, knows all too well the consequences of being bitten by ticks. During his annual hunts for morel mushrooms, Wines contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever in 2018 and Lyme disease in 2019.

Wines first noticed a rash over his arms, almost like pimples, in 2018. He first thought they came from the thorny Gooseberry bushes near the morels he was picking, but his wife insisted he get tested.

A blood test revealed that he had Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

“Next thing I know, I’ve got the CDC and the Health Departments from both Pottawattomie SEE TICK DISEASES, 6A

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FROM PAGE 1A

ELECTION AD tics, exposing a network of local officials and wellconnected business interests working together far from the public eye to influence voters.

In this case, they tried to create an ad that would be a game-changer for Longwell, who, as Clendenin put it, was “getting his rear kicked” in the election after an Eagle investigation uncovered his handling of the city’s water treatment plant contract.

But it backfired badly.

Voters were repelled by the sensationalistic allegations that were almost instantly proven false and the manipulation of a young actress who says she was tricked into appearing in the ad under the pretense that it would be a public-service announcement denouncing domestic violence.

O’DONNELL, CLENDENIN RAISED $10K O’Donnell and Clendenin said they raised $10,000 with the understanding that it would be used for billboards, but the billboard campaign never materialized and the money went to the attack video instead.

“I eventually found it was used for the video when the video came out,” Clendenin said.

Neither official would say who asked them to raise the money.

Nor would either disclose a complete list of donors.

Both said they were not involved in the planning and execution of the video.

O’Donnell, a former Wichita City Council member and state senator, said he’s had good returns on billboards in his own campaigns and thought that’s what Longwell needed to catch up to Whipple.

He said he expected the billboards would be a mix of content, with some focused on Longwell’s accomplishments and others criticizing Whipple, based on a Wichita State University Sunflower article. That story had criticized Whipple’s use of collegiate interns as designated drivers to legislative receptions while he served in the state House of Representatives.

Of the billboard campaign, Clendenin said, “I didn’t have an expectation of what the content would be, whether it would be anti-Whipple or pro-Longwell.”

The video came out about three weeks before the Nov. 5 election and featured paid actresses, shown in darkened silhouette, posing as Capitol interns.

They read a script of sexual harassment accusations and admonished voters to “Stop Brandon Whipple.”

The video was released and promoted on Facebook and YouTube under the auspices of “Protect Wichita’s Girls LLC,” a New Mexico shell company set up to take advantage of that state’s laws masking the owners of businesses.

The veracity of the video unraveled almost immediately.

The accusations were lifted from a story that had appeared in the Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle in 2017. Those allegations had been made against Republican senators, not Whipple, who was a Democratic state representative.

The nasty allegations and shadowy origins of the ad prompted Whipple to file a lawsuit to find out who was behind it.

“Frankly, I think this lawsuit is a distraction,” Clendenin said. “I think the sooner the lawsuit is over with, and there’s some sort of resolution, the better.”

O’Donnell and Clendenin said their fundraising efforts shouldn’t be held against them, and that they’re both interested in repairing their relationships with Whipple.

Clendenin, a two-term council member who has been involved in politics for the past 10 years, said the incident has taught him a lesson about campaigning.

“If you’re going to support a candidate through a third party, you know, make sure you know where the money’s going to go,” he said. “If I ever support a campaign again, I don’t believe that I would support a thirdparty campaign. I think I would (contribute) support directly to the candidate.”

CAPPS CONNECTIONS One name that surfaces repeatedly in the controversy is Michael Capps, a Republican state representative in a district that straddles Sedgwick and Butler counties and includes parts of north Wichita, Bel Aire and the city of Benton.

Capps lives in the same east Wichita house as Colborn, the video pro-

FROM PAGE 1A

HOLIDAY Empire State Building.

In Philadelphia, maskand glove-wearing descendants of the signers of the Declaration of Independence participated in a virtual tapping of the famed Liberty Bell on Independence Mall and people were asked to join from afar by clinking glasses, tapping pots or ringing bells.

Trump’s “Salute for America” celebration on Saturday evening was to include a speech from the White House South Lawn that he said would celebrate American heritage, as well as a military flyover over the city and an enormous fireworks display that could pack people downtown.

The president kicked off the holiday weekend by traveling to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for a fireworks display Friday night near the mountain

carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. In his remarks, he accused protesters who have pushed for racial justice of engaging in a “merciless campaign to wipe out our history.”

In a presidential message Saturday on the 244th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Trump acknowledged that “over the past months, the American spirit has undoubtedly been tested by many challenges.”

His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, said in a statement that the U.S. “never lived up” to its founding principle that “all men are created equal,” but that today “we have a chance to rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country.”

Trump’s participation in

Brandon Whipple

Jeff Longwell

Michael O’Donnell

James Clendenin

CHANGING STORIES One person who knows most or all of what happened is Colborn, but he keeps changing his story about who did what.

In December, Colborn admitted in a court affidavit to producing the video, but didn’t reveal who paid

for it or helped him.

In March, Colborn said that County Commissioner O’Donnell was the driving force behind the video attack, a court document says.

Colborn told lawyers in the case that O’Donnell ran the operation and wrote the script containing the false allegations, according to a court filing by Whipple’s lawyer Randy Rathbun, a former U.S. attorney for Kansas.

Rathbun said in the filing that Colborn made that statement in a March 13 meeting with him, his paralegal and Colborn’s former lawyer, Ross Hollander. Although the meeting was informal and designed to facilitate possible settlement talks, Colborn made the statement under oath. O’Donnell denies that he had anything to do with production of the video.

Concerns about possible bribery also surfaced about that time.

Hollander had told Rathbun before the meeting that Colborn was worried because someone was “attempting to bribe him to change his testimony in the case to protect unnamed third parties,” Rathbun wrote.

During the meeting, “Colborn swore to tell the truth and disclosed the following: unnamed third parties were offering ‘gifts’ to get him to shade his testimony,” Rathbun wrote.

Then in April, in an affidavit filed in the lawsuit after he fired his attorney, Colborn changed his story to conform with the version of events Capps had previously described.

Colborn said Glasscock, not O’Donnell, masterminded the video project and provided the talking points. Also in April, he stated in a court filing that it was Glasscock who was trying to sway his testimony.

Glasscock denies having had anything to do with the video and says he never tried to bribe Colborn.

Colborn’s statements also have varied on who set up the dummy corporation to shield the donors and politicians involved with the video from public scrutiny.

In December, in his

big gatherings comes as many communities have decided to scrap fireworks, parades and other holiday traditions. The goal is to try to prevent further spread of the coronavirus, which large gatherings could spur.

Confirmed cases are climbing in 40 states, and the U.S. set another record Friday with 52,300 newly reported infections, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

For the Mount Rushmore event, GOP Gov. Kristi Noem, a Trump ally, insisted social distancing wasn’t necessary and masks were optional.

Trump spent little time in his Mount Rushmore address reflecting on pandemic, which has killed more than 129,000 Americans.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that mass gatherings present a high risk for spread of the virus.

Trump’s surgeon general, Jerome Adams, who has stepped up his call for

Americans to wear a mask in public, sidestepped when asked during an interview Friday whether he would caution a loved one from attending large gatherings, like the one on the National Mall. “It’s not a yes or no,” Adams told NBC’s “Today Show.” “Every single person has to make up their own mind.”

Trump wants to see the nation return to normalcy, and he has been willing to push the envelope further than many states and big city mayors are willing to go.

Interior officials said they would hand out 300,000 face coverings to spectators who gather on the National Mall. Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt said visitors would be encouraged to wear masks and keep a six-foot distance from one another. There was no indication that would be mandatory, despite the recommendations of health officials.

Washington Mayor

ducer, according to recent election filings, and he shares an office at 300 S. Broadway with Colborn and Clendenin.

Protect Wichita’s Girls LLC used the same Wyoming-based anonymous incorporation service and mail drop as a Capps company, Krivacy LLC. Krivacy also purchased the web domain protectwichitagirls.com the day the video was released.

Clendenin is partnered with Capps in at least two businesses: VR Business Brokers of the Heartland, which sells businesses, and the No Bake Cafe, a snack shop that sells raw cookie dough.

Capps says he wasn’t involved with making the video.

After Sedgwick County Republican Party officers in November unanimously called for Capps’ resignation from the Legislature over the ad, Capps accused party Chairman Dalton Glasscock of masterminding the video project.

Glasscock, also a campaign aide to Longwell at the time, testified he’d heard rumors of a video that could upend the election, but said in a sworn deposition that he had no part in making or promoting it.

Glasscock testified he had worked with Colborn to try to make a Republican Party-funded, proLongwell ad during the campaign, but the first he saw of the anti-Whipple video was when O’Donnell showed it to him about the time it went public.

Text messages between Glasscock and O’Donnell appear to substantiate claims that Glasscock was in the dark about the operation. Clendenin, while declined to say who asked him to raise money, said it was not Glasscock.

“I don’t have any knowledge, personally, of Dalton’s involvement,” Clendenin told The Eagle.

original answer to Whipple’s lawsuit, Colborn said he had no knowledge of the New Mexico shell company.

In May, Colborn says in an amended answer that he created and ran it himself.

Colborn attributes his reversal of stories to a rough relationship with his former lawyer. He is now representing himself after firing his lawyer for what he called in a court document “poor representation.”

“Previous counsel was pushing me to say things I neither agreed with or was comfortable with to make the entire thing go away,” Colborn said in an e-mail response to Eagle questions. “I am done being attacked by Mayor Whipple and his cronies. I am clearing my reputation and making sure the public knows the truth about Brandon Whipple’s past misdeeds.”

Colborn has no formal legal training.

“Many nights in front of Google and talking to Alexa and Siri have helped me understand some of the legal system,” he said in his e-mail.

POLITICAL PAYMENTS Colborn has received payments from both Capps’ and Clendenin’s campaign accounts, according to expenditure reports.

He has received monthly payments from Capps’ campaign account throughout the controversy.

Capps made his first $500 payment to Colborn on Oct. 2, 2019, two weeks before the video appeared online. He has since been asked by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission to explain those payments, records show.

In a written response to the ethics commission, which investigates campaign finance violations, Capps disclosed that Colborn is his campaign manager and is paid a monthly $500 retainer, an arrangement that is ongoing.

Clendenin paid Colborn Media $1,500 out of his campaign account for “consulting services” in 2019, campaign finance reports show. Clendenin said he paid Colborn to help him with his messaging strategy surrounding Wichita’s new $75 million baseball stadium and the closure and redevelopment plan for Clapp Golf Course.

The account was otherwise dormant because Clendenin’s last race was in 2017 and he can’t run for council again because of term limits.

Muriel Bowser, who said she didn’t have the right to shut down the holiday spectacle because it’s on federal land, warned the federal government about the obvious dangers of such a large crowd. On Friday, she urged the city’s residents to be smart about how they spend the holiday. “Just because someone invites you to a party doesn’t mean you have to go,” Bowser tweeted.

In other holiday weekend developments: A California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, warned counties that they risked losing state money if they failed to enforce health orders heading into the holiday weekend. He urged residents not to gather with people they don’t live with and to avoid crowds. Fireworks shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and elsewhere in the state were canceled.

A Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., said he would not hesitate to close down

7A

MAYOR: ‘DEALING WITH BULLIES’ Although the lawsuit was proceeding slowly, Mayor Whipple said James Clendenin, now his colleague on the City Council, recently warned him to drop the lawsuit, “or else.”

Whipple said Clendenin told him that “other people involved wanted to go on the offensive, . . . pretty much if I didn’t stop the case, they would attack my character. He insinuated it was (Rep.) Michael Capps and people associated with him.”

Shortly after that conversation, Colborn started filing court papers with new allegations of sexual harassment against Whipple that were “absolutely in line with what James was saying,” Whipple said.

Whipple said O’Donnell also urged him to drop the lawsuit, in a conversation outside the county courthouse after a joint citycounty coronavirus briefing in late March, telling him, “I can’t control Capps.”

In a court affidavit filed May 11, Whipple said that the release of the Protect Wichitas Girls video led to a series of threats.

“Defendant Colborn gave my personal phone number out in the hit piece,” Whipple said.

“Colborn achieved his goal — people called me and attacked me. I received a death threat. I felt like I had to move the family out of our home because of the calls. My wife and I spent time in the basement of our home with our children to be protected by the concrete foundation.”

Whipple said he’s letting his lawyer, Rathbun, handle the legal process while he’s focused on the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think I’m just dealing with bullies, and I don’t have time for that” he told The Eagle.

“The people responsible for this have been caught in a lie,” he said. “They are so deep in this hole that they’re trying to lie their way out of it and continue to try to intimidate me.”

Whipple said he has no intention of dropping the lawsuit.

“The stuff that’s come out so far — we’re just scratching the surface,” Whipple said. “There’s a lot of corruption yet to be exposed.”

Coming up in Part 2: “This is sleaze with a capital S.” Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752, @byChanceSwaim Dion Lefler: 316-268-6527, @DionKansas

businesses that don’t abide by capacity requirements, and he encouraged people to avoid large crowds.

A Beach closures in prime locations are a pandemic fallout. Florida’s most populous county, Miami-Dade, closed beaches through the weekend, and South Florida municipalities from Vero Beach to Broward County did the same.

Beaches in the Florida Keys were closed, too. In California, beach closures extended from Los Angeles County northward through Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. To the south in Orange County, hugely popular beaches such as Huntington and Newport were affected.

A Even with large public festivities scrapped, sales of consumer fireworks have boomed. Some officials were concerned about fires and injuries with more pyrotechnics going off in backyards and at block parties.

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ANATOMY OF A SMEAR CAMPAIGN, PART 2

Scheme to fund fake Wichita ad was ‘Sleaze with a capital S’

BY CHANCE SWAIM AND DION LEFLER

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

Note: This is Part 2 of a three-part Eagle series, “Anatomy of a Smear Campaign.”

The money used to attack Brandon Whipple with false claims of sexual harassment was collected through a nonprofit charity controlled by a state lawmaker. The charity was originally formed to

raise money to help build a new football field at a Wichita high school.

The secret and potentially illegal funding scheme was spearheaded

by Wichita-area elected officials and bankrolled by business interests with ties to City Hall, according to a Wichita Eagle investigation and documents in a defamation lawsuit filed

by Whipple, who unseated incumbent Mayor Jeff Longwell in November.

Sedgwick County Com-

missioner Michael O’Donnell and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin asked Michael political O’Donnell patrons to cut checks to the Fourth and Long Foundation, a charity owned and controlled by Wichita Republican state Rep. Michael Capps.

Using the charity as a

Brandon Whipple, left, and Jeff Longwell

vehicle to accept payment, which also allowed them to keep donors anonymous, O’Donnell and Clendenin raised $10,000.

They tapped the Wichita

Area Builders Association, downtown developer Gary Oborny of Occidental Management and others, according to court documents.

O’Donnell and Clendenin would not say who else, if anyone, gave to the campaign or who asked them to raise the money.

The officials mobilized to try to save Longwell, whose re-election was at risk after a Wichita Eagle investigation showed how he steered a $500 million

city contract to friends who had given him thousands of dollars in undisclosed gifts.

Using a charity to collect money for third-party political attack ads, which hides donors’ identities — and creating an anonymous out-of-state company to disguise campaign organizers — is about as bad as it gets, according to a national expert on political ethics.

SEE SMEAR, 5A

New driver’s license office opening

BY CARRIE RENGERS

crengers@wichitaeagle.com

recently – more than seven times what it was reporting a month ago.

New Mexico, which has been largely spared major outbreaks, plans a hybrid model of virtual and in-person learning. Parents in New York have demanded schools reopen in the fall. And in Maine, more outdoor learning is planned. Districts nationwide are coming up with various rules for wearing masks.

Some want all students to wear them. Others, such as Marion County, Indiana, plan to limit the requirement to older children.

Each of these decisions is fraught, trying to balance health concerns with clawing back as much normalcy as possible. Parents, wrung out after months of juggling full-

Wichita’s second driver’s license office is opening Monday at the Kellogg Crossing shopping center at Kellogg and Tyler in about 10,000 square feet just west of Side Pockets.

“The addition of this office will help advance our vision of continually improving customer service while meeting the demand of the regional population size,” said David Harper, Director of the Division of Vehicles, in an e-mail statement.

Initially, the office will offer new licenses and testing that goes with them only.

Full service will begin July 20.

That will include license renewal, replacements for lost or damaged ones, transfers from out of state and license reinstatement.

The office will offer concealed-carry licenses and state identification credentials as well.

Previously, Kansas Department of Revenue spokesman Zach Fletcher told The Eagle that the new office will reduce lines and wait times.

The only other Wichita driver’s license office is in the Twin Lakes shopping center at 21st and Amidon.

There are also area offices in Derby and Andover.

Fletcher also previously noted Kellogg Crossing’s centrality for the county.

“From what we’ve been able to tell, it’s actually the geographic center of Sedgwick County.”

There will be 14 work stations where drivers can renew their

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CHARLES KRUPA AP file

School buses are parked April 27 at a depot in Manchester, N.H. Adhering to social distancing guidelines means many school districts will need to add buses to transport students.

Debates turn emotional as schools decide about opening

BY PATRICK WHITTLE AND CAROLYN THOMPSON

Associated Press PORTLAND, MAINE

School districts across America are in the midst of making wrenching decisions over how to resume classes in settings radically altered by the coronavirus pandemic, with school buses running below capacity, virtual learning, outdoor classrooms and quarantine protocols for infected children the new norm.

The plans for the upcoming school year are taking shape by the day and vary district to district, state to state. The debates have been highly emotional, with tempers flaring among parents and administrators, and have been made all the more vexing by record numbers of COVID-19 cases

SETH WENIG AP file

Olivia Chan’s father helps her with a new mask she received during a graduation ceremony June 10 for her Pre-K class in Jersey City, N.J.

being reported each day.

In Florida, some school districts want students back in the classroom in early August, even

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though the virus is surging through communities. On average, Florida has reported more than 7,000 new cases each day

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FROM PAGE 1A

SMEAR Running money through a charity for political ads is illegal, said Daniel Weiner, deputy director of election reform at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

It bypasses the donor disclosure required by law when contributions are made directly to a candidate and can give the donors a tax break, in essence a government subsidy for attack ads, he said.

“This is sleaze with a capital S,” Weiner said.

Matthew Colborn, a 22-year-old videographer and campaign manager for Capps, has claimed sole responsibility for producing the video.

O’Donnell and Clendenin said they thought the money would be used on political billboard advertisements, not a video falsely accusing Whipple of sexual harassment.

No billboards were ever posted.

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT: CHARITY BROKE RULES The Fourth and Long charity was originally set up as a vehicle to raise money for a new football stadium at Wichita West High School, an economically disadvantaged school where nine out of 10 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

The foundation broke its own rules by handling campaign money.

