Music and pictures: Folk singer and photographer battle for Sedgwick Commission

The Democratic primary battle in Sedgwick County’s Commission District 4 offers a contrast between a seasoned community activist and a newcomer inspired to politics by the Women’s March.

Michael Kinard, the “Pictureman,” is a photographer by trade, former Wichita school board member and longtime community volunteer.

Lacey Cruse is a hospice consultant and folksinger/songwriter who performed onstage the Women’s March last year and last week’s Bernie Sanders rally at Century II.

The winner of the Cruse-Kinard race will face the winner of a Republican primary fight between incumbent Richard Ranzau and retired marketing executive Hugh Nicks.

District 4 stretches from central Wichita to the north and west, including Park City, Valley Center, Maize and Sedgwick.

It’s been a tough nut for Democrats to crack.

In recent elections, Democratic candidates from Wichita’s historically black northeast neighborhoods have won the urban areas of the district but lost the suburbs, leading to a 20-year winning streak for Republicans.

Kinard took a run at the seat in 2006. He lost by about five percentage points to former Commissioner Kelly Parks.

Kinard said he’s been working hard this time around to introduce himself to more of those suburban voters. But he said it is a challenge being the only person of color running for the county commission.

“I’m just telling you, it is tough out there,” he said. “We’re just going to try to keep knocking on doors out there to let people know who we are. Hopefully they can see me as a man and not just a person of color. It is an uphill climb.”

‘Not just an emcee’

Cruse said electing her would bring a much-needed female perspective to an all-male board. The commission hasn’t had any women on it for the last eight years. It has been 16 years since the last time there were two.

She said campaigning has been energizing but “it is real exhausting (while) trying to raise my children and work a full-time job.”

Cruse is a divorced mother of two who came to Wichita with $400 in her pocket, attended Wichita State University and got a degree in communications. She’s worked marketing and advertising jobs in hearing aids, senior living, senior health and now hospice services.

“I broke my hip when I was 10 and everyone was like ‘What the heck, isn’t that something that happens to old people?’” she said. “So since the tender age of 10 years old, I’ve always had an affinity for the elderly.”

Her introduction to general politics came in January of last year when the Women’s March attracted about 3,000 demonstrators downtown to protest in the wake of the election of President Trump.

“It was incredible to see this crowd of thousands of people who were energized, who wanted to see change,” she said.

But the crowd was disorganized and just kind of milling around, she said. “So I just got up on a ladder and started playing my guitar for the crowd so that we could sort of get things going,” Cruse said. “I kind of parted the Red Sea if you will and walked through the crowd and led them to City Hall. It just kind of happened, it was very organic.”

No one had been picked to serve as master of ceremonies so she took the microphone and started introducing speakers at the rally. When the second Women’s March came around this year, she was asked to emcee the event in advance and had time to make some cue cards about the speakers and their accomplishments, she said.

“As I was researching these incredible women doing these incredible things all across the country, as I’m introducing them with my daughter by my side, I thought to myself ‘I am not just an emcee,’” she said.

So she started looking into offices coming up for election and decided County Commission would be the best fit.

Looking into the history of the commission, she noticed a major gender imbalance going back to 1953.

“I made a spreadsheet and I just put down all the men and the years they served and totaled it up,” she said. The result was 31 men serving a total of 228 years, to five women and 28 years, she said.

“I thought, Wow, we are vastly . . . underrepresented,” she said. “I mean $425 million (in the county budget) is a lot of money. And to have the same kinds of people allocating those resources, I feel there needs to be a new perspective.”

Then she started researching the votes of her own commissioner, Ranzau.

“Quite frankly, I was appalled at the commissioner who was representing my district,” she said.

She especially objected to Ranzau leading an effort that cut $300,000 from the Women, Infants and Children food assistance program in 2015.

“As a 19-year-old mother, I used WIC,” she said. “I needed WIC to provide formula for my child. Was I happy that I had to be on WIC? No. Did I want to do it? No. But I had to do it to support my family.”

She said a major local issue to her is city/county cooperation.

“In order for us to be a good governmental body, we should work together,” she said.

‘A dark place’

“Pictureman” is both the name of Kinard’s business and his community nickname. He earned it through years of photographing Wichita’s African-American community and Democratic events.

One of his major goals is more engagement between the commission and the public it serves.

If elected, he said he’ll schedule at least one public breakfast a month, rotated through the towns in the district, to make sure everybody feels respected and represented.

“Every community has its own set of needs that they need,” he said. “I don’t live in Maize, so how in the world am I going to know everything that’s going on in Maize unless I go to them and ask?”

Kinard served on the Wichita school board from 2001 to 2005. But electoral success has eluded him since then.

He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2004, losing to Rep. Todd Tiahrt, and in November he finished second to Brandon Johnson in a four-way race for Wichita City Council.

He said one of the reasons he decided to run for the county office is that he began to suffer from depression after losing to Johnson, about the same time he was hit with the death of a friend, physical illness and a $1,200 car repair bill.

“A lot of things kept piling on and piling on,” he said. “I went to kind of a dark place.”

But he said it gave him a new insight and desire to serve on the County Commission, which oversees ComCare, the mental health department. He said he supports a proposed budget provision to provide mental-health professionals at suburban schools to intervene early with student mental-health issues.

“Sometimes it doesn’t take medicine,” he said. “We tend to want to medicate everybody. Sometimes it’s just simple as just a conversation to say ‘I care. I love you. You mean something to me.’ Those are powerful words to a person who’s feeling alone and who’s feeling depressed and unwanted.”

Another major issue for Kinard is new office space for county government. Growth in the courts and district attorney’s operation is squeezing the office space at the courthouse where county government is also headquartered.

The commission has been unable to reach consensus on whether to build onto the current courthouse or buy and remodel the existing Riverview office building nearby. They have delayed the decision until after the election brings at least one new commissioner and possibly as many as three to the five-member board.

Kinard said he thinks one of the big differences between him and Cruse is that he’s been involved in major school building projects and is more qualified to evaluate new county office needs.

“It’s one thing to watch it on TV or watch it from afar, but another to get the detailed information.” Kinard said. “If we’re going to make a 50-year decision here, I don’t want to take just the two options they’re giving us. I want to explore all the options. I hate to go backwards, but you know, if we’re going to do this I think we better do it right.”

Advance voting is already under way for the Aug. 7 primary.