Gietzen's passion shows in his years of activism

With Mark Gietzen, what you see — and hear — is what you get.

That goes from the religious messages he posts on a large sign in his front yard to the graphic anti-abortion fliers he thrusts into a visitor's hand to his no-holds-barred opinion of just about every politician around.

"I'm not going to waffle and change and be something I'm not," said Gietzen, who's running for the District 3 City Council seat representing south and southeast Wichita.

Gietzen is known to many Wichitans from decades of activism in the Republican Party and the anti-abortion movement, plus a few personal incidents. Last week, he was arrested after missing a court appearance on driving-related charges. He said he forgot about the court date in the midst of a busy campaign day and later said that the arrest was politically motivated.

Gietzen, 56, is a former aircraft worker who runs two organizations — the Kansas Coalition for Life and the Christian Singles Info-exchange — out of his home. He's a past president of the Sedgwick County Republican Party and has run unsuccessfully for the Legislature more than once, the latest time last fall. He's a single parent of three children aged 16 to 25 and has lived in the district 25 years.

Gietzen grew up in North Dakota in a politically active family. One grandfather was a state campaign chairman for John F. Kennedy. Gietzen's father was involved in the state's pro-life movement.

After serving in the Marines, Gietzen attended the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa. Returning to North Dakota one day, he stopped for gas in Wichita and, almost on a whim, walked into Boeing to ask how much workers there were being paid. A few months later, he moved here and took a job at Boeing.

The walls of his basement are covered with dozens of signs of political campaigns he's worked on since then.

"I literally wore out a pair of shoes working for Bob Bell and Bob Dole," he said, referring to early campaigns.

As a county chairman and precinct committeeman, Gietzen has also been involved in plenty of party in-fighting. He seems to have an encyclopedic memory for what each faction did during each local campaign of the past quarter-century, and many of his stories end with him relating how somebody was angry with him, or vice versa.

Take Jim Skelton, the last council member elected from District 3. Gietzen campaigned for Skelton, who left that seat for one on the Sedgwick County Commission recently. But he now says he is "so disappointed" with much of Skelton's performance on the council.

The same goes for outgoing council members Sue Schlapp and Paul Gray, who he says have abandoned fiscal conservatism.

"I don't know if there's something wrong with the water down there at City Hall or what," Gietzen said. "Our City Council has been going more and more off the deep end — or the high end. It's just nuts with the CIDs (community improvement districts) and TIFs (tax increment financing districts). We forget we're a free market economy. I think people should ask, 'What would (free-market icon) Milton Friedman do? So-called Republicans on the council know what Milton Friedman would do, but they lack the backbone to do it."

Gietzen opposes the city subsidizing the Affordable Airfares campaign, investing public money in downtown redevelopment, most industrial revenue bonds, and what he calls the city's proposed take-over of the trash collection system. He believes overall spending should be reduced. He can't believe the city is considering spending $25 million to repair the Broadway Street Bridge when, according to his own plan, it could be done for $5 million "and be perfectly fine for 100 years."

Gietzen goes on to say that City Manager Bob Layton is "completely overpaid and underworked" and the city could find another competent city manager "for $100,000 or less." Layton's salary is about $185,000 a year.

The one area where Gietzen thinks the city should spend more is for infrastructure in District 3, including flood control and street maintenance. He said south Wichita has not gotten its share of money for streets, resulting in unpaved roads that stifle housing development.

Background

Gietzen calls James Clendenin, his opponent in the District 3 race, a "nice guy