All funds collected by Fourth and Long were supposed to go to “create an environment of success for low-income, at-risk or otherwise defined disadvantaged student-athletes and the educators, administrators, mentors and coaches who support them,” according to its incorporation papers, filed

by Capps with the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office in 2013.

As a 501(c)(3) corporation, Fourth and Long also broke IRS rules that prohibit public charities from meddling in political campaigns, Weiner said.

Such a breach can jeopardize a charity’s taxexempt status and could result in a fine, he said.

Weston Shartz, one of the City League’s most successful football coaches and a founding Fourth and Long board member, said he thought the foundation dissolved years ago after failing to raise enough money to build a new stadium at West High, where Shartz was head coach and Capps was an equipment manager for the football team.

“It faded away like a dandelion in the wind,” Shartz said. “I thought it was gone.”

Despite the failure to raise enough money, Capps kept the foundation active by filing annual reports with the state. It never raised more than $50,000 in a single year, IRS filings show, so the charity is not required to disclose its donors nor is it required to say how much money, if any, was raised.

As a tax-exempt entity, the foundation’s forming documents state that “no substantial part of the activities of the corporation shall constitute the carrying on of propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation” or intervening in “any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.”

Clendenin, who owns two businesses with Capps and shares office space with Capps and Colborn, said running the money through Capps’ foundation didn’t “raise any

flags” for him and was a matter of convenience.

“It was to help Jeff Longwell,” Clendenin said. “We didn’t know how we were going to do that. And then, of course, the checks were written to the Fourth and Long Foundation to be able to handle making that happen. . . . It was a mechanism that was already an organization that could receive money. It was the easiest way to be able to collect money.”

O’Donnell said it was Capps who suggested handling the money through the charity.

“Michael Capps says, ‘Hey, I have a foundation that can . . . do the billboards and stuff for you,’” O’Donnell said. “So I told him ‘Great, I’ll go raise some money.’”

Capps denied his foundation was involved in the production of the video, again citing the billboards that never appeared.

“As part of a digital billboard ad campaign conceived by O’Donnell and Clendenin, Mr. Colborn deposited some checks to pay for digital billboard ad space,” Capps said in an e-mail to The Eagle.

The billboards never materialized and the money was diverted to the video project, Clendenin and others confirmed.

SUBSIDIZING ATTACK ADS Funneling any type of political contribution through a tax-exempt charity is supposed to be forbidden by the Internal Revenue Service, said Weiner, the elections expert at the New York University’s Brennan Center.

“The IRS is supposed to enforce rules that prohibit political spending and campaign spending by charities, but the IRS just doesn’t,” Weiner said. ”It’s common knowledge.

They’ve been cowed into submission.”

Weiner said there’s a powerful lobby primarily funded by wealthy corporate interests, “who cry bloody murder every time the IRS suggests that maybe political speech, as important as it is, shouldn’t be tax deductible.”

The Protect Wichita Girls video and its hidden funding scheme is more offensive than most because it was part of a local election, where power is concentrated in fewer elected officials and it takes less money to swing an election, he said.

“Politicians should never be exempt from criticism,” he said. “But if you’re going to try to intervene in an election, and influence voters, I think in most circumstances it’s not unfair to say that you should identify yourself.

You should be willing to stand behind the messages you’re paying for.

And if you’re not willing to, then that’s an issue.”

Equally troubling is that Fourth and Long doesn’t have to pay taxes. Pushing money through a charity would allow the political contributors to write off their donations on their taxes, he said.

“That’s adding insult to injury,” he said. “Not only do you have secret, unaccountable money, but that secret, unaccountable money was tax deductible.

“So you, the taxpayer, are in essence directly subsidizing attack ads.”

THE SHELL COMPANY Loose disclosure laws allowed the smear campaign’s organizers to operate in corporate silhouette.

The attack was launched through a shell company in New Mexico, the only place in the country where limited liability companies don’t have to

TRAVIS HEYING The Wichita Eagle

State Rep. Michael Capps introduces himself during a County Commission candidate forum sponsored by the Wichita Pachyderm Club on June 12.

provide the names of significant owners to the state.

Colborn said in an April affidavit that he alone set up the New Mexico limited liability company, “Protect Wichita Girls, LLC.” That testimony directly contradicts a statement that Colborn made in a Dec. 31 court filing claiming “Colborn is without knowledge regarding New Mexico LLCs or the purpose of the corporation.”

Also, the actual name of the company behind the video was “Protect Wichita’s Girls, LLC,” which differs slightly from the name of the company Colborn now says he founded.

The company’s address was a Wyoming mail drop and its registered agent was a Wyoming LLC mill that creates tens of thousands of companies and acts as their registered agent, allowing the actual business owners to remain anonymous in states that don’t otherwise require public disclosure.

The company, Registered Agents Inc., has local offices in all 50 states and advertises its service to business owners as “your only real connection to the outside world.”

A Capps-owned company, Krivacy LLC, uses the same Wyoming office of Registered Agents Inc. and the same Wyoming mail drop as Protect Wichita’s Girls LLC. Krivacy purchased a website domain called protectwichitagirls.com about the time the video was released, records show.

A history of the site obtained through Domain Research Suite shows the site name was originally owned by Capps’ company.

After Capps’ name surfaced in the controversy, the site domain ownership was moved behind a hosting service called NameSilo, which hides the identity of its domain holders.

BIG BUSINESS MONEY The names of donors first surfaced in court filings after Colborn, the video producer, contradicted previous statements he had made in the case.

In December, Colborn admitted in court records to producing the “Protect Wichita Girls and Stop Brandon Whipple” video, featuring young women reading false accusations from a script. But he said he did it at the behest of unnamed John Does in the lawsuit.

Months later, Colborn offered to provide Whipple’s attorney, Randy Rathbun, evidence in exchange for a settlement dismissing him from the case.

At a March 13 meeting with Rathbun, a paralegal and Colborn’s attorney, Colborn swore to tell the truth and explained who else was involved. According to a filing by Rathbun, Colborn disclosed the following: A O’Donnell ran the operation to defame Whipple and authored the

bogus script.

A Clendenin was in charge of raising money for the ad.

A The Wichita Area Builders Association, Gary Oborny and the Cornejo Companies gave money for the ad.

A The money for the ad was run through Capps’ Fourth and Long Foundation.

Rathbun attached a copy of a $1,000 check from Oborny to Fourth and Long as proof of Oborny’s contribution.

Oborny, one of the region’s most prolific and successful commercial developers, told The Eagle in e-mails that he donated $1,000 with the understanding that the money would be used to reprint and distribute a 2017 college newspaper story.

Persons quoted in that Wichita State Sunflower article criticized Whipple and other lawmakers for using college-age Statehouse interns as designated drivers when attending legislative and political functions where alcohol was served.

“I was contacted only by Michael O’Donnell in October 2019 to support a fund that was going to only reprint an article that had previously run,” Oborny said in an e-mail.

“I contributed $1,000 to this fund.

“Once I learned my contribution was used for the Protect Wichita Girls video, I demanded return of my contribution. I received all of my contribution back promptly.”

Oborny called the video “inappropriate.”

“The video is not something that I was aware of and I would not have supported it in any manner,” he said. “I was quite disappointed with how this unfolded — the fact that my funds were used for an entirely different purpose than what I was told.”

Oborny, chairman and CEO of Occidental Management, partnered with the city in a multi-milliondollar public-private project to redevelop the Historic Union Station property in downtown Wichita and last year purchased the Sprint Corp. headquarters in Overland Park, one of the largest corporate headquarters complexes in the country.

Wichita Area Builders Association president and CEO Wess Galyon confirmed in an e-mail that his organization donated to the campaign as well, at Clendenin’s request.

“He (Clendenin) said he wanted to do something to help Mayor Longwell get re-elected, and asked if WABA would be willing to make a contribution to be used to purchase some digital billboards,” Galyon said in an e-mail response to Eagle questions.

He said it was news to him that the money was used for the allegedly defamatory ad against Whipple.

“If that is true, I can assure you that WABA never intended any of its funds be used in such a manner,” he said.

WABA represents hundreds of builders, contrac-

tors and remodelers and is one of the most influential lobbying groups at the City Council and County Commission. City and county government routinely consult with WABA on zoning and building policy.

And at election time, “We interview candidates and support those we believe are best qualified,” Galyon said.

Pat Short, president of Cornejo and Sons LLC, said his company did not donate to the campaign fund. He also said there is no such company that goes by the name Cornejo Companies.

CITIZENS UNITED OPENED THE DOOR Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said a 10-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision explains why this is all playing out through a civil lawsuit and not campaign finance laws.

That decision — Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission — struck down a federal law that kept corporations and other associations from funding or producing “electioneering communication” that mention a candidate by name within 60 days of an election.

Since then, political donors have been allowed to pump unlimited cash into elections via business entities, while remaining anonymous.

Citizens United “has given entities like businesses, LLCs, et cetera, First Amendment privileges to say these sorts of things,” Bennett said.

Four years ago, the City Council removed a local prohibition on businesses

5A

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THE IRS IS SUPPOSED TO ENFORCE RULES THAT PROHIBIT POLITICAL SPENDING AND CAMPAIGN SPENDING BY CHARITIES, BUT THE IRS JUST DOESN’T. Daniel Weiner, New York University election expert giving money directly to city candidates’ campaigns.

That passed on a 4-3 vote of the council, with Clendenin and Longwell both voting for the change.

“It sounds like the City Council made things worse,” said Weiner, the NYU election expert.

He said despite Citizens United, local governments can and should make an outfit like Protect Wichita’s Girls “disclose its donors and say who the real people are who paid for that message.”

If they don’t, videos like the one targeting Whipple could become the new normal, Weiner said.

“If people don’t demand that their elected leaders take these concerns seriously, then this is the system,” he said.

Coming up in Part 3: Fallout from ad left scars across Wichita’s political landscape

LOCAL OBITUARIES Williams, Andrew Jr.

AREA OBITUARIES ABILENE, TX-Schwiethale, Marla Jean (Skiles)

LOCAL DEATHS Emerson, Oma Jean, 92, passed away June 24, 2020.

Service: 10:00 a.m. Wed., July 8 at Asbury United Methodist Church.

AREA DEATHS GILMER, TX-Freeman-Ford, Lorene Vesey passed away June 28, 2020. Celebration of life: 11:00 a.m. Wed., July 8 at Jackson Mortuary Chapel

Williams, Andrew Jr. 75, passed away June 30, 2020. Wake 6-8 p.m. Tues. July 7th at Central Avenue Funeral Services 2703 E. Central.

Homegoing Celebration 11 a.m. Wed. July 8th at New Jerusalem Baptist Church 1625 N. Madison. Survived by wife Jane Williams; son Curtis Jones; daughters Alva Power, Christine Williams, Judy Franklin, Rachel Ehue, Jessica Guyton, ; brothers Jimmy, James, Sanders, Earnest, Tommy and Otha Williams; sisters Minnie Williams, Essie Hill, Vera Birdow, Alice Williams, Sarah Reed, Almedia Wimbley, Jeannie Glover; 7 grandchildren; 4 great grandchildren. Masks are required to attend wake and homegoing celebration.

ABILENE, TX-Schwiethale, Marla Jean (Skiles) devoted wife, mother and grandmother, passed away May 8, 2020 in Abilene, TX at the age of 77.

She was born to Max and Zella Skiles on Dec.16, 1942, in Wichita, KS. She is preceded in death by her parents and her brother, Stan. She is survived by her husband, Art, of 57 yrs., and children, Jeff (Sheryl), Jon (Cheryl), Jana (Scott), and Julie and 12 grandchildren. Marla dedicated 43 yrs. to teaching piano. She was a proud member of the Daughter’s of the American Revolution and was committed to building a foundation of faith in her home. A celebration of life will be held in Wichita, Friday, July 10th at 11 a.m. at the Westlink Church of Christ, 10025 W. Central. Memorials sent to Carpenter’s Place, 1501 N. Meridian, Wichita KS. 67203 View obituaries online Go to: Also, get directions to services, order flowers, donate to a charity, express condolences or share memories by signing the guest book.

The Wichita Eagle offers small free death notices for Kansas or former Kansas residents. Please call for more information. Free death notices are not featured online. Families who choose to publish additional information may do so for a fee. Obituaries are written and supplied by families and mortuaries. Pricing information can be obtained through your mortuary or by calling 316-268-6508.

The Wichita Eagle reserves the right to edit, alter or omit any obituary.

Effective February 1, 2017, the obituary office hours will be Monday thru Saturday 8am-4pm. Deadline is 3pm. Closed Sundays & Holidays.

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TUESDAY JULY 7 2020

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ANATOMY OF A SMEAR CAMPAIGN, PART 3

False anti-Whipple ad scars Wichita’s political landscape

BY DION LEFLER AND CHANCE SWAIM

dlefler@wichitaeagle.com cswaim@wichitaeagle.com

Note: This is Part 3 of a three-part Wichita Eagle series, “Anatomy of a Smear Campaign.”

A last-ditch attempt to save former Mayor Jeff Longwell’s job with a ham-handed attack ad against his election opponent has left scars across Wichita’s political landscape — a trail of broken

alliances and broken friendships.

Not only did the false ad fail to take out Brandon Whipple, who easily won the mayor’s race, it backfired on the local Republicans linked to it, including state Rep. Michael Capps, Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell, Wichita City Council member James Clendenin and video producer Matthew Colborn.

A defamation and civil conspiracy lawsuit filed by

Michael Capps

Michael O’Donnell

Whipple against Colborn, a shell company and the “John Does” who bankrolled and controlled the operation isn’t close to a trial. But court documents and interviews with the

James Clendenin

Randy Rathbun

Brandon Whipple, left, and Jeff Longwell

key players have already revealed plenty of backroom political chicanery and infighting, including: A A unanimous demand

by Sedgwick County Republican Party officers

that Capps resign from office for the good of the party. In a statement, the local party classified Capps as “persona non grata” — an unacceptable

Wichitan Rolph successfully lands plane experiencing engine failure

BY CARRIE RENGERS

crengers@wichitaeagle.com

Most people probably would not describe a plane losing power at 6,000 feet above the ground as any sort of a lucky moment, but David Rolph does.

The co-founder of Sasnak Management — the company his son, Jon, now runs as Thrive Restaurant Group — flew from Jabara Airport at 8:30 a.m. on June 16. He was 30 minutes into his two-and-a-half-hour flight to Colorado Springs, about halfway between Pratt and Great Bend, when the 1960 Bonanza he shares with former Yingling Aviation president Jack Feiden started shaking violently.

“The greatest thing that happened was I was lucky enough to have a situation in which my skill could make a difference,” Rolph said. “A lot of times you get in a situation where it’s checkmate.”

He also credits what he calls the “600,000 square miles of landing field” that is western Kansas.

“There’s a reason that they . . . chose to build planes in Kansas.”

Rolph has been flying since 1979 in all kinds of planes, including gliders. He has almost 3,000 hours. His Bonanza is 60 percent into the life of its third engine.

One of the trickiest parts of a flight is takeoff. It’s not usually being at cruising altitude on a clear day in a plane with plenty of fuel.

When the extreme bucking and jerking started, the engine lost about half of its power.

“It was like, ‘What?’ . . . It was so sudden and unexpected,” Rolph said.

He thought he might have lost part of the propeller. Rolph then apprised air traffic control at Kansas City Center, the Missouri-based control center that SEE PLANE, 3A

or unwelcome person.

A A political counterattack by Capps against the county party, targeting its chairman, Dalton Glasscock, who Capps now says masterminded the plot.

A A falling out between Glasscock and O’Donnell, longtime friends and allies who helped build each other’s political careers.

Former Gov. Jeff Colyer came to Wichita on SEE SMEAR, 4A

Things to know as tax deadline nears

BY SARAH SKIDMORE SELL

Associated Press

LARRY D. FENWICK Great Bend Tribune

Dodge City-based Crotts Aircraft Services moves Wichitan David Rolph’s 1960 Bonanza from a wheat field where he landed in Stafford County after engine failure on June 16. The plane is now in St. John veterinarian Jim Doran’s hangar in Macksville.

‘‘

Courtesy photo

David Rolph was flying this 1960 Bonanza, which he shares with former Yingling Aviation president Jack Feiden, on June 16.

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Obituaries Opinion Sports

It’s time to do your taxes – no more delays.

As the coronavirus pandemic took hold this spring, the federal government postponed the traditional April 15 filing deadline until July 15.

The move provided some economic and logistic relief for taxpayers dealing with the disruptions and uncertainty brought on by lockdowns, school closures and shuttered businesses. But now that new deadline is rapidly approaching.

Taxpayers must file or seek an extension by the new deadline or face a penalty.

The IRS is expecting about 150 million returns from individuals, and as of last count, it had received almost 139 million.

Q: Must I file?

A: Yes. In most cases, you must file and pay your taxes

by July 15.

Taxpayers who need more time can request an extension on the IRS website. That will give them until Oct. 15 to file. However, an extension to file does not mean added time to pay. So those planning on filing later should estimate what they owe and make that payment by July 15.

Q:

A:

THE GREATEST THING THAT HAPPENED WAS I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE A SITUATION IN WHICH MY SKILL COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE. A LOT OF TIMES YOU GET IN A SITUATION WHERE IT’S CHECKMATE.

Q: What do I do if I can’t pay now?

A: Go ahead and file your taxes even if you cannot pay.

The IRS is willing to set up Q:

A:

David Rolph

5A 7A 1B

SEE TAXES, 4A

TV Wichitalk

7B 8B

4A

News

FROM PAGE 1A

TAXES payment plans or make other arrangements with taxpayers who cannot pay in full. Many of those can be set up online. And the penalty for failure to file will be much more expensive than the failure to pay, says Kathy Pickering, chief tax officer at H&R Block.

FROM PAGE 1A

SMEAR Wednesday, July 1, to condemn Capps and endorse his Republican opponent, Patrick Penn.

Colyer blasted Capps and said he has “disqualified himself” from the Republican nomination for his part in the mayoral election and several other recent scandals. Capps dismissed Colyer’s admonishment in a written statement, saying voters deserve a representative who is not beholden to “the Topeka establishment” and that he’s “not interested in winning any Swamp popularity contests.”

The attack ad that debuted about three weeks before the November election was meant to be the remedy needed by Longwell’s campaign, which had been staggered by a Wichita Eagle story that the mayor steered a half-billion-dollar water-treatment project to friends.

The anti-Whipple ad featured seamy allegations of sexual harassment by young women who appeared to be interns at the state Capitol, where Whipple then served as a representative.

But the women were actually paid actresses and the accusations were cribbed from a newspaper story about someone else.

EXTORTION ALLEGED A widespread backlash against the fake video ad made any association with it radioactive for politicians and led to an investigation of possible extortion.

Sworn testimony from a deposition by Glasscock in the defamation lawsuit says the investigation began with a conversation between O’Donnell and Register of Deeds Tonya Buckingham, also vice chair of the county Republican Party.

“O’Donnell was making a claim that Representative Capps was saying ‘If you don’t give me money in my campaign account, I’m going to release your guys’s names (as being connected with the video)‘ was the extortion,” Glasscock said. “And so O’Donnell had a list of individuals who were being extorted, including himself.”

Buckingham confirmed Glasscock’s testimony in an interview and that O’Donnell told her some of the people being pressured to donate to Capps included: A Wess Galyon, president and chief executive of the influential Wichita Area Builders Association.

A Jason Watkins, a former state representative, now a lobbyist for Sedgwick County government and the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce.

A Dave Wells, owner of Key Construction, which has built numerous citypaid and public-private partnership projects including Eisenhower Airport, Cargill Protein Headquarters, River Vista Apartments and the Chicken N Pickle restaurant and sports complex.

Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter told The

TUESDAY JULY 7 2020 KANSAS.COM

Q: What about refunds?

A: The IRS is still processing and issuing refunds, most within 21 days.

Those getting refunds will be paid interest, dating back to April 15, if they file on time. The interest rate is 5% per year through June 30. Starting July 1, it drops to 3% per year. The interest is compounded daily for refunds.

Any refund issued after July 1 will get a blended rate.

Q:

A:

Eagle that his office and the District Attorney’s Office jointly investigated the extortion complaint in December.

“After many interviews of who we were told was potential victims the complaint was closed,” Easter said in an e-mail. “We could not establish that a crime was committed.”

DA Marc Bennett also confirmed the investigation and that it didn’t lead to criminal charges.

He said in an e-mail that investigators conducted interviews “to assess alleged statements attributed to Mr. Capps after the release of the television commercial in question.”

“At the conclusion of the interviews, investigators were unable to substantiate that the alleged statements were ever made,” he said.

It remains unclear who was actually interviewed in the investigation.

Watkins, Wells and Capps all said they weren’t.

“I was a supporter of Longwell’s, but I had nothing to do with the Protect Wichita Girls film or whatever it was they created,” Watkins said.

“None of this makes any sense to me.”

Wells said he doesn’t know Capps and was not extorted, adding “I don’t know anything about this video except what I’ve read in the paper.”

Galyon also said he wasn’t threatened. “I have never been a victim of extortion of any kind,” he said in an e-mail.

O’Donnell confirmed he had spoken with Buckingham about political pressure, but said he didn’t use the word “extortion.”

“I’m sure at that time I felt like I was being pushed,” O’Donnell said.

But “even when I talked to the sheriff’s deputy, I made that very clear that I did not truly believe I was being extorted. And that’s why I think they closed the case.”

CAPPS OSTRACIZED Shortly after Capps was linked to the video, the Longwell campaign returned a donation it had received from Capps and said it had nothing to do with the ad, which Longwell himself described as “slimy.”

The county Republican Party also sought to distance itself from the Republican lawmaker.

GOP officers decided to return contributions Capps made to the party coffers and to publicly call for his resignation from the Legislature.

All the party’s clubs and organizations except one, Republican Women United, joined in calling for Capps to quit, Glasscock testified.

Capps declined to resign and is currently running for re-election in the Republican primary Aug. 4.

Two days after Glasscock told Capps the party was asking him to step down, Capps launched a counter-offensive.

He went on KNSS, a local conservative talkradio station, and told show host John Whitmer that it was Glasscock who had green lighted the anti-Whipple video.

Q: Can I file online?

A: Yes, you can file or pay your taxes online. The IRS urges taxpayers to use electronic options to support social distancing and speed the processing of returns, refunds or payments. The agency is still working its way through a backlog of mail that built up during its closure in response to the pandemic.

Accountants and tax preparation services say they have a variety of means to help people Q:

A:

‘‘

prepare their taxes without meeting face to face.

Q: What about estimated taxes?

A: Taxpayers who make estimated quarterly tax payments have until July 15 to make the payments for the first and second quarters. Those were originally due on April 15 and June 15, respectively.

Q:

A:

Q: What else do I need to know?

A: There are a host of Q:

A:

AFTER MANY INTERVIEWS OF WHO WE WERE TOLD WAS POTENTIAL VICTIMS THE COMPLAINT WAS CLOSED. WE COULD NOT ESTABLISH THAT A CRIME WAS COMMITTED. Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter told The Eagle in an email that his office and the District Attorney’s Office jointly investigated the extortion complaint in December.

It was the first time anyone publicly alleged a link between Glasscock and the video. Ben Sauceda, then executive director of the county GOP, said he thinks Capps did it out of revenge.

“I think he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and when we as a party said we’re not going to tolerate it, he became very upset,” Sauceda said.

Capps tells a different story.

“I suspect Mr. Glasscock is fervently denying his involvement to protect his relationships with Casey Yingley (sic) and other local democrat operatives,” Capps wrote in an e-mail. “This raises questions as to whether or not Mr. Glasscock was coordinating with outside groups while a member of the Longwell campaign — a felony I believe.”

Casey Yingling, Whipple’s lawyer during the campaign, said she hasn’t talked to Glasscock about the lawsuit.

But she did hear from him on Capps’ allegation that he was behind the video.

“He was pretty mad about it and reached out saying he didn’t have any involvement in it,” Yingling said.

Glasscock testified that he had heard rumblings about a video that would derail Whipple’s campaign, but the first he saw of it was when O’Donnell showed it to him about the time it was first posted on Facebook and YouTube.

Within days, it had been viewed at least 41,000 times on Facebook.

On YouTube, the ad ran as a targeted, paid campaign commercial that voters had to sit through to get to the video they wanted to watch.

VIDEO WAS ‘DESPICABLE TRASH’ Glasscock testified that the video ultimately hurt Longwell.

His testimony details the damage-control effort that took place in the Longwell campaign after the attack video hit voters’ screens.

After the video was proven untrue, Glasscock and Longwell’s campaign manager, former Sheriff Mike Hill, called everyone on the campaign team and told them “if they had anything to do with this video that we expected their immediate resignation,” Glasscock testified.

No one resigned, and the campaign workers were told not to share or talk about the video, Glasscock said.

“Not only was it damaging to — not even damaging. It was disgusting towards Mayor Whipple,” Glasscock testified. “I

thought it was damaging (the) Longwell campaign, too. And so (I) wanted complete distance of it.”

Hill said he personally called several members of Longwell’s campaign team and he was prepared to resign if anyone on the Longwell staff had participated in the video attack.

“That was the most despicable piece of trash I have ever seen,” he said.

CAPPS ASKED TO RESIGN Glasscock and Sauceda broke the news to Capps that the party was severing ties with him on Nov. 1, four days before the mayoral election.

During that meeting, Glasscock testified he pressed Capps for information about who was behind the video, which Capps resisted giving.

“He was like, ‘Dalton, you don’t want to know those names,’” Glasscock said in a deposition.

He also said that Capps talked about the video’s producer, Matthew Colborn, at one point saying: “I won’t have to throw Matthew to the wolves until I have to. He’s a good kid.

He’s doing a lot of good work for the party.”

Glasscock said that Capps didn’t take it well when he was told the party would publicly call for his resignation.

Sauceda said Capps was visibly angry and frustrated during the conversation.

He “became very animated” during the heated exchange with Glasscock, Sauceda said.

At the end of the meeting, Capps “stormed off,” missed the door handle, ran into the door and broke its latch as he exited Glasscock’s home, Sauceda said.

In a phone interview with The Eagle, Sauceda said he doesn’t think Glasscock had anything to do with the Whipple smear campaign.

During the meeting it became clear that Capps knew detailed information about the video and who was behind it — and that Glasscock did not, Sauceda said.

“Capps even admitted that,” Sauceda said of their Nov. 1 conversation.

“He said: ‘Dalton, you don’t know who is involved in this, and you don’t want to know who is involved in this.’

“Capps, in his own words, is admitting that Dalton didn’t know.”

Sauceda, now a candidate for county treasurer, said Capps threatened him and Glasscock. “(Capps) made a threat to Dalton and me that it would fall at our feet” if they publicly called on him to resign, Sauceda said.

other tax deadlines linked to July 15. Check out the IRS website or reach out to a tax professional for answers to your specific question.

One worth noting is that July 15 is also the deadline to claim a refund for 2016 tax returns. An estimated $1.5 billion in refunds for 2016 are sitting unclaimed because people failed to file tax returns. The law provides a three-year window to claim a refund.

But if taxpayers do not file

a return within that time, the money becomes the property of the Treasury.

There is no penalty to file a later return if a refund is due.

It’s also a good time to check in with a tax professional if you have had a major shift in income, employment or other tax situations in 2020. With all the changes stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, there may be need for added help when it comes to taxes.

TENSE TEXTS As Glasscock worked to distance the local Republican Party from the video, he also moved to keep O’Donnell at arm’s length.

Text exchanges between O’Donnell and Glasscock attached to court records show Glasscock’s anger that the video was ever produced and disappointment that O’Donnell was involved.

O’Donnell and City Council member Clendenin raised $10,000 that wound up financing the project. They got the money by tapping their contacts with public-works contracting firms and others who routinely do business with the county and city.

On Oct. 30, Glasscock texted O’Donnell: “Hey — because of finding out that you have knowledge of who produced that video and not knowing your full connection I do not want you raising money for the party or having any conversation on behalf of the party to anyone. Thank you for wanting to help out but I will not accept any check that comes from now and Election Day with you as a conduit.”

Replied O’Donnell: “That’s fine I understand.

I’ll let the Weigands and Ruffins know before they cut the checks. And Sam Sackett.”

Weigand and Ruffin are major real estate interests in the Wichita area and Sackett is the senior manager of government relations at Spirit AeroSystems, the county’s largest employer.

The next day, O’Donnell texted Glasscock that there would be a story about Capps “and that stupid commercial” coming out in the newspaper.

Glasscock replied: “Hope he knows I’m still furious. He could very well have cost us this election and made my life difficult on top of hurting Brandon (Whipple) and his family.”

Later in that exchange, O’Donnell sought to calm Glasscock down: “Nobody believes half this crap anyway. . . . The Democrats put this crap out as well.

And we should care that the Longwell family has been attacked just as much.”

Glasscock: “I’m not responsible for what they do. I’m responsible for what we do. I’m not tolerating this anymore. We are better than this s---.”

In his deposition, Glasscock testified that O’Donnell also tried to warn him off from trying to reach Colborn in late October.

After Glasscock tried to contact Colborn for several days straight, O’Donnell called and told him “Quit trying to get a hold of Matthew,’” Glasscock testified. “And I was like, ‘Why’s that?’ And he said ‘There’s things you can’t know. . . . You don’t need to know. Matthew really doesn’t want to talk.’”

O’Donnell said he wasn’t trying to protect Colborn, but to warn Glasscock.

In addition to Glasscock’s Republican Party duties, he was also on the payroll of the Longwell campaign at the time.

O’Donnell said he

didn’t want Glasscock to violate campaign finance laws that prohibit the coordination of a candidate’s campaign with outside third parties supporting the candidate.

A RAFT OF SUBPOENAS Since firing his lawyer and taking over his own defense in the slander lawsuit, Colborn has filed requests for multiple subpoenas of potential witnesses he wants to depose — almost all of them Democrats.

They include: A Whipple, who sued Colborn A Abbie Hodgson, former chief of staff for the House minority leader’s office in the Legislature A Glasscock, to retestify on his actions related to the Protect Wichita Girls video A Yingling, Whipple’s campaign lawyer and adviser A Rep. Tom Burroughs, D-Kansas City, former House minority leader A Rep. Jim Ward, DWichita, also a former House minority leader Several of the subpoenas requested by Colborn contain an unsubstantiated accusation that Whipple sexually harassed Hodgson and it was covered up by former Democratic legislative leaders Ward and Burroughs.

“Who did you say is subpoenaing me?” Burroughs said when an Eagle reporter told him of the document Colborn filed.

“Wow, unbelievable,” he said, adding that he has “no comment about anything” to do with the case.

Hodgson declined comment and Ward, currently a candidate for state Senate, did not return phone messages seeking comment.

Yingling said she doesn’t expect to have to testify because she served as Whipple’s campaign lawyer and her communications with him and Rathbun are covered by attorney-client confidentiality.

She said she’s known Whipple since 2010 and had never heard of any sexual harassment claims against him until the fabricated accusations in the video.

“One of the reasons I’ve worked for him so long is he’s one of the only men in politics on both sides that treats me like an equal,” Yingling said.

“And that’s important to a young professional woman.”

She said while Colborn has the ability to produce a video, she doesn’t believe he had the acumen to plan and run a multistate plot with a New Mexico shell company and an anonymous Wyoming mail drop, as Colborn has recently attested he did.

“I think this is, unfortunately, a young kid that maybe has gotten wrapped up with somebody that’s a manipulator,” she said. “It makes me sad, almost. It’s just unfortunate.”

Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752, @byChanceSwaim Dion Lefler: 316-268-6527, @DionKansas

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Audio: Officials plot to frame Glasscock

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Halloween COVID-19 style will be a quite different treat

BY CHANCE SWAIM AND DION LEFLER

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

A secret recording released Friday shows that three Republican officials sought to frame the county’s Republican chairman for a falsified ad they put together smearing then-mayoral candidate Brandon Whipple. One compared their mission to that of the man who shot Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

“Us Republicans, we all agree,” Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said. “The murder of George Tiller was bad. But am I sad that he’s dead? No. I’m just glad I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.”

Tiller was assassinated in 2009 by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder during a Sunday morning service while Tiller was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.

State Rep. Michael Capps said the anti-Whipple video was justifiable to derail Whipple’s candidacy, because he’s a “liberal Democrat.”

“It’s what we do,” Capps said. “It’s the way the system works. Nobody wants to know how the sausage is made, they only want the sausage when it’s done. And that’s the principle: This is the sausage making — nobody likes to see that.”

The statements were on a secret recording made by Matthew Colborn, hired to SEE VIDEO, 2A

JAIME GREEN The Wichita Eagle

A sign alerting people to the fact that there will be no trick or treating is posted in front of a house on North Broadview in College Hill.

BY DENISE NEIL

dneil@wichitaeagle.com

Wichitans know by now that, because of COVID-19, they can’t go to concerts, throw big parties or attend the festivals and fairs that have become part of their annual traditions.

But do they have to skip Halloween, too?

Not necessarily, says Adrienne Byrne, director of the Sedgwick County Health Department, who has been fielding questions for more than a month about what Halloween

will – and should – look like in Wichita this year.

The spookiest of holidays doesn’t have to be completely canceled, even though there’s a very scary virus on the loose, and people can still participate, she said.

But if they want to be safe and responsible, they’ll have to make some changes, alter some routines and accept some realities – including the fact that Wichita’s most popular Halloween neighborhoods should be avoided this year.

“Halloween can happen,” Byrne said. “It just needs to be a

little bit modified. It needs to be a little different this year.”

People should follow the CDC guidelines for participating in safe holiday celebrations, she said, which include observing the holiday outdoors, avoiding crowded indoor spaces, wearing masks over their noses and mouths, and washing their hands frequently.

What they absolutely should not do is attend large parties with non-household members or attend big carnivals and festivals. High volume trick-or-treat events should be avoided, as should haunted house attrac-

tions, where “there can be a lot of touch points,” Byrne said.

Altered trick or treating can be OK, though, she said, as long as families go to neighborhoods where the streets remain congestion free and that only one group at a time approaches a porch. Community grab bowls should be avoided in favor of individually packaged treats, and people passing out treats should be careful not to touch their visitors’ hands.

And people should not, under any circumstances, gather in SEE HALLOWEEN, 16A

US Senate race most costly election in Kansas’ history

BY JOHN HANNA

Associated Press

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Democratic state Sen. Barbara Bollier, shown Sept. 11, has raised a lot of money for her U.S. Senate campaign and has outspent her Republican opponent 4-to-1 over the past three months, forcing GOP groups to burn through the kind of cash that few thought they would need.

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Republicans who were desperate to have Kansas Congressman Roger Marshall as their candidate for an open Senate seat are finding the race to be anything but the sure thing they once thought it

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GOP groups are pouring in millions of dollars to help the two-term congressman win what was supposed to be a safe Republican seat and to keep it from going to a party-switching state senator who was little known SEE SENATE, 8A

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A New York Times and Siena College poll released Thursday says U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall, shown Wednesday in Kansas City, Kan., has a 46% to 42% lead over his opponent, Barbara Bollier. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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Wichita transit says new electric buses better than diesel

BY SARAH SPICER

sspicer@wichitaeagle.com

Wichita transit added seven new electric buses this month in the next step of its plan to eventually electrify the entire fleet.

With 11 buses, Wichita currently has the largest electric transit offering in Kansas.

The buses, which cost more than their diesel counterparts, were paid for by two federal grants.

Still, each bus is expected to save the city $462,000 over its lifetime — at least 12 years — as electric bus-

es cost about 50% less to run than the diesel buses, according to Mike Tann, city transit director.

The grants were to help pay for the electrification of regular route buses and replace the diesel trolleys on the Q-Line, which offered free downtown transportation before the services were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Electric buses are growing in popularity among transits nationwide. In 2019 650 electric buses were being used, up from 300 in 2018, according to BloombergNEF, a clean

energy research group.

Nearly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from transportation, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change and heavy-duty vehicles, such as buses, account for 25% of vehicle emissions, according to a study by a non-profit scientist group called Union of Concerned Scientists.

REDUCED COSTS Tann was already looking at replacing the aging bus fleet in Wichita when

TRAVIS HEYING The Wichita Eagle

One of the Wichita’s new electric buses makes its way through downtown last week.

The buses were paid for using grant money.

there was an opportunity to apply for a federal grant to purchase electric buses.

He saved about $250,000 per bus by buying remanufactured electric buses,

FROM PAGE 1A

VIDEO produce a video smearing Whipple in his campaign to unseat former Mayor Jeff Longwell. Colborn’s attorney, Michael Schultz, released the audio to media Friday.

O’Donnell, Capps and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin were behind the plot. And when their involvement was coming to light, they decided to lie and frame members of their own party, the recording reveals.

Initially, they thought to implicate both county GOP Chairman Dalton Glasscock and County Clerk Kelly Arnold, a former chairman of the state Republican Party.

They ultimately decided not to try to implicate Arnold because he was more capable of fighting back and they felt it was a war they couldn’t win.

Glasscock said Friday evening that he was “disappointed, disheartened and disgusted” by what he heard on the recording.

“Anyone that is associated with this is not fit for public office,” he said.

O’Donnell is the only one of the three politicians on the ballot in the Nov. 3 election, where early voting is already ongoing.

While the county Republican Party hasn’t spent any money in O’Donnell’s race against Democrat Sarah Lopez, the state GOP has been sending out frequent mailers in the 2nd Commission District attacking Lopez and supporting O’Donnell.

Glasscock said he’ll be contacting state GOP Chairman Mike Kuckelman and asking him to turn off the flow of campaign spending to boost O’Donnell.

“I will do everything in my power and my advice to Chair Kuckelman to make sure we don’t spend a dime in that race, that the state Republican Party does not spend a dime in that race,” he said.

“Voters have begun voting in this election and we’re 11 days out from the general election, and I hope that voters will look at all these allegations,” he said. “And I trust the voters of Sedgwick County to make a decision on Election Day that shows that character matters and character counts.”

In the secret recording

— about 50 minutes long — O’Donnell, Clendenin and Capps craft a calculated narrative meant to mislead the public and cover their tracks while saving their political careers.

Colborn, a 21-year-old video entrepreneur who produced the video, was at that time involved in the plotting, but recorded the unfolding drama in case he needed to protect himself.

The politicians launched the campaign from behind an anonymous New Mexico shell company they created, but their cover began to unravel shortly after their video premiered.

Eagle research found ties between Capps and Clendenin, to Colborn and the false video. O’Donnell’s involvement surfaced later in a defamation lawsuit filed by Whipple.

O’Donnell and Clendenin have said they raised money used to bankroll the false video, but have also said they thought it would be used for billboards to boost Longwell’s campaign, not the video that appeared.

A ‘SCAPEGOAT’ Whipple filed a defamation and civil conspiracy lawsuit against the video organizers in October.

O’Donnell said in the recording that he didn’t think the lawsuit would go anywhere after the mayoral election, but it has dragged out for almost a year so far.

“I don’t think that we’re all culpable, like for a lawsuit or anything,” O’Donnell said. “But I just don’t want it to ever get into discovery mode where then they say: ‘Oh you lied’ or this or that, or questioning my personal integrity.”

On Friday, neither O’Donnell nor Clendenin returned phone calls seeking comment. Capps’ phone went unanswered and didn’t have voicemail activated.

The fake ad, launched on Facebook and YouTube about two weeks before the November mayoral election, used paid actresses posing as legislative interns to falsely accuse Whipple of sexual harassment when he was a state representative.

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Audio indicates that, from left, James Clendenin, Michael Capps and Michael O’Donnell engineered a smear plot.

One of those actresses told The Eagle she was paid $50 to read the script and told it would be used in a public-service message denouncing violence against women.

The script lifted accusations from a Kansas City Star/Wichita Eagle story about alleged Statehouse harassment by Republican senators and those accusations didn’t involve Whipple.

Schultz, Colborn’s attorney, provided a written statement to The Eagle in an attempt to clear his client’s name.

“Matthew regrets his participation in this whole ordeal,” the statement said. “While he chose to participate in these underhanded attacks, he has also been used and scapegoated in the public eye.

Needless to say, it has been a year of painful lessons about politics, relationships, and business. But he is now ready to move past this chapter in his life.

“Unfortunately, others still desire to attack and scapegoat Matthew. As a result, we believe it is necessary to provide some of the information publicly that we provided in discovery, so that Matthew can clear his name and truly put this behind him.”

“Matthew was at the meeting where Michael O’Donnell, James Clendenin, and Michael Capps planned to push the blame for this ad onto Dalton Glasscock and others. To protect himself, he recorded that conversation. We are releasing that recording now to demonstrate the accuracy of what Matthew has now said and to try and stop those who continue to attack him.”

‘OUR NECK OR HIS’ The audio indicates that O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin were involved in the smear campaign and an attempted coverup.

All three officials were named in the Whipple

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lawsuit this month and Colborn’s name was dropped from the lawsuit after he handed over information.

The bogus narrative by O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin centered on Capps’ appearance on former Republican legislator John Whitmer’s radio show.

O’Donnell told Capps to lie, but to do so in a way that couldn’t be proven false while shifting blame to Glasscock.

“I’m just trying to keep us out a refutable lie,” he said.

O’Donnell, who has fought off several scandals in his political career as a City Council member, state senator and county commissioner, offered a nugget of advice to the others.

“Like I’ve always learned in politics, it’s always avoid the truth at all expense, right? And just go on the attack.”

O’Donnell said.

Capps agreed and lamented that he wasn’t as good at that as O’Donnell.

“That’s one of the political skills that I’m lacking,” Capps said. “It’s not that I can’t develop it, but it’s the engineer in me, because engineers see things in very finite … terms.”

“Black and white,” interjected Clendenin.

All three officials agreed framing Glasscock was the best route to take.

“If it’s the narrative as just discussed, I’m fully bought into (it),” Clendenin said.

“This is not an ideal narrative, and I’m going to accept the fact that it’s not,” Capps said. “I also am looking at this purely from a business/political perspective that it’s either our necks or his,” Capps said of Glasscock.

The four participants in the meeting brainstormed talking points for the Whitmer show and discussed how they could manufacture their narrative around a meeting with Glasscock that never happened.

which meant he could buy more buses than initially planned.

“From the ground up, it’s a new bus, other than just the frame, but every-

thing is converted over to electric power,” Tann said.

The costs to run and

At one juncture, Capps pointed out that Glasscock had been traveling out of town and asked O’Donnell to sift through his text messages and find a day when Glasscock was actually in Wichita, to add plausibility to Capps’ claim that he’d met with him.

They also settled on what their story would be if Capps were asked where the purported meeting occurred.

They considered saying it was at Capps’ and Cledenin’s shared office, but rejected that because it could cause problems with their landlord.

“You don’t have to say it was at our office because if you get real specific and this does go to court, then there’s all sorts of (expletive) that’s going to hit the fan,” Clendenin said.

Then they considered saying it was at the Candle Club, an east-side private club popular with Wichita’s business and political leaders. They rejected that because they didn’t want to hurt the business.

They finally settled on just saying the nonexistent meeting was at an unnamed private club.

Glasscock said “unequivocally no,” when asked if the purported meeting ever occurred. He said he learned of the accusations in the video about the time it was released publicly.

They decided the details could remain vague because Whitmer was unlikely to ask any hard questions.

Capps assured the others that Whitmer wouldn’t press because he “wants Dalton’s head.”

“He just doesn’t want to hunt. He just wants to collect,” Capps said.

Whitmer denied targeting Glasscock and said he feels like he had been used by Capps.

Whitmer said Friday that he hadn’t had time to listen to all the recordings, but that he “absolutely” felt he had been used.

He defended his interview with Capps and said he asked hard questions.

Whitmer also objected to Whipple pursuing the case through the court because of the near-impossibility of a prominent public official actually winning a defamation suit.

“It’s unfortunate this whole thing is being politicized and that the courts are being weaponized to

influence the outcome of an election,” he said.

In the recording, the three officials and video producer also initially discussed trying to frame Arnold along with Glasscock.

At one point, Capps, practicing for his Whitmer interview, proposed how he would do that, saying: “... I do believe that Dalton Glasscock with the assistance of Kelly Arnold conspired to cover this up.”

When no one immediately objected, Capps said: “Wow, that was an easier sell than I thought. I genuinely thought you were going to have a conniption fit over that.”

“No, no,” O’Donnell said.

Capps explained: “All I’m trying to do is direct light at Kelly Arnold. I’m not trying to make an accusation.”

They ultimately decided Arnold was too popular in Republican circles to take on. They were also worried if they did draw Arnold into it, he could team up with Whipple’s lawyer, Randy Rathbun, and help expose the plot.

Shortly after Capps was linked to the faked video, Glasscock and the entire leadership team of the county GOP called for Capps to resign. The secret recording was made two days later.

“It was so dumb,” O’Donnell said of Glassock’s decision to call for Capps’ resignation. “But that’s where we want to bring up Kelly, but we’re not going to.”

“No,” Colborn agreed.

“We can’t win that war.”

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DA probes whether officials should be ousted after secret recording

BY CHANCE SWAIM AND DION LEFLER

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

Three Wichita Republican officeholders are under investigation to see if they can be ousted after a secret recording surfaced last week of the officials plotting to frame the county GOP chairman for a falsified smear video that the three organized.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett announced the investigation Monday afternoon after a majority on

the Sedgwick County Commission publicly called for Commissioner Michael O’Donnell to resign. O’Donnell is up for re-election Nov. 3.

The Sedgwick County Republican Party also has called on O’Donnell as well as the other two officials — Wichita City Council member James Clendenin and State Rep. Michael Capps — to resign. The Wichita Chamber of Commerce, an influential business organization that previously endorsed O’Donnell, called on the three men to

From left to right: James Clendenin, Michael Capps and Michael O’Donnell

resign Monday afternoon and for O’Donnell to withdraw from the commission race.

The three officials have not returned calls for com-

ment.

Commission Chair Pete Meitzner is the only county commissioner who has not called for O’Donnell’s resignation. He said in an

email that “we must respect everyone’s right to due process and let the case continue without Commission involvement.”

Meitzner stands out as an outlier as several groups and the rest of the commission has publicly called for O’Donnell to step down.

“There is also an election about a week away that will decide commission representation; I encourage residents to take advantage of their civic duty and vote if they have not already done so,”

Meitzner said. “And finally, as the Board of County Commissioners for Sedgwick County, the actions available to us on this matter are very limited and we are in consultation with our County Counselor. All five of us are uniquely elected by the people and do not have authority over one another.”

The secret recording released Friday showed that three Republican officials sought to frame the county’s Republican SEE PROBE, 3A

Senate plans vote to confirm Barrett

WINTRY WHITE ON A COLD OCTOBER DAY

BY LISA MASCARO

Associated Press WASHINGTON

ELSEWHERE A Residents in the Texas border city of El Paso have been urged to stay home for two weeks as a spike in coronavirus cases overwhelms hospitals.

The uptick in cases has also prompted the state to dedicate part of the city’s civic center as a makeshift heath care center for the ill. On Sunday night, El Paso County’s top elected official issued a stay-at-home order that imposes a daily curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Violators could be fined $500 under the order.

Earlier Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said 50 hospital beds will be set up in the city’s convention center and another 50 beds could be added if need-

A divided Senate was set to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday night, giving the country a ninth justice as Republicans overpower Democratic opposition to secure President Donald Trump’s nominee the week before Election Day. Democratic Amy Coney leaders asked Barrett Vice President Mike Pence to stay away from presiding over Barrett’s Senate confirmation due to potential health risks after his aides tested positive for COVID-19. But although Pence isn’t needed to break a tie, the vote would present a dramatic opportunity for him to preside over confirmation of Trump’s third Supreme Court justice.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and his leadership team wrote that not only would Pence’s presence violate Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, “it would also be a violation of common decency and courtesy.”

But Senate Republicans control the chamber, and Barrett’s confirmation isn’t in doubt.

The 48-year-old Barrett would secure a conservative court majority for the foreseeable future, potentially opening a new era of rulings on abortion, gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act. A case against the Obama-

SEE VIRUS, 5A

SEE VOTE, 2A

JAIME GREEN The Wichita Eagle

Cows huddle on a farm in west Wichita. The wintry weather is expected to continue Tuesday. See story, Page 2A.

Daily virus death toll up 10% in US; worse feared Associated Press BOISE, IDAHO

Deaths per day from the coronavirus in the U.S. are on the rise again, just as health experts had feared, and cases are climbing in nearly every state.

Average deaths per day across the country are up 10% over the past two weeks, from 721 to nearly 794 as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections per day are rising in 47 states, and deaths are up in 34.

Health experts had warned that it was only a matter of time before deaths turned upward, given the record-breaking surge in confirmed cases engulfing the

U.S. recorded more than 80,000 new cases on both Friday and Saturday – the highest marks ever – though testing has expanded dramatically over the course of the outbreak, making direct comparisons problematic.

THE VIRUS IS BLAMED FOR MORE THAN 8.6 MILLION CONFIRMED INFECTIONS AND MORE THAN 225,000 DEATHS IN THE U.S., THE HIGHEST SUCH TOTALS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. country. Deaths are a lagging indicator – that is, it generally takes a few weeks for people to sicken and die from the coronavirus.

The virus is blamed for more than 8.6 million confirmed infections and over 225,000 deaths in the U.S., the highest such totals anywhere in the world, with a widely cited model from the University of Washington projecting about 386,000 dead by Feb. 1.

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Deaths are still well below the U.S. peak of over 2,200 per day in late April. But experts are warning of a grim fall and winter, as “pandemic fatigue” – or weariness with wearing masks and staying away from others – takes hold and cold weather forces people indoors, where the virus can spread more easily.

The seven-day rolling average for daily new cases hit a record high on Sunday of 68,767, according to Johns Hopkins. The

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TRUMP IS SCHEDULED TO HOLD 11 RALLIES IN THE FINAL 48 HOURS BEFORE POLLS CLOSE.

JACQUELINE LARMA AP

ANDREW HARNIK AP

Supporters listen during a campaign event Saturday for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

A supporter of President Donald Trump photographs the crowd before a campaign rally Monday in Lititz, Pa.

Trump begins battleground blitz; Biden plays it low key

BY ZEKE MILLER AND ALEXANDRA JAFFE

Associated Press ALLENTOWN, PA.

President Donald Trump embarked Monday on a final-week charge through nearly a dozen states ahead of the election amid a surge of coronavirus cases in the U.S. and a fresh outbreak in his own White House. His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, is holding far fewer events in an effort to demonstrate that he’s taking the worsening pandemic seriously.

The final days of the campaign are crystallizing the starkly different approaches Trump and Biden have taken to address the worst public health crisis in a century – with risks for each candidate.

“It’s a choice between a Trump boom or a Biden lockdown,” Trump claimed Monday in Pennsylvania.

For Trump, the fullspeed-ahead strategy could spread the virus in places that are already setting records and leave him appearing aloof to the consequences. And if Biden comes up short in the election, his lower-key travel schedule will surely come under scrutiny as a

FROM PAGE 1A

PROBE chairman for a falsified ad they put together smearing then-mayoral candidate Brandon Whipple. In the recording — about 50 minutes long — O’Donnell, Clendenin and Capps craft a calculated narrative meant to mislead the public and cover their tracks while saving their political careers.

Commissioners Lacey Cruse, David Dennis and Jim Howell all posted statements Sunday on Facebook calling for O’Donnell to step down.

Cruse, the commission’s lone Democratic official and O’Donnell’s primary foil, said early Sunday that she wanted a full investigation into whether any county resources had been used as part of the sham video campaign and the subsequent cover-up.

“First off, Michael O’Donnell has proven to be a risk and major liability to Sedgwick County and should not be in a position where he can make decisions on behalf of 500,000+ people,” Cruse wrote. “The Sedgwick County Commission is making million dollar decisions weekly. Michael O’Donnell should not have access to any information or financial decisions. Period. How can we trust him with information? We can’t.

We all heard him say he would go into a court of law and lie. He has proven with his own words his lack of integrity and has clearly violated our ethical conduct.”

Dennis, who is also up for re-election, said he supports the District Attorney’s investigation and called for O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin to

bad choice.

Both men are making points with their travel plans. Trump was holding three events in Pennsylvania alone on Monday, suggesting he’s on defense in a state that he won in 2016 and that will be critical to his re-election.

Biden, meanwhile, is demonstrating more confidence with signals that he’s hoping to expand his campaign map.

Though the Democrat on Monday was remaining close to his Wilmington, Delaware, home, on Tuesday he will visit Georgia, a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. He’s dispatching his running mate, Kamala Harris, later this week to Texas, which hasn’t backed a Democrat for the White House since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

With more than a third of the expected ballots in the election already cast, it could become increasingly challenging for Trump and Biden to reshape the contours of the race. But both men are fighting for any endgame advantage. Biden is leading Trump in most national polls and has an advantage, though narrower, in many key battlegrounds.

While the final week of the campaign is colliding with deepening concerns about the COVID crisis in far-flung parts of the U.S., Trump is anxious for voters to focus on almost anything else. He’s worried he will lose if the election becomes a referendum on his handling of the pandemic. Biden, meanwhile, is working to ensure the race is just that, hitting Trump on the virus and presenting himself as a safer, more stable alternative.

The stakes were clear this past weekend as the White House became the locus for a second outbreak of the virus in a month. Several close aides to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive, including his chief of staff, Marc Short. Pence, though, was insistent on maintaining his aggressive political calendar, even though he was deemed a “close contact,” claiming the status of an “essential employee.”

With Election Day just over a week away, average deaths per day across the country are up 10% over the past two weeks, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections per day are rising in 47 states, and

resign.

“It is vital that citizens have trust in their elected officials, and the recording demonstrates a clear breach of honesty and the values that we as Commissioners swore to adhere to,” Dennis wrote Sunday.

Howell, who has often voted with O’Donnell against coronavirus pandemic restrictions, agreed with the other commissioner and the local party leadership.

“The people of Sedgwick County deserve representation that is ethical, above reproach, and honest,” he wrote. “The actions of these been in the ‘Protect Wichita Girls’ scandal is reprehensible and embarrassing to our community.”

Most of the Wichita City Council has been silent on the secret recordings, which were released Friday by video producer Matthew Colborn. However, Whipple said in a phone interview that the officials should do “some soul searching to decide whether the public can trust them enough to continue leading through a pandemic, given their dishonesty in the recording.”

It’s seems unlikely the general public will get to weigh in on the situation before Election Day. The commission is scheduled to meet Wednesday, but county spokeswoman Kate Flavin said public comment won’t be allowed because the meeting was called as a special session for the sole purpose of getting an update on spending of federal coronavirus relief grants.

“If we allow public comment at this special meeting, it’d be inconsistent when we go back to normal and no comment’s

allowed at special meetings,” Flavin said.

A staff meeting scheduled Tuesday was canceled by the county on Monday afternoon.

Howell said this is bad timing for voters. Thousands have already cast ballots and he said he’s heard from some voters telling him “they felt like they may have voted differently” if they’d known about Colborn’s recording.

He said the proximity of the revelations to the election could mean that O’Donnell could resign now but still reclaim his office were he to win the election.

He said it’s uncertain whether there’s a way to get a binding promise from O’Donnell that if he wins, would step down and let Republican precinct committee members select his replacement.

The Wichita Chamber, a business organization that frequently endorses Republican candidates, called the behavior “ugly and unacceptable” in a written statement Monday afternoon.

“The Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce and Wichita Regional Chamber Political Action Committee (PAC) condemn the actions of Michael Capps, James Clendenin, and Michael O’Donnell, relating to the production, release, and cover-up of a fabricated attack video. Due to the gravity of the situation and the lack of integrity and civility displayed, we ask them to step down from their roles and withdraw from any current races immediately.”

Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752, @byChanceSwaim Dion Lefler: 316-268-6527, @DionKansas

deaths are up in 34.

The latest national outbreak has provide a potent sign of the divergent approaches the Trump and Biden campaigns have taken to the virus. Trump aims to pack thousands of people, most without face coverings, into rallies across some of the upper Midwestern states bearing the brunt of the surge.

Biden’s team argues the coronavirus is likely to blot out any other issues that might come up in the final days of the campaign. That strategy appeared to pay off as the outbreak in Pence’s staff refocused the national conversation once again on the pandemic.

Trump and his team, meanwhile, have struggled to settle on a closing message, with the candidate increasingly trusting his instincts over his advisers. He’s grasped for dirt on his Democratic rival and used apocalyptic terms to describe a Biden presidency, but Biden has thus far proven more resistant to such attacks than Trump’s 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton.

“You can certainly expect that (Biden) will focus on COVID as it continues to, unfortunately, rise all across the coun-

try,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said. “It is disrupting people’s lives and people are looking for a leader to put in place plans to get it under control.”

Anticipating a razor-thin Electoral College margin, Trump has an aggressive schedule including a visit to Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday after a Sunday visit to Maine, aiming to lock up one electoral vote in each of the states that award them by congressional district. Trump is scheduled to hold 11 rallies in the final 48 hours before polls close.

Biden is sitting on more campaign cash than Trump and is putting it to use, blanketing airwaves with a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over the final two weeks. The ads feature both upbeat messages and blistering criticism of Trump’s handling of the pandemic.

It’s part of what Josh Schwerin, the senior strategist for Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, says has helped Biden gain an advantage.

“Those dual messages – continuing to draw a contrast with Trump, but also offering that positive aspirational message, giving people a reason to vote for Biden and not just against Trump – continues to be the best way forward. And we’re seeing it work,” he said.

Democrats have been heartened by their lead in the record numbers of early votes that have been cast across a number of battleground states – though they caution that Republicans are more likely to turn out on Election Day and certain to make up ground.

3A

Azerbaijan, Armenia cite truce violations Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday accused each other of violating the new cease-fire announced the day before in a bid to halt the fighting over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh that has killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, in just four weeks.

The truce that took effect Monday morning was agreed upon Sunday after talks facilitated by the United States. It was a third attempt to establish a lasting cease-fire.

Azerbaijan alleged that Armenian forces fired at Azerbaijani settlements, while Armenia accused Azerbaijani forces of shelling Nagorno-Karabakh.

— ASSOCIATED PRESS

It’s a boy: White rhino born at Disney World A 150-pound white rhinoceros was born at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Florida over the weekend.

The as-yet-named rhino was born to Kendi, who was the first white rhinoceros born at the animal theme park in 1999.

Both mom and son are doing well, Disney said in a news release.

Disney says it was the 11th white rhino born at Disney World, and two more are on the way.

White rhinos are the second-largest land mammal and are an endangered species with a nearthreatened status.

— ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Council votes to censure Clendenin and cohorts

BY CHANCE SWAIM AND DION LEFLER

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

Wichita’s City Council censured James Clendenin Tuesday afternoon for his role in a plot to falsely accuse Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexual harassment and then try to shift the blame to Republican Party leaders when the

smear campaign backfired.

Clendenin’s involvement was revealed in a secret recording released Friday showing the southside council member plotted a cover-up with Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell and State Rep. Michael Capps.

On the recording, they discussed how to frame Sedgwick County GOP

comb said the Chairman Dalton council had no Glasscock for a authority to remove falsified and anoClendenin from nymous video ad office. The council that attacked also condemned Whipple during the O’Donnell and 2019 mayoral race.

Capps.

The council James Clendenin has unanimously Clendenin admitted to helping passed a resolution raise money used to bankcondemning Clendenin’s actions, saying he violated roll the Protect Wichita Girls ad. The secret rethe city’s code of ethics. cording showed he also Vice Mayor Cindy Clay-

participated in the Glasscock set-up, helping Capps and O’Donnell fabricate a false narrative aimed at misleading the public and saving their political careers.

“I was extremely disappointed in the dialogue that I heard with the three individuals on tape, and I just wanted to say that there is no place not only in local politics but politics

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in general for what we heard on that recording,” Council member Brandon Johnson said.

“I think that anyone who engages in that type of behavior does not — should not have the honor of representing people in public office,” Johnson said. “And I know that if it were me, I would not stay in that seat because Wichita deserves better.”

Clendenin said he would cooperate fully with an ongoing district attorney investigation into whether his conduct rises to the level that would trigger ouster proceedings to remove him from office.

SEE SMEAR, 4A

Democrats eye GOP’s veto-proof majority in Topeka

BY KATIE BERNARD

cbernard@kcstar.com

MARK RIGHTMIRE AP

With Modjeska Peak and Santiago Peak as a backdrop, the Silverado Fire burns east of Irvine, Calif., before dawn on Tuesday.

Wind-swept fires force evacuation of 100,000

BY FAITH E. PINHO, HAYLEY SMITH, RUBEN VIVES AND STEPHANIE LAI

Los Angeles Times SANTA ANA, CALIF.

Orange County remained on high alert Tuesday as a pair of wind-driven wildfires continued their race toward populated areas, forcing 100,000 residents to evacuate and choking much of the region with smoke.

The larger of the blazes, the Silverado Fire, broke out early Monday morning in the brush country around Santiago Canyon and Silverado Canyon roads. It had burned 12,535 acres by noon PDT Tuesday. At least 90,000 residents were under evacuation orders, and the fire was 5% contained.

The cause of the blaze, which is burning on hilly terrain in state lands, is not clear. But in a report to the state Public Utilities Commission, Southern California Edison said it was investigating whether its electrical equipment might have caused the fire. The brief report said it appeared that a “lashing wire” may have struck a primary conductor and that an investigation was underway.

At least two firefighters working on hand crews were severely burned as they battled the flames, according to Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy.

pumps that would allow them to pull water from homeowners’ pools, he said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said California had received a fire management assistance grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that will allow the state to receive 75% reimbursements for firefighting efforts related to the Silverado and Blue Ridge fires. The grant is provided through the president’s Disaster Relief Fund on cost-share basis.

“I want to thank FEMA and our partners at the federal level for their support,” he said.

Newsom said 42 fires had ignited across the state in the last 24 hours, many fueled by fierce winds. He thanked the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, along with local firefighting agencies, for their quick work in suppressing most of the blazes.

“We talk in historic terms,” he said, “and I remind you that six of the top 20 wildfires in our state’s history have occurred in 2020.”

More than 4 million acres have burned this year, and wildfires across the state have resulted in 31 fatalities, he said.

Monday’s dangerous winds – which saw gusts of up to 80 mph fueling the aggressive blazes – were expected to begin dissipating later Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

“They’re not going to be as strong as they were yesterday,” said Casey Oswant, a weather service meteorologist in San Diego.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM SAID 42 FIRES HAD IGNITED ACROSS THE STATE IN THE LAST 24 HOURS, MANY FUELED BY FIERCE WINDS. The firefighters, ages 26 and 31, were both placed on ventilators after suffering second- and third-degree burns over half their bodies, Fennessy said.

“This is tough for me, tough for all my firefighters and certainly for the families of my two injured firefighters,” Fennessy said during a news conference outside the Orange County Global Medical Center, where the men were being treated.

“They’re gravely injured,” he said. “We’re doing all we can for them.”

There were no official updates on their conditions Tuesday morning, Capt. Thahn Nguyen of the fire authority said.

Nguyen said their injuries were “pretty severe,” and he could not say whether they were expected to make a full recovery.

Hours after the Silverado Fire ignited, the Blue Ridge Fire erupted in Santa Ana Canyon – a notorious wind tunnel said to have given the blustery Santa Anas their name.

The flames spread quickly as the fire pushed west toward

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Yorba Linda, threatening the town’s Hidden Hills community. By noon Tuesday, the blaze had engulfed 15,200 acres and was zero percent contained. At least 10,000 residents had been evacuated. Ten homes had been damaged and 2,500 were still threatened.

The two fires have spurred multiple evacuation orders and warnings.

“This is absolutely a large mutual aid fire, a lot of resources from all over the state,” Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Jason Fairchild said Tuesday, noting that more than 1,700 firefighters are battling the two blazes. “And we have additional resources coming in from farther away.”

Facing flames that could threaten multiple homes at once in the county’s suburban sprawl, firefighters have been relying on their engines’ 500gallon tanks to beat back flames instead of connecting to hydrants so the crews aren’t “anchored down,” Fairchild said.

If the water supply were to become an issue, many of the engines are outfitted with

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Kansas Republicans are in no danger of losing their majority in the state legislature, an advantage they’ve held in both houses without interruption since 1992.

What is at risk — possibly hanging by a single seat in the Kansas House — is the twothirds supermajority that allows the GOP to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes. It means leverage in virtually any legislative fight, and Democrats would like to take it off the table on Nov. 3 Ending the veto-proof majority would allow Democrats a role in shaping debates over the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicaid expansion, abortion, school funding and the upcoming redrawing of congressional and legislative boundaries based on the 2020 census.

The good news for Democrats is that recent gains, especially in an increasingly blue Johnson County, have put the goal within reach. The party needs a net gain of just one seat in the 125member House next week to push Republicans under the threshold of the 84 needed to hold their supermajority. The 40-member Kansas Senate, where the GOP has enjoyed a supermajority since 1996, is more of a reach, with Democrats needing a gain of three seats.

Democrats would only need to claim one chamber to eliminate GOP veto control. A veto override requires supermajorities in both.

Democrats’ best opportunity may come in Johnson County, where Republican strength has eroded in the past decade. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the county by 16 points. Four years later, Donald Trump squeaked by with a 2% margin (while carrying the state by nearly 20 points).

In 2018, Democrat Sharice Davids won Johnson by six points as she unseated 3rd DisSEE VETO, 4A

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FROM PAGE 1A

VETO trict incumbent Republican Rep. Kevin Yoder.

And heading into the 2020 election, a New York Times poll showed Democrats Joe Biden and Barbara Bollier leading among voters in the Kansas City region, which includes Wyandotte County, by double digits.

The growth on the legislative level has been robust. In 2014, there were just two Democratic state representatives from the county — now there are 10.

“I’ve been surprised how quickly...Johnson County have become more democratic,” said KU political science professor Patrick Miller.

“These districts are vulnerable for Republicans but it’s hard to say how much.”

The most vulnerable Republicans are in districts where voters went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Laura Kelly in 2018.

Conservatives who unseated longtime moderate Republican lawmakers in the August primary may also be at risk.

The loss of GOP moderates has prompted Democrats to run for those

FROM PAGE 1A

SMEAR Facing that probe and Whipple’s defamation lawsuit, Clendenin declined to make any substantive comments about either case.

“Due to the pending legal matter, I’m just looking forward to the legal process and what comes through that,” he said.

Clendenin did not announce any plan to resign, referring to a written statement he issued Monday saying he planned to continue to the end of his term.

Although he did not participate in the discussion or vote, he remained in his seat at the council dais throughout the proceedings.

After the meeting, he explained that “I felt like it was important for me to face my colleagues. I’m not running from anything and so that’s why I made the decision I made today.”

Whipple, who also recused himself from the measure, left the room entirely during the discussion.

O’Donnell is the only one of the three on the ballot in the Nov. 3 general election.

Capps was defeated in the Republican primary in August and will leave the Legislature when his term expires in January.

Clendenin has served on the City Council since 2011 and because of term limits, he won’t be able to run for re-election next year.

seats, with a message focused on ending the supermajority and retaining a centrist voice in the legislature.

“There are too many Republicans who rode on the coattails of being able to say well I have moderate friends. Those people left,” Kansas Democratic National Committeeman Chris Reeves said.

Among the races to watch are House District 78 in Olathe, where Kathy Meyer is challenging Speaker of the House Ron Ryckman. In Overland Park’s House District 20, Republican-turned-Democrat Mari-Lynn Poskin is running against conservative Republican Jane Dirks, who defeated moderate Jan Kessinger in the August primary.

State Reps. Cindy Holscher (D) and James Todd (R) are competing for the Senate District 8 seat vacated by retiring Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning. In Senate District 11 in Overland Park, Democrat Joy Koesten and Republican Kellie Warren are competing after Warren defeated moderate Republican John Skubal in the primary.

Stephanie Sharp, a former state representative and Kansas political consultant, said she believes the county is react-

ing to President Donald Trump and any swing to the left is temporary.

“Once Donald Trump is gone, Dems won’t hold those seats and they will switch back to extreme conservative,” said Sharp, a moderate Republican.

CALLS FOR RESIGNATION The censure, although it stops short of asking Cledenin to resign, adds the City Council’s voice to a growing chorus calling for Clendenin, O’Donnell and Capps to consider stepping down.

The Sedgwick County Republican Party and Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Estes have called on all three officials to step down.

None of the trio of Wichita Republican officeholders has voluntarily stepped down. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett is investigating whether they can be removed.

The Sedgwick County Commission is expected to follow the city Wednesday morning at a special meeting, when O’Donnell’s role will be discussed. Each of O’Donnell’s colleagues on the County Commission has called for him to resign.

In contrast, the City Council had remained silent since the audio recording was released Friday.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, council members held an extended, 40minute executive session to “discuss legal authority of municipalities relating to public officials.” Whipple, who was the target of the smear campaign, recused himself from the discussion and vote and Clendenin stayed out of the room while the council discussed what to do next.

When the council returned from the closed meeting, Vice Mayor Cindy Claycomb called for a

late-afternoon special meeting to “discuss a resolution regarding public officials.”

Also on Tuesday, Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Meitzner joining the other three commissioners adding his name to a growing list of Republican officials calling for the resignations of the three GOP officials involved in the scandal.

It marked a departure from a Monday statement in which Meitzner said he was “saddened, angered, and disappointed” by the actions of O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin, but suggested the right course was to “respect everyone’s right to due process and let the case continue without Commission involvement.”

The three officials are currently embroiled in a civil defamation lawsuit brought by Whipple and under investigation by District Attorney Marc Bennett, who will decide whether their actions constitute grounds for legal action seeking to oust them from office.

The resignation demands follow Friday’s reveal of an audio recording made by Matthew Colborn, the young video entrepreneur who made the “Protect Wichita Girls” video targeting Whipple in his 2019 race against incumbent Mayor Jeff Longwell.

Meitzner said the circumstances had changed since his first statement.

“Last night, a second recording was released of Mr. Capps threatening members of the Republican Party,” Meitzner

MORE WILLING TO CROSS PARTY LINES? Lawmakers in both parties said the fate of the supermajority will be an important factor in determining what the legislature accomplishes in 2021.

Ryckman said it will be essential for the Republican’s to protect the state’s economy from COVID-19-related restrictions and Kelly’s vetoes of any tax cuts and business loans “The main thing is if we’re able to override some of the governor’s vetoes on policies that would definitely help Kansas trying to have an economic recovery from COVID,” Rykman said.

“Our state cannot go through another round of vetoes on economic policies.”

Also at stake for the GOP is the future of the “Value Them Both Amendment,” which would revise the state constitution to assert that there no right to an abortion in Kansas. Earlier this

year the measure fell five votes short in the House of being placed before voters on the August ballot.

In a statement to The Star, a spokesperson for Kelly said whatever the legislature’s partisan composition, Kelly will focus on Medicaid expansion, funding of schools and roads, economic development and a non-partisan redistricting committee.

“From Day One, Governor Kelly has committed to working across the aisle and to being a bipartisan leader, her priorities continue to reflect that approach. Regardless of the election outcome, she will stay focused on strengthening Kansas’ economy and keeping Kansans healthy,” the statement said.

One Johnson County Democrat running to unseat a Republican incumbent said the absence of a veto-proof majority might change the political calculations of some Republican lawmakers.

Ryckman’s challenger, Kathy Meyer, said that without a supermajority more Republicans may be willing to cross party lines to vote for such measures.

“One party or the other isn’t controlling everything,” she said. “This

would help if we didn’t have the supermajority in either house, allowing and maybe forcing us to work together.”

Democrat Holscher, running in Senate District 8, said as Republicans in the legislature move further to the right, arriving at deals on Medicaid expansion and school funding will only become harder.

said. “Let me make my stance clear, if I was involved in conduct or actions such as this, I would resign effective immediately and urge those involved to do the same, immediately.”

Meitzner is the fourth and final member of the County Commission to call for O’Donnell’s resignation. O’Donnell is also being challenged by Democrat Sarah Lopez in the Nov. 3 election.

The attack ad lifted accusations from a Kansas City Star/Wichita Eagle story about alleged sexual harassment of interns by Republican senators at the Kansas Capitol, and

wrongly transferred those accusations to Whipple, a House Democrat.

The ad, launched from behind the shield of an anonymous New Mexico shell company, was quickly proven false by Eagle reporting and Whipple filed his civil lawsuit to find out who was behind it.

The audio recording released Friday offered detailed evidence of plotting by O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin to falsely accuse Glasscock of masterminding the project.

Estes, a Wichita Republican, is the highest-ranking Republican so far to call for the resignation of

FOUR CONGRESSIONAL MAPS, ‘GUARANTEED’ Kelly’s veto power will be especially consequential in 2021 as the state develops a plan for redistricting.

Kansas redraws legislative and Congressional lines once every 10 years using new census data.

The 2010 map, enacted in 2012, was drawn by the courts after the legislature was unable to agree on a plan.

Kelly called for a nonpartisan commission in early October after Senate President Susan Wagle told a Republican audience in Wichita that the supermajority would be essential to ensuring that Rep. Sharice Davids, the lone Democrat among the state’s four U.S. House members, is put in a newly-drawn district where it will be difficult to keep her seat.

“I guarantee you we can

draw four Republican congressional maps but we can’t do it unless we have a two-thirds majority in the Senate and House,” Wagle said.

The Kansas GOP said losing the veto-proof majority would ensure that Kelly draws a map favorable to Democrats.

“If Kansans want fair maps that reflect the will of the majority in our state they should vote for Republicans,” C.J. Grover, spokesman for the Kansas GOP said. “If Kansans want maps drawn specifically to protect Governor Kelly’s friends like Sharice Davids in Congress and others in the Legislature, they can stay at home on November 3rd and not worry about it because rest assured those will be the governor’s priorities.”

Would the end of the supermajority actually create a more collaborative environment for lawmakers? Miller isn’t sure.

“Republican leaders have dismissed (Kelly) …

They’ve said they’d govern without her,” Miller said. “(Loss of a supermajority) should put the need to compromise directly in the face of politicians in Topeka. That doesn’t mean they’ll realize it.”

O’Donnell, Clendenin and Capps.

“What I heard on the recording represents the very worst of politics and shows they have abused the positions entrusted to them by Kansas voters,” Estes said in a post on Facebook on Monday night. “Kansans deserve better, and I’m calling on all three of them to resign.”

O’Donnell’s attorney filed a response in the lawsuit late Monday denying that O’Donnell was “the driving force behind the conspiracy” as Whipple has alleged. He also denies trying to frame Glasscock and requests a jury trial.

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MAKING HISTORY Kim Ng is hired as general manager of the Miami Marlins, becoming the first woman in MLB to hold that job.

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SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14 2020

O’Donnell resigns post on Sedgwick County Commission

BY DION LEFLER AND CHANCE SWAIM

dlefler@wichitaeagle.com cswaim@wichitaeagle.com

Embattled Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell has stepped down from the position he won four years ago after a scandal over a false 2019 campaign ad attacking Wichita’s mayor.

The resignation was handled quietly, in an e-mail to commis-

Concerns about virus as Kansas universities let out

sioners.

“I got a note from staff that said he is resigning as of 5 o’clock this afternoon,” said Commissioner Jim Howell.

Michael Howell said he O’Donnell was not informed of the resignation earlier and that he was surprised O’Donnell stepped down.

O’Donnell’s campaign was

roiled by a secretly made audio recording, released 11 days before the election, that captured O’Donnell plotting with state Rep. Michael Capps and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin to cover up their role in the false attack ad and instead frame Sedgwick County Republican Party Chairman Dalton Glasscock.

District Attorney Marc Bennett has been conducting an investigation into whether all

three office holders should be ousted for misconduct.

Late Friday, Bennett announced he had found sufficient grounds to pursue ouster against O’Donnell.

“The District Attorney notified legal counsel for Commissioner O’Donnell that the District Attorney intended to initiate a legal proceeding for forfeiture of public office through ouster proceedings the week of Monday, November 16, 2020,” Bennett said in a

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statement. “ In response to this communication, Commissioner O’Donnell, through counsel, indicated his intent to resign from his position prior to 5:00 p.m. November 13, 2020 effectively terminating the need for official ouster proceedings.

“The Office of the District Attorney received confirmation that the Commissioner tendered his resignation before 5:00 p.m. this evening.”

O’Donnell had already announced that he would not serve a second term if reelected. He is trailing Sarah Lopez by a narrow margin of 125 votes in his reelection bid.

Howell said his understanding is that the Republican Party precinct committee members in SEE O’DONNELL, 12A

Sedgwick County turns up 382 missed ballots; 10,200 left to count

BY STEPHAN BISAHA

Kansas News Service

In less than two weeks, thousands of college students in Kansas will board planes and hop into cars daydreaming of sweet potatoes and turkey legs.

Most of those students won’t return to campus for the rest of the semester. To cut the risk of spreading the coronavirus, the majority of universities in Kansas will have students finish the fall semester online.

Even one-way Thanksgiving trips, health experts worry, could mean trouble when all those students return home, pack around holiday feasts, pass the gravy and hug an uncle or a grandma they haven’t seen for months.

One study found that student travel during spring break led to the local spread of the coronavirus. Now that the virus is surging across Kansas, the mass exodus from college campuses could make the spread even worse.

Here’s what Kansas’ six universities are — or aren’t — telling students before they leave to help prevent the spread.

GET TESTED BEFORE YOU GO Kansas State University has been the one state school encouraging all students to get tested before leaving — specifically three days before they travel to get results beSEE UNIVERSITIES, 2A

TRAVIS HEYING The Wichita Eagle

Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell, a member of the county election board, closely examines the signature on a ballot during the board’s canvassing meeting on Friday.

BY DION LEFLER

dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

Sedgwick County’s Election Board voted Friday to count 10,200 remaining ballots from the Nov. 3 election and reject about 2,000 for a variety of flaws.

The county’s election commissioner also announced that

random auditing that began last year bore its first fruit this election, catching 382 ballots that should have been counted, but weren’t.

The five-member Election Board met Friday with Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman to start the process of “canvassing” the votes.

It’s a procedure that takes place after every election to

examine questionable ballots and weed out those that shouldn’t legally be counted.

The votes that passed Friday’s examination will be tallied over the weekend by the election office, with final results in all races expected to be reported at noon Monday.

Lehman would ordinarily have led the board through the canvassing in person. But this

Wichita teachers’ union members strongly reject contract offer from school district

BY MEGAN STRINGER

mstringer@wichitaeagle.com

Members of Wichita’s teachers’ union voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract agreement with the district over concerns about lack of salary increases, teacher workload and

building safety in the pandemic, the union announced Friday.

The United Teachers of Wichita voted 85% no on the collective bargaining agreement. In all, 79% of union members voted. Representatives from USD 259 and the union will both return to negotiations.

The previous contract expired

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at the end of July. Without a new agreement, the old one remains in place. Teachers are not able to strike and not planning to do so, said Gabriel Costilla, vice president of the UTW. In the past 30 years, UTW has only rejected a contract offer from the district twice, Costilla said. This year, negotiations

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were initially delayed, but began in August. Last month, the parties required a federal mediator after they reached an impasse and did not agree on compensation.

“Remember, a no vote is just the first step,” a post on the union’s Facebook page read. “In order to convince the BOE to

Partly sunny 70°/35° See 12A

time, she had to appear by remote conferencing because she’s been undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and can’t risk exposure to the coronavirus that’s caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The post-election audit that caught the 382 uncounted ballots was required by a state law SEE VOTE COUNTING, 2A

truly support teachers, we’re going to need to come together like never before.”

Union staff referred to the district’s proposal as “abysmal.”

The Wichita Board of Education did not offer salary increases to about a third of teachers, according to the union, which contended the offer was disrespectful as teachers “work harder than we have ever worked before in the midst of a global pandemic that puts our mental and physical health on the line.”

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Partly sunny and windy Precip: 5%

Breezy early; otherwise, mainly clear Precip: 5%

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National Extremes Friday for the 48 contiguous states High: 92° in Weslaco, TX Low: -4° in Leadville, CO World Extremes Friday High: 116° in Fitzroy Crossing, Australia Low: -48° in Delyankir, Russia

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at El Dorado near El Dorado at Augusta

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San Francisco 60/48

Minneapolis 41/31

Washington 57/45

Kansas City 64/38

Denver 44/26

New York 52/40

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Houston 83/67

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FROM PAGE 1A

O’DONNELL O’Donnell’s 2nd District will have to select a replacement, as short as that term would be.

“They’ll only be there around 40 days or so,” if Lopez holds onto the lead in the election.

O’Donnell has been

under fire for his role in a smear video last year that falsely accused Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexually harassing college-age Capitol interns while he was a state representative.

O’Donnell was part of a

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team tied to the attack ad that was launched from behind the shield of an anonymous New Mexico shell company.

The video was an outside effort to boost the campaign of then-Mayor Jeff Longwell.

Dion Lefler: 316-268-6527 Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752

TRAVIS HEYING The Wichita Eagle

Peggy Schneegurt, a librarian at two Wichita elementary schools, holds up a sign protesting working conditions at a demonstration this summer outside of North High.

FROM PAGE 1A

TEACHERS “The District has the utmost respect for teachers and deeply value the hard work they do to educate our students during these very difficult times,” said Susan Arensman, district spokesperson.

“The pandemic has caused our staff to work differently in more stressful and challenging circumstances. The BOE has a long track record of honoring teachers and staff members with compensation when funding has been available.”

The compensation package that the BOE offered was a 1.41% increase, Arensman said.

“The District put forth a wage package that is sustainable given the current

uncertainty around the pandemic, future enrollment and future funding,” Arensman added.The lack of salary increases doesn’t account for cost of living changes, Costilla said. The union typically expects to see every teacher receive a cost of living increase each year. Costilla said it was clear in negotiations that the district has the money to offer those increases, despite any negative budget impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That was a pretty big shock to a lot of our teachers,” Costilla said. “But it’s not just about salary, it’s the incredible workload our teachers are under, whether they’re re-

mote or in person. They’re working crazy hours to find innovate ways to meet student needs.”

The union recommended members vote no on the contract, citing lack of recognition of health and safety risks to teachers with no salary increases.

They also said teachers feel “Frustration and indignation at being the last consideration for the BOE as they conduct their business,” union staff told members in an email this week. Voting began Tuesday and ended at noon Friday.

If the district offers cost of living increases for teachers, Costilla said members might accept the contract. However, a growing workload in the remote learning environment and concerns about COVID-19 safety in school buildings also have

City Albuquerque Atlanta Austin Billings Birmingham Boston Cheyenne Chicago Dallas Denver Fairbanks Honolulu Houston Las Vegas Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis New Orleans New York Oklahoma City Omaha Philadelphia Phoenix Raleigh St. Louis Seattle Wash., DC

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near Towanda at Augusta

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Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain, sf-snow flurries, sn-snow, i-ice

MICHAEL O’DONNELL HAD ALREADY ANNOUNCED THAT HE WOULD NOT SERVE A SECOND TERM IF REELECTED.

teachers worried, he added.

Many teachers would like the option to work from home if they are teaching remotely, Costilla said, as opposed to in the school building. The union also wants in-person teachers to be able to work from home if they need to quarantine, instead of using up sick leave. They’ve been working with the district to find solutions for this and have made some progress, but policies could depend upon a building principal, Costilla said.

When members approve a new contract, it will be retroactive to August and will likely last one year.

Teachers’ unions have been in the spotlight across the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

Many called on districts to take additional safety precautions for teachers and students, and some threatened strikes.

Moving forward, UTW is looking for ways teachers can join together in collective action. Teachers want the Wichita community to know why they’re seeking contract changes and hope to persuade the BOE to return to the bargaining table with a contract teachers are more likely to accept, the union said.

“My hope is that they come back quickly with a better offer, so we can move forward and do the work we need to do,” Costilla said.

Megan Stringer: 316-347-7442, @megstringers

Trump has 10 days to make his legal case

BY MICHAEL WILNER

mwilner@mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON

The clock is ticking for Republicans who insist rampant voter fraud altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Party leaders are asking for time to come up with evidence supporting their claims, which so far have been unsubstantiated, because three states that clinched victory for President-elect Joe Biden – Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania – will certify their election results within the next 10 days.

Republicans have moved to halt the certification of results in all three states, and they hope recounts or audits of votes in some states could delay those final certifications.

“Our legal strategy is to proceed to bring resolution to any of our issues prior to final certification,” said Matt Morgan, general counsel for the Trump campaign.

He said secretaries of state might have to recertify results if recounts change the ultimate vote tally. “So all of our legal matters are on timelines that we hope will achieve our intended result prior to final certification,” Morgan said.

The certifications will effectively close the door on Trump’s legal challenges.

The only state that has confirmed it will recount votes is Georgia, where Biden leads President Donald Trump by over 14,000 votes. That recount could be completed before the state’s Nov. 20 deadline to certify election results.

Pennsylvania and Michigan certify their vote tallies on Nov. 23. Biden leads Trump in Pennsylvania by over 50,000 votes, and in Michigan by nearly 150,000 votes.

The Trump campaign has also called for a re-

count in Wisconsin, where they are entitled to one as long as they pay for it. That state’s deadline for certification is Dec. 1, and Biden’s margin of victory stands at nearly 20,000 votes.

Attorneys for Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party have already lost over a dozen cases.

Several lawsuits filed since Election Day have been rejected in state courts on grounds that they lacked evidence or sound legal arguments.

And the few cases that remain active are seen by legal experts as unlikely to succeed based on their merits or change the outcome of the race.

“The forces of inertia are on Biden’s side, because the processes of moving toward certification and choosing electors is pretty much on autopilot unless there’s some way of disrupting it,” said Richard Hasen, chancellor’s professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. “The cases as a whole seem quite weak, either weak factually or weak legally or both.”

Aides to Trump acknowledge his legal wrangling is unlikely to change the outcome of the election.

But they struggle to articulate what the president hopes to achieve by casting doubt on the democratic process.

One theory – supported by the framing of the Trump team’s lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania – is that the president and his campaign hope to sow enough doubt in the integrity of the results to justify state legislatures breaking with the popular vote and sending electors to vote for Trump instead of Biden.

“What people are scratching their heads over is, what’s the end game here? Because it does not appear that Trump’s going to be able to litigate his way to victory,” said Hasen.

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SUNDAY DECEMBER 13 2020

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com

As the U.S. economy faltered under the coronavirus pandemic and Congress unleashed a torrent of federal spending to protect businesses and save Amer-

ican jobs, two Wichita elected officials signed up for help.

Michael Capps, a state legislator, and James Clendenin, a Wichita City Council member, appear to have submitted false information to get federal money for their company.

Records indicate they inflated

their payroll, asking for money to pay the salaries of workers who did not exist.

Capps also sought a $150,000 disaster loan to cover six months of expenses for another company with annual revenues around $40,000 a year, according to Dun & Bradstreet, sug-

conte lusive on unt li n com/ t : kans as ne activ . ate

$3.99

Two elected officials awarded a total of $495,200 from CARES Act. Did they need it?

BY CHANCE SWAIM

BO SUBSNUS for S et u C R I B for e p your ac ERS xc co

gesting the company applied for far more than its fair share.

Capps did the same thing with a charity he controls. The nonprofit was awarded a disaster loan worth more than triple the revenue it has ever reported to the IRS in a single year. Six months later, Capps dissolved

James Clendenin

Michael Capps

the charity. He told The Eagle that he plans to return the loan.

Capps says he did nothing wrong.

The companies and organizations Capps sought money for — Midwest Business Group LLC, Krivacy LLC and Fourth and Long Foundation — are the same ones used to launch and fund a false attack campaign SEE OFFICIALS, 8A

Pfizer set to ship first doses of vaccine to states

BY ABBY GOODNOUGH, REED ABELSON AND JAN HOFFMAN

New York Times

ered multiple multibillion-dollar bailouts to farmers to make up for the lost revenue, an initiative that helped him maintain his popularity in farm country.

But even as new trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada took effect during the final year of Trump’s presidency and ended the battle of retaliatory tariffs, many farms are still recovering. In 2020, government subsidies are projected to account for as much of 40% of total farm income, a record $46 billion nationwide.

It’s not a business model that farmers or lawmakers think is sustainable.

“We’ll lose some of that bribery money,” quipped Schmidt.

Farmers in the region are

At Novant Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the new ultracold freezers are ready — enough to eventually house more than 500,000 doses of the first coronavirus vaccine approved in the United States.

In Los Angeles, the CedarsSinai medical center has installed extra security cameras to protect the secret location of its soon-to-arrive supply of the vaccine.

In Jackson, Mississippi, the state’s top two health officials are preparing to roll up their own sleeves in the coming days and be the first to get the shots there as cameras roll, hoping to send the message, “We trust it.”

The Food and Drug Administration’s emergency authorization Friday night of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech has set in motion the most ambitious vaccination campaign in the nation’s history, a challenge of staggering proportions choreographed against a backdrop of soaring infection rates and deaths. This weekend, 2.9 million doses of the vaccine are to begin traveling by plane and guarded truck from Pfizer facilities in Michigan and Wisconsin to designated locations, mostly hospitals, in all 50 states.

The first injections are expected to be given by Monday to high-risk health care workers, the initial step to-

SEE FARMERS, 6A

SEE VACCINE, 7A

JAIME GREEN The Wichita Eagle

Jason Schmidt, a dairy farmer who lives outside of Newton, visits one of his favorite Jersey cows. Schmidt, a fifth-generation Kansas farmer, wants the Biden administration to reward farmers based on how much carbon they are storing in the soil.

Kansas farmers hope Biden ends trade wars

BY BRYAN LOWRY

blowry@mcclatchydc.com WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump carried Harvey County, in south central Kansas, by 20 points.

That was no surprise to dairy farmer Jason Schmidt, who voted for President-elect Joe Biden.

“Being a progressive farmer, just about anywhere in the country you’re going to be in the

minority,” said Schmidt, who lives just outside of Newton, the county seat.

While rural Kansas and Missouri overwhelmingly favored Trump in 2016 and 2020, farmers see an opportunity with the incoming Biden administration: a rational trade policy.

Trump waged costly trade wars with China and Mexico that decimated their profits for much of his presidency. Kansas saw 36 Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies in 2019, the fourth

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most of any state, according to the American Farm Bureau. The 595 farm bankruptcies nationwide in 2019 marked an eightyear high.

“Interestingly, when I was talking with some of my relatives who are on the other side of the political spectrum they admitted to me that Trump didn’t know what he was doing in the trade war,” said Schmidt, a member of the Kansas Farmers Union.

Trump’s administration off-

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SUNDAY DECEMBER 13 2020

...................................................................................THE WICHITA EAGLE

FROM PAGE 1A

OFFICIALS against Brandon Whipple during the 2019 Wichita mayoral race. Former Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell, who does not share ownership of businesses with Capps and Clendenin, was also involved in the attack ad and subsequent cover-up.

The election-related scandal has led to calls for their resignations and attempts by the Sedgwick County district attorney to remove them from office.

O’Donnell resigned, an ouster of Clendenin is pending, and both the Sedgwick County district attorney and Kansas attorney general said they don’t have the authority to remove Capps from his seat in the Kansas House of Representatives.

U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, a Wichita Republican who voted for the CARES Act coronavirus stimulus package, said the apparent abuse is part of a “pattern of bad behavior” by Capps and Clendenin.

In response to the Eagle’s findings, Estes said any fraud committed to receive federal funds as part of the coronavirus relief efforts should be prosecuted.

Applications for the federal loans said knowingly making a false statement on an application to a federally-insured bank and federal government could be punishable by up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

“These programs were established to help Americans, and anyone fraudulently abusing COVID-19related relief programs should be prosecuted,” he said. “Unfortunately, these lawmakers have exhibited a pattern of bad behavior, and this is another reminder of why they need to step down from serving the public.”

TRANSPARENCY CONCERNS Together, entities con-

trolled by Capps and Clendenin were awarded $495,200. They tapped into CARES Act money at the federal, state and county level. It’s unclear how much money has been dispersed.

They applied for loans through the two primary coronavirus relief programs offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration: the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Advance Grant program.

Between the two programs, the SBA awarded $717 billion nationally in loans from March to November.

The SBA initially would not release information on the loans and fought to keep the information private for months after being sued by several news organizations, including the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Names of entities who were awarded loans and the exact amount each received was not released until earlier this month under a court order.

But state and federal agencies do not make enough information — such as the number of employees on payroll — publicly available on private companies and small charities. That would allow the public to crossreference claims made by companies to receive the coronavirus relief loans.

Employee data on entities associated with Capps and Clendenin only surfaced in a civil lawsuit brought by one of Capps’ former employers to recover at least $200,000.

Capps had to report his business assets in that lawsuit. It wouldn’t have been otherwise publicly available.

Coupled with federal data released last week, an Eagle investigation found three entities connected to a Wichita politi-

cal scandal benefited greatly from federal coronavirus relief funds.

Among the Eagle’s findings: A Midwest Business Group LLC, the company owned by Capps and Clendenin, claimed eight employees to secure an $80,500 loan through the Paycheck Protection Program. The company had no employees under the program’s definitions in 2019, records show. Besides Capps and Clendenin, it has only one agent, and she works on a commission-only basis, meaning she was potentially ineligible.

A Fourth and Long Foundation, a Cappscontrolled 501(c)(3) corporation set up in 2013 to raise money for a stadium at Wichita West High School that was never built, was awarded more than triple its annual income through an Economic Injury Disaster Loan.

Those funds were supposed to cover six months of working capital. Six months after its first federal award, the Fourth and Long Foundation dissolved.

A Krivacy LLC, another Capps-controlled entity, was awarded the maximum loan amount of $150,000 under the EIDL program, which was supposed to help businesses and organizations overcome a “temporary loss of revenue due to the coronavirus” and was supposed to be limited to six months of working capital.

According to Dun & Bradstreet, the company’s annual revenues are around $41,950 a year.

A Fourth and Long and Krivacy LLC were each awarded $10,000 grants that were reserved for businesses and organizations with 10 or more employees. Neither entity had any employees, according to an October court filing listing Capps’ 2019 business interests.

In addition to the federal money, Midwest Business Group and Krivacy were each awarded $20,000 Small Business

. ..................................................................................................................

Here’s a list of the awards A Krivacy

LLC (owned by Capps): $10,000 EIDL Advance grant; $150,000 EIDL loan; $20,000 Small Business Working Capital grant A Midwest

Business Group LLC (owned by Capps and Clendenin): $114,700 EIDL loan; $80,500 PPP loan; $20,000 Small Business Working Capital grant; $5,000 Safe Operating Grant A Fourth

and Long Foundation (controlled by Capps): $10,000 EIDL Advance grant; $85,000 EIDL loan ...................................................................................................................

Working Capital grants through the state’s CARES Act funds in November.

Midwest Business Group was awarded a $5,000 Safe Operating Grant by Sedgwick County on Nov. 25.

A GROWING COMPANY The Paycheck Protection Program was created to help small businesses pay their employees during a worldwide health crisis, especially in industries forced to shut down or severely limit their operations and those suffering catastrophic losses due to shutdowns and travel restrictions. The PPP loans offered payroll loans for companies with as many as 500 employees.

The more workers a company had, the more money it could receive.

Midwest Business Group, which brokers business sales, listed eight employees to receive an $80,500 forgivable PPP loan. That number was supposed to be based on its average payroll for 2019.

But the company, which is owned jointly by Capps and Clendenin, didn’t have any employees in 2019, records show.

In recently filed court documents, Capps claimed Midwest Business Group had no employees and only one “agent” who worked on a commissiononly basis in the 12 months that ended in November 2019. Payroll costs for commission-only workers are potentially ineligible under the PPP. Clendenin did not re-

spond to questions about his company. As a City Council member, he receives a $46,026 salary and full health care benefits from the City of Wichita.

Capps, who as a member of the Kansas House gets paid around $20,000 from the state, declined to say how the federal money was spent, other than saying it was “used in accordance with Federal guidelines.”

He also would not discuss the number of employees.

“You do not have a right to private, personnel information from a private company,” he said.

Nor would he discuss the business operations.

“As with all businesses, operations change over time, especially a young company in growth mode,” he said in an email. “We have had numerous new staff, agents and partnerships over the past year and continue to solicit for additional employment vacancies.”

To get the loan, business owners were required to self-certify that “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant.”

Capps did not explain why a company in growth mode needed money intended for businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.

“A growing company is a relative term,” he said.

Midwest Business Group’s “Meet Our Team” web page shows a

team of three: the two officeholders as partners and Vanessa Christophersen, the agent listed in court documents.

The bank that handled the PPP loan and the SBA, which administered the disaster assistance, declined to comment.

“The SBA does not comment on individual borrowers,” SBA spokesperson Carol Chastang said in an email. “Evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse with any of the SBA’s loan programs is not tolerated and should be reported.”

Emprise Bank, a Wichita-based financial institution that serviced the PPP loan to Midwest Business Group, also declined to comment.

“Our privacy policy doesn’t allow us to provide or discuss customer information,” an Emprise spokesperson said.

The SBA paid a 5% processing fee to banks for loans less than $350,000.

Unlike previous SBA programs, during the coronavirus pandemic banks were permitted to disperse money based on selfcertifications by business owners without verifying their claims. Banks are held harmless if a business doesn’t follow the rules and PPP loans were fully guaranteed by the federal government.

‘A SLAP IN THE FACE TO THE PUBLIC’ Capps declined to provide evidence to dispute the Eagle’s findings and said he’s tracking all of his spending in accordance with federal law.

A national nonpartisan watchdog group said Capps seeking federal loans is “a slap in the face to the public.”

“A lot of small businesses and nonprofits applied for these funds and not everyone who needed them to stay afloat received them,” said Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch, a national nonprofit watchdog group and informaSEE OFFICIALS, 9A

SUNDAY DECEMBER 13 2020

THE WICHITA EAGLE ...................................................................................

FROM PAGE 8A

OFFICIALS tion service.

“Look around,” she said. “Look at all the restaurants and other small businesses that have closed. The people out of work. The working people who are underpaid. The tenants who can’t afford rent, and the home owners who can’t afford to pay their mortgages.”

Particularly alarming to Styron was the money awarded to the Fourth and Long Foundation, given its past involvement in a political campaign.

“A nonprofit acting as a pass-through organization for political funds is not only strictly prohibited by the IRS, it is a slap in the face to the public in cases where that same nonprofit is holding its hand out for tax-subsidized federal grants,” Styron said. “If a nonprofit has the money to violate IRS rules by playing around in political campaigns, it’s not in an ethical position to hold its hand out to taxpayers for government subsidized funding.”

Cindy Miles, executive director of the Kansas Nonprofit Chamber, was also critical of Fourth and Long and Capps.

“Capps has committed who knows how many acts of fraud,” Miles said.

“And I think it sends a signal to other people that, ‘Hey, Michael Capps got away with starting a fraudulent nonprofit organization and getting grants and that kind of thing, and we can do that, too.”

Questioned about the Fourth and Long Foundation dissolving after taking federal funds, Capps said the charity hasn’t spent any of the money and plans to return it to the SBA — if he can figure out how.

“Fourth and Long Foundation did indeed dissolve and all funds received under the EIDL Loan are being returned to the SBA,” he said. “No funds from the EIDL Loan were spent. We are awaiting

instructions from the SBA on processing the loan return.”

Capps dissolved the charity on Oct. 19.

He said it’s standard operating procedure to not disclose information about private businesses and charities.

“Why don’t you inquire to the personnel records of other private companies and see if they disclose their personnel information,” he said in an email.

“Why don’t you ask for expenditures from the Kansas Human(e) Society, also a 501c3 (sic) and see if they give you their expenditures.”

The Kansas Humane Society’s expenditures are publicly available and listed on its IRS Form 990. In its most recent filing, it reported expenditures of $4.1 million with more than half — $2.2 million — spent on employee salaries, compensation and benefits.

The Kansas Humane Society was awarded a $333,300 PPP loan to help pay 79 employees. It did not take out a disaster loan.

Because the Fourth and Long Foundation is so small, it annually files a postcard version of the IRS disclosure form for charities, the 990-N. It lists the most basic information about Fourth and Long — the name and address of the organization, Capps’ name, and certification that the charity’s gross receipts were not greater than $25,000 for the year.

Fourth and Long received a $10,000 EIDL Advance Grant and an $85,000 EIDL loan.

Capps would not say what services the charity has provided to the community.

Styron said that money could have been better spent elsewhere.

“Nonprofits play an important role in acting as a last-ditch safety net for people in need,” she said.

“Every dollar ... that was

misdirected is a dollar that could have gone to a nonprofit in a position to really help people during this time of incredible need.”

MORAN PROMISES OVERSIGHT Established through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, CARES Act for short, the Paycheck Protection Program was initially seen as a lifeboat for small businesses struggling to pay workers through the pandemic. It provided shortterm, potentially forgivable loans to cover payroll at small businesses.

The $670 billion program has since been criticized by a Congressional watchdog agency for its lack of transparency and internal controls to prevent fraud and abuse.

“Given the immediate need for these loans, SBA worked to streamline the program so that lenders could begin distributing these funds as soon as possible,” an October report by the Government Accountability Office said.

“For example, lenders were permitted to rely on borrowers’ self-certifications and use of loan proceeds. As a result, there may be significant risk that some fraudulent or inflated applications were approved.”

PPP loans could also be used on mortgage interest, rent, utilities and interest on previous loans, but to be forgiven entirely, at least 60% had to be used on payroll.

Capps applauded the federal response to the pandemic.

“Through the bold leadership of President Trump, with the aid of Senate Republicans, our country answered the call in providing critical relief to unemployed citizens and economically suffering businesses across the country,” he said.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, promised oversight and legislative fixes by the Senate to address The Eagle’s findings on Capps and Clendenin.

“Congress provided

funding in the CARES Act to support small businesses with emergency resources to pay their employees and keep their doors open during this

pandemic,” Moran said.

“Anyone who commits fraud should be reported, and there should be a thorough investigation into the use of the federal

funds they received or requested.”

Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752, @byChanceSwaim

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THURSDAY DECEMBER 17 2020

Virus relief bill revised to include stimulus payments

BY ANDREW TAYLOR

Associated Press

Congressional negotiators closed in Wednesday on a $900 billion COVID-19 relief package that would deliver additional “paycheck protection” subsidies to businesses, $300 per week jobless checks, and $600 or so stimulus payments to most Americans.

The long-delayed measure

was coming together as Capitol Hill combatants finally fashioned difficult compromises, often at the expense of more ambitious Democratic wishes for the legislation, to complete the second major relief package of the pandemic.

It’s the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the landmark CARES Act in March, which delivered $1.8 trillion in aid and more generous jobless benefits and direct

payments to individuals. Since then, Democrats have repeatedly called for ambitious further federal steps to provide relief and battle the pandemic, while Republicans have sought to more fully reopen the economy and to avoid padding the government’s $27 trillion debt.

But President-elect Joe Biden is eager for an aid package to prop up the economy and deliver direct aid to the jobless and hungry, even though it falls

short of what Democrats want.

He called the emerging package “an important down payment“ and promised more help next year.

Republicans, too, are anxious to approve some aid before going home for the year.

“We made major headway toward hammering out a bipartisan relief package,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told reporters Wednesday morning. And dur-

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ing a Senate GOP lunchtime call a day earlier, party leaders stressed the importance of reaching an agreement before for the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff election, according to a person who was on the private call and granted anonymity to discuss it.

The details are still being worked out, but lawmakers in both parties said leaders have agreed on a top-line total of about $900 billion, with direct payments of perhaps $600 to most Americans and a $300per-week bonus federal unemployment benefit to partially replace a $600-per-week benefit that expired this summer. It also includes the renewal of extra weeks of state unemploySEE RELIEF, 5A

County to pay arena operator for losses from COVID-19

BY DION LEFLER

dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

cess, so we’ll be looking at that,” Shelton said. “There was an open-records request for that information yesterday.

They have provided expenditure reports and proof of those expenses.

“I can’t tell you at this point what the disposition of that is, because I don’t know. Not that I won’t tell you, but I just don’t know at this point.”

Replied Dennis: “I appreciate it and I think we need to ask for the money back, thank you.”

Dennis is the first Wichitaarea official to publicly address the awards to Capps and Clendenin, who attended the Wich-

Sedgwick County will pay the operator of the Intrust Bank Arena $200,000 next year to manage the county-owned facility, plus cover ongoing operating losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2021 loss is estimated to be $1.1 million, as the arena struggles to bring operations back to normal after being almost entirely shut down for nine months by coronavirus concerns, said county Chief Financial Officer Lindsay Poe Rousseau.

The county will also cover this year’s arena losses, which will be invoiced in January and are expected to be as much as $500,000, county spokeswoman Kate Flavin said.

Money to pay the losses will come from the arena’s reserve, a combination of the remnant from the sales tax that built the arena in 2010 and a $1.50 “facility fee” charged on arena tickets.

Also Wednesday, arena management announced that it will reopen to events on a limited basis with the Jan. 1 home opener for the Wichita Thunder minor-league hockey team.

Attendance will be limited to 11.5% of the arena’s seating capacity of about 12,000. Masks and social distancing will be mandatory for fans; tickets and concessions will be touchless.

The $200,000 management fee will be paid to the arena’s private-sector operating company, ASM Global, barring the unlikely event that the arena runs at a profit next year, Poe Rousseau said.

SMG, the original arena contractor, was absorbed by ASM in a 2019 merger and the county contract remains under the SMG name.

Under ordinary circumstances, ASM/SMG shares profits with the county, getting the first $400,000 and splitting anything above that 50-50 with the county. ASM/SMG would also be responsible for any operating losses.

However, the contract contains a “force majeure” clause

SEE CARES ACT, 3A

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TRAVIS HEYING The Wichita Eagle

Fans celebrate as Kansas State’s Justin Gardner runs an interception back for a touchdown against Kansas on Oct. 24. The team has announced that it will not pursue a bowl bid because of mounting COVID-19 issues on its roster. See story on Page 1B.

Commissioner wants Capps, Clendenin to return CARES Act money to Sedgwick County

BY CHANCE SWAIM AND DION LEFLER

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com dlefler@wichitaeagle.com

A $5,000 grant to two Wichita elected officials is under audit, and a Sedgwick County commissioner is asking them to return the money after an Eagle investigation uncovered nearly half a million dollars in questionable CARES Act awards to entities tied to a political smear campaign.

Michael Capps, a state legislator, and James Clendenin, a Wichita City Council member, are under investigation by the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office for possible

abuse of federal programs meant to keep small businesses and their employees afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

James Capps and Clendenin Clendenin tapped into CARES Act dollars at the federal, state and county level. Sedgwick County gave their company, Midwest Business Group, LLC, a Safe Operating Grant that could be used for a variety of costs or to reimburse companies and organizations for coronavirus-related expenses between March 1 and Nov. 30.

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Questions about the grant to the two officials were raised by Commissioner David Dennis during a report on the Michael county’s CARES Capps Act spending.

“We gave $5,000 to Capps and Clendenin. Have we asked for that back?” Dennis asked.

“We have not yet asked for that back,” replied Brent Shelton, the county’s deputy chief financial officer.

But Shelton said the matter is under audit.

“They are being reviewed as part of a random review pro-

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Wichita hospital region CARES ACT has state’s lowest ratio of available ICU beds; county adds 21 deaths FROM PAGE 1A

ita City Council meeting remotely on Tuesday and didn’t speak during the four-hour meeting. No one else on the council brought it up.

BY JASON TIDD

jtidd@wichitaeagle.com

The Wichita area has the lowest percentage of available intensive care unit beds of any region in Kansas, according to a new coronavirus hospitalization report from the state’s health department and hospital association.

Just 25 of the 278 adult staffed ICU beds in the south-central Kansas hospital region were available as of Monday, or about 9%. Statewide, about 17% of adult staffed ICU beds were available, the Kansas Hospital Association and Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported on Tuesday.

“The issues are real,” said Jon Rolph, a Wichita businessman who hosted a regional hospital report on Tuesday via teleconference. “We’re on the edge, and if the numbers spike and we do get a Thanksgiving or holiday or flu bounce, it could really start getting even more serious.”

The report showed the south-central region hospitals had 313 confirmed COVID-19 patients. There were 361 confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients hospitalized, with 105 of those in the ICU. There were 42 COVID-19 patients on ventilators.

While the statistics are for the weekly reporting period that ended Monday, Rolph said hospital numbers are constantly moving and the reports are snapshots in time.

“When it comes to the hospitals, if there’s issues, it usually revolves around one of three things: stuff, staff or space,” he said.

“Stuff was the issue in April, which was around PPE (personal protective equipment). Right now it’s around staff.”

The south-central region had the second-highest percentage of hospitals anticipating staffing shortages this week, at 53%.

The Kansas City metro region was the highest at 57%. The statewide figure

was 40%.

Dee Dee Dewell from Ascension Via Christi said staffing issues can be more challenging for smaller, rural hospitals that have fewer employees. The high demand for contract staff has exacerbated the problem.

“Those staffing shortages directly impact how many patients that you’re going to be able to care for at any given point in time,” Dewell said.

Dr. Stacy Dashiell, a family physician in Rice County, said that when she goes on social media, she sees inaccurate public perceptions on the pandemic.

“It is asking things of our rural healthcare systems that are so far outside of normal for us,” Dashiell said. “... We are definitely feeling the staffing shortages that were noted. We have three laboratory technicians, so when one tests positive and the other two have been exposed, that is literally incapacitating for us.”

She said her rural hospital has no ICU beds and depends on larger facilities for transfers. Finding beds has been difficult.

The ICUs have been full at Wichita’s Wesley Healthcare and Ascension Via Christi hospitals since the start of November, according to the Sedgwick County Health Department. Combined, the hospitals were treating 240 COVID-19 patients with 76 of those in ICUs as of Monday. They have approximately 208 ICU beds total for all patients.

On Tuesday, the county health department reported 21 new deaths from the coronavirus disease. The county’s total for the pandemic is now 220. Local hospitalizations, new cases and the positive test rate have seen modest improvement.

Dewell said the number of new COVID-19 cases in the south-central Kansas region was a small decrease from the previous week.

“Since the end of No-

vember, we have actually kind of seen a slight plateau in that number of cases,” she said. “So this could possibly indicate that increase in awareness from the statewide efforts that have been taken by many groups to take measures to slow the spread.”

Seth Konkel, who has worked in public health emergency management in Sedgwick County, said it is important to reduce the high positive test rate.

That statistic is used for several purposes, including reopening schools and mandated testing of nursing home workers. The state and local numbers remain in the red zone of both the KDHE and the White House coronavirus task force.

“This is not going to be stopped by one person, one entity,” Konkel said.

“This is really going to be us as a community, and we can’t do it without everybody in the region and within the state.”

“We’re going to continue to see a higher level as long as people are not following the recommended guidelines. Those are science-based. Wear a mask, social distance.”

The new hospital reports were the product of a bipartisan effort from Gov. Laura Kelly, Senate President Ty Masterson and Speaker of the House Ron Ryckman, according to the governor’s office.

The weekly reports are intended to “regularly communicate critical data to better inform regional and state leaders as they navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Kansas Hospital Association reports on the state’s seven hospital regions will be released every Tuesday through the KDHE’s website. Local health leaders will present the information and inform state leadership about immediate needs in their communities.

Jason Tidd: 316-268-6593, @Jason_Tidd

Mother of 2 who walks 6 miles to work surprised with van

BY JASON TIDD

jtidd@wichitaeagle.com

A Kansas mother of two young children will no longer have to walk to work after her community came together to help her.

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Office said deputies received several calls for service over the last two weeks for a 24year-old Princeton woman walking along the road.

The mother of two was walking to work 6 miles both ways on the cold highway.

The deputies would give her a ride, and they learned she worked at the Love’s Truck Stop to support her two young children.

“She had to walk so she could feed her children and was very driven and motivated to take care of her family any way she could,” the sheriff’s office said.

After giving her a ride again on Dec. 9, a group of deputies pooled their “No Shave November” funds with additional assistance from some citizens and businesses to donate a van, registration, a year of insurance, two new car seats, a grocery store gift card and $200.

Courtesy of Franklin County Sheriff’s Office

Kansas sheriff’s deputies organized their community to help a woman who walked to work to feed her family.

On Tuesday, the sheriff’s office and community members teamed up with the Love’s Truck Stop to surprise the mom with the gifts “in the hopes for making a better Christmas

for her and her small children,” Sheriff Jeff Richards said.

Jason Tidd: 316-268-6593, @Jason_Tidd

FEDERAL FUNDS, LOCAL RESPONSE An Eagle investigation found about $495,200 in CARES Act funds were awarded to entities controlled by Capps or coowned by Capps and Clendenin.

The $5,000 grant from Sedgwick County is just over 1% of that amount.

But it was part of a pattern of capitalizing on coronavirus relief aid to boost Capps’ and Clendenin’s business interests while other small businesses collapsed.

Capps did not answer questions posed by The Eagle and instead sent a written statement saying that “Contrary to the Eagle’s distortion of the facts, Midwest Business Group applied for the Sedgwick County Safe Operating Grant using the same procedures as all other recipients.

“Further, the funding received under the grant has been expended, properly documented and reported to Sedgwick County consistent with the terms of the grant,” he wrote.

Clendenin did not respond to questions.

The federal money went to two companies and a charity used to launch a political video advertisement that falsely accused Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexual harassment less than three weeks before the 2019 election.

That scandal has resulted in a civil lawsuit, a resignation and widespread condemnation of Capps, Clendenin and former Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell, who partici-

pated in the smear campaign but had no part in seeking federal awards.

In late October, the Sedgwick County Commission and Wichita City Council each censured Clendenin, Capps and O’Donnell for their roles in the anti-Whipple video and a cover-up plot that sought to frame local GOP leaders. The County Commission called on O’Donnell to resign; the City Council did not asked Clendenin to step down.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett is attempting to remove Clendenin from office for his role in the smear campaign and the subsequent cover-up. He filed a petition last month alleging Clendenin engaged in criminal and unethical conduct that made him unfit to serve in office.

Capps was defeated in the August Republican primary and will leave office in January. The District Attorney and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt both said they did not have the authority to oust Capps.

The federal coronavirus relief awards could bring more legal troubles for the two Republican business partners.

Congressman Ron Estes and U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, both Kansas Republicans, have said any fraud identified in the CARES Act programs should be investigated and prosecuted. Federal law enforcement authorities have declined to comment.

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Bennett, who as a district attorney enforces Kansas state law, confirmed Monday that his office has been investigating since September.

He would not comment on the full scope of the investigation.

The two elected officials appear to have submitted false information to get federal money to their company, Midwest Business Group LLC, from the Paycheck Protect Program. Records indicate they inflated their payroll, asking for money to pay the salaries of workers who did not exist to obtain a forgivable $80,500 loan.

Capps also sought a $150,000 disaster loan to cover six months of expenses for Krivacy LLC, which has annual revenues of around $40,000, according to Dun & Bradstreet, suggesting the company applied for far more than its fair share.

Capps did the same thing with a charity he controls called the Fourth and Long Foundation.

The nonprofit was awarded an $85,000 disaster loan worth more than triple the revenue it has ever reported to the IRS in a single year. It also received a $10,000 disaster grant in the spring.

Six months later, Capps dissolved the charity. He told The Eagle that he plans to return the loan.

Krivacy LLC and Fourth and Long Foundation have no employees, and Capps is the sole controlling member of each entity, records show.

Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752, @byChanceSwaim

THE $5,000 GRANT FROM SEDGWICK COUNTY IS JUST OVER 1% OF THE TOTAL. BUT IT WAS PART OF A PATTERN OF CAPITALIZING ON CORONAVIRUS RELIEF AID TO BOOST THEIR BUSINESS.

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WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 23 2020

Wichita City Council member Clendenin to resign

BY CHANCE SWAIM

cswaim@wichitaeagle.com

Under investigation for potential abuse of CARES Act funds and facing ouster proceedings for participating in a political scandal during the 2019 Wichita mayoral race, Wichita City Council member James Clendenin plans to resign by the end of the year, he announced Tuesday.

“It would be selfish and unproductive for me to continue in my council position if other events in any way diverted attention from James the important city Clendenin work that must go on,” Clendenin said Tuesday from the City Council bench as he read from a prepared statement.

Clendenin is the longest serving member on the City Council and faced the possibility of being the first council member ousted in the city’s 150-year history. His resignation is effective Dec. 31.

Clendenin is one of three Wichita Republican officeholders behind the “Protect Wichita Girls” video, a political advertisement that falsely accused Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexual harassment, and a plot to

blame former Sedgwick County GOP Chairman Dalton Glasscock for the bogus ad.

The video was meant to help former Mayor Jeff Longwell, one of Clendenin’s closest allies on the council.

The two other Republicans involved — state Rep. Michael Capps and former Sedgwick County Commission Michael O’Donnell — were both voted out of office this year.

Following the November

Ambulances would be exempt from federal surprise billing ban

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election, O’Donnell resigned after being informed that Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett planned to oust him based on an investigation into the video and subsequent cover-up.

Bennett later filed a petition in district court seeking to remove Clendenin from his seat on the council. Clendenin has not responded to Bennett’s filing in court and was granted an extension until Dec. 30, court records show. Clendenin’s decision to resign would render the move to oust him moot.

The ouster effort arose after Clendenin, Capps and O’Donnell were secretly recorded by Matthew Colborn, the young video entrepreneur hired to SEE CLENDENIN, 2A

Feds sue Walmart over role in opioid crisis

BY MICHAEL BALSAMO

Associated Press WASHINGTON

to the patient of $450. (Whether an ambulance company chooses to pursue this bill is something his research cannot determine, which is why it is merely potential.) Both private and public ambulance departments send surprise bills, which leaves patients with $129 million in potential surprise ambulance bills each year.

An earlier study, published in Health Affairs, also found that a

The Justice Department is suing Walmart, alleging the company unlawfully dispensed controlled substances through its pharmacies, helping to fuel the opioid crisis in America.

The civil complaint filed Tuesday points to the role Walmart’s pharmacies may have played in the crisis by filling opioid prescriptions and by unlawfully distributing controlled substances to the pharmacies during the height of the opioid crisis. Walmart operates more than 5,000 pharmacies in its stores around the country.

The Justice Department alleges Walmart violated federal law by selling thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances that its pharmacists “knew were invalid,” said Jeffrey Clark, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division.

Federal prosecutors also alleges that Walmart also “systematically violated its legal obligation to detect suspicious orders of controlled substances” and report them to the federal government, Clark said.

“Walmart knew that its distribution centers were using an inadequate system for detecting and reporting suspicious orders,” said Jason Dunn, the U.S. attorney in Colorado. “As a result of this inadequate system, for years Walmart reported virtually no suspicious orders at all. In other words, Walmart’s pharmacies ordered opioids in a way that went essentially unmonitored and unregulated.”

Clark said Walmart “violated

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DESIREE RIOS NYT

An ambulance drives past the John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, Nov. 27. Ambulances have the highest out-of-network billing rate of any medical specialty, meaning most rides can result in a surprise bill.

BY SARAH KLIFF AND MARGOT SANGER-KATZ

New York Times

When Congress passed a new law banning surprise medical bills Monday, it made a notable exception: ambulances.

Ambulances have the highest out-of-network billing rate of any medical specialty, meaning most rides can result in a surprise bill. The new federal law will protect patients from the bills of out-of-network doctors

unexpectedly involved in their care. Those protections will not extend to the ambulance trip needed to get there.

Amid a surprise billing debate that involved industry opposition and jurisdictional fights, many lawmakers saw adding ambulances as too hard.

They had little data on the actual costs of ambulance trips and worried about tussling with the local governments that often oversee these services – especially those whose budgets

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have been battered by the economic downturn.

“From a policy standpoint, the omission of ground ambulances is huge,” said Karan Chhabra, a surgical resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who has studied the issue. “It affects a really large number of people, even if the size of the bills isn’t eye-popping.”

Chhabra’s work finds that 71% of ambulance rides have the potential to generate a surprise bill, with an average cost

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...................................................................................THE WICHITA EAGLE

Kelly selects new acting leader of state labor department

BY KATIE BERNARD

cbernard@kcstar.com

The Kansas Department of Labor’s acting secretary stepped down Tuesday in accordance with state law, but Gov. Laura Kelly has not found a permanent replacement to lead the agency.

In a news release Tuesday, Kelly announced that the state’s deputy secretary of labor, Brett Flachsbarth, will be the new acting secretary.

Flachsbarth follows Acting Secretary Ryan Wright, who served for six months, the maximum amount of time allowed by state law. Kelly will have another six months to announce a permanent secretary or choose a new acting secretary.

In a news conference Tuesday, Kelly said her administration was in the process of seeking a permanent nominee and may “come to a resolution in the next couple of weeks.”

“We hope to be able to

FROM PAGE 1A

CLENDENIN produce the false ad targeting Whipple. That recording captured the three politicians plotting to lay blame for the false ad on Glasscock, a close friend of O’Donnell and his former campaign manager.

Bennett’s petition to remove Clendenin said he had engaged in criminal and unethical conduct that made him unfit to hold public office.

Bennett said Clendenin broke multiple laws: A Aiding and abetting criminal false communications — After the video smearing Whipple published, Clendenin knew it was false but denied any knowledge or involvement in interviews with reporters. He waited 18 days to tell the video producer to take down the video.

A Criminal false communications — Clendenin advised Capps to lie on a radio program to shift the blame onto Glasscock.

A Soliciting illegal donations — Clendenin and O’Donnell asked donors to write checks to the Fourth and Long Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity founded and controlled by Capps, for the purpose of a political campaign, which is illegal. The money was funneled through the charity to pay Colborn for producing the Whipple attack ad.

A Violating the City Council’s Code of Ethics — Clendenin’s role in attacking Whipple and Glasscock with false allegations broke the city’s code of ethics, showing he “willfully neglect(ed) to perform any duty enjoined upon (him) by law.”

Earlier this month, Bennett confirmed an investigation into Clendenin and Capps. Nearly a half a million dollars in coronavirus relief aid that went to entities under their control, the same companies and nonprofit charity used to fund and launch the attack ad in 2019.

Clendenin has not responded to questions about his role in the CARES Act awards. He

did not discuss any specifics on Tuesday.

“This is neither the time nor the place for discussing or debating the specifics of allegations being made against me or why I’m choosing today and this forum to make this announcement,” Clendenin said. “Let it be enough, for now, that I recognize that I have become a distraction from the critically important work of this council and from this city that I love and have served for nearly a decade. I cannot in good conscience allow that to continue.”

ERA OF UNCERTAINTY Clendenin’s resignation brings an end to a ten-year stint on the City Council book-ended by economic turmoil.

In 2011, Clendenin ran on a platform of job creation as an outsider with no political experience.

He was endorsed by then-Mayor Carl Brewer, the Wichita Area Builders Association, Wichita Independent Business Association and the Wichita Eagle editorial board at the time. His candidacy received an eleventh-hour boost when his opponent, anti-abortion activist Mark Gietzen, was arrested for traffic charges three weeks before the election.

He leaves office as the longest tenured City Council member in the term-limit era. He won re-election in 2013 and 2017 and would have been prohibited from seeking another consecutive term on the council. His resignation follows months of calls by members of his own party to step down.

Throughout the pandemic, he voted against the city taking an active role in the fight against the coronavirus, sparring with Whipple on a temporary mask ordinance in July. Then last month he voted against allowing the county to enforce its public health order in city limits.

Clendenin was first elected to the Wichita City Council as the city grap-

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take care of this pretty soon,” she said. “We’ve been working hard and looking far and wide.”

Wright, who had been Kelly’s deputy chief of staff, stepped into the role after Delia Garcia resigned amid the agency’s struggles to keep up with increasing unemployment claims.

Under Wright, the agency has significantly reduced backlogs, increased the size of its information technology staff and used a consulting firm to boost

pled with aviation layoffs in the aftermath of the Great Recession. He replaced Jim Skelton, whose term ended early when he was elected to the Sedgwick County Commission.

In an election that put five of seven seats on the council up for grabs, Clendenin, O’Donnell and Pete Meitzner joined the council as newcomers. Brewer and Longwell kept their seats.

Clendenin’s major projects on the council included helping save the Starlight Drive-In outdoor movie theater in southeast Wichita and closing Clapp Golf Course to replace it with a mixture of commercial development and green space. The course closed in 2019, and no plan for its redevelopment has been approved.

Clendenin said Tuesday that he’s also proud of helping shape a new South Central Community Master Plan and opening a new branch library in southeast Wichita.

Clendenin often sided with Longwell on the city’s biggest and most controversial decisions of the past decade.

He joined Longwell in a 5-2 vote against re-opening a contested bid on the new terminal at Eisenhower Airport in 2012 after the city awarded the contract to the higher of two bidders, a team that poured thousands of dollars into Longwell’s campaign account around the time the council was considering a challenge to the bid.

He also sided with Longwell in a 4-3 vote to change the selection criteria in the bidding process for the Northwest Water Treatment Facility in 2018 after Jacobs Engineering beat out Wichita Water Partners, a team of contractors that had given Longwell gifts in the form of golfing rounds. Jacobs later dropped out and Wichita Water Partners was awarded the contract as the sole bidder on the largest capital project in the city’s history.

Both Clendenin and Longwell in a 4-2 vote approved city incentives for a River Vista Apartments project on the west bank of the Arkansas Riv-

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the number of people taking calls.

In the release, Kelly said she expected Flachsbarth to continue that work.

“Brett is a Department of Labor veteran, and he knows the ins-and-outs of the issues KDOL faces,” Kelly said. “I’m confident he will be able to continue the progress made and ensure Kansas families receive the relief they need.”

Garcia’s June 22nd resignation came after her agency chose to “clawback” more than 4,500 duplicate benefit payments totaling $7 million, which caused some residents to overdraft their bank accounts.

The agency and its 1970s era computer system were overwhelmed beginning in March as an unprecedented number of unemployment claims were filed as a result of COVID-19 related closures.

The staff was flooded with calls from Kansans unable to obtain unemployment benefits. Garcia became the target of intense criticism from GOP lawmakers for the problems in the agency’s response.

In the release Tuesday, Kelly said the department has “largely been stabilized” in the last six months.

Since Garcia’s resigna-

tion, KDOL has brought on IT consulting giant Accenture to help make improvements. The company has temporarily boosted unemployment insurance staffing levels to 339 people, up from 75 prior to the pandemic.

The state’s backlog of unemployment claims, the release said, was reduced from around 25,000 in June to 1,800. The agency is expected to eliminate the backlog around Jan. 1st.

The Star’s Jonathan Shorman contributed to this report.

er near First Street and McLean despite accusations that backdoor dealings had spoiled the Request For Proposal process. The same developers have leveraged their experience on the west bank to get millions more in city subsidies for a planned development near Riverfront Stadium.

Clendenin cast what was ultimately the swing vote to allow corporations and PACs to contribute to candidates in city elections in 2016.

Clendenin, along with the rest of the City Council, also supported tearing down Lawrence-Dumont Stadium and building a new $75 million ballpark to attract a Triple-A baseball team to Wichita. After construction on the new stadium had started, details of a secret deal surfaced that showed the team would not commit unless the city sold the team owners prime riverfront land for $1 an acre.

Clendenin said in March 2019 that a Triple-A ballpark was just “one piece of the puzzle” in increasing Wichita’s national profile and that it would help serve as an anchor for other development downtown and around the stadium that would require millions in public and private investment. “It’s time that we put on our big boy pants and be big boys and girls and drive this community forward with bold action,” he said at the time.

evidence surfaces.

When the video first posted online last October, he denied any involvement or knowledge of who made the video.

The District Attorney’s filing shows Clendenin knew the attack ad was coming before it posted online and later tried to delete text messages to hide his involvement.

The day before the video posted, Clendenin asked Colborn to watch one of Whipple’s campaign ads, saying Whipple was “Totally making himself look like a community family man ... he knows it’s coming,” according to the ouster petition.

Clendenin also noted that Whipple’s wife was attempting to look like a “happy little supportive wife” but it was “all about to be blown up,” the filing says.

The day after the attack ad published, Clendenin was asked by an Eagle reporter if he knew about the video or had any role in it. He said: “All I can say is I had nothing to do with the video. I’ve tried to do everything I can to stay out of this mayoral election other than the questions I’m getting about our ethics. ... I had nothing to do with this video and, honestly, it’s a pretty intense video.”

That same afternoon, after Eagle reporting showed the allegations in the video were false, Clendenin sent another text message to Colborn saying, “I seriously need to find out who burned me.”

A week later, on Oct. 25, 2019, Clendenin again said to a reporter that he had no prior knowledge of the video campaign and hadn’t participated. He also denied knowing that Colborn had produced the video.

“No, no, no, no,” Clendenin said. “That, to me, seems awfully out of character for Matt.”

In the summer, after allegations surfaced in Whipple’s lawsuit, Clendenin admitted to raising money through Capps’ charity, but he said he thought it would be used on billboard advertisements.

Clendenin told Bennett this fall that he knew

Capps paid Colborn $5,000 from the Fourth and Long Foundation in October 2019 and said it was Capps’ idea to raise money through a charity.

“It was Capps’ idea to run the money raise(d) for the defamatory ad through the 51C3 (sic), which is illegal,” Clendenin told investigators, according to Bennett’s ouster petition. “Um, I, first of all don’t know that it is illegal.”

CLENDENIN’S CHANGING STORY Clendenin has kept a low profile on the council recently, casting votes without speaking for several weeks, and largely avoided answering questions from reporters since Whipple filed a defamation lawsuit against him in October.

Bennett’s ouster petition quotes extensively from a recent interview with Clendenin and text messages obtained by investigators, providing a new level of detail to Clendenin’s role.

Clendenin’s version of events surrounding the smear video campaign has continued to shift as new

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Katie Bernard: (816)234-4167, @KatieJ_Bernard

WHAT’S NEXT? To replace Clendenin, the mayor must announce the vacancy at the Jan. 5, 2021 City Council meeting and set a petition deadline for selecting a replacement.

Candidate petitions must have a minimum of 100 valid signatures of qualified voters in District 3 to be filed with the City Clerk’s Office within three weeks of the announcement. District 3 includes parts of southeast and south central Wichita.

From there, the District 3 Advisory Board must hold an open and public forum to screen all candidates who have filed a petition for candidacy.

At the end of the meeting, the DAB must vote to nominate up to five candidates.

The City Council will choose a winner out of that pool of candidates.

That winner would serve until the winner of the next city election is sworn into office in January 2022.

Chance Swaim: 316-269-6752, @byChanceSwaim

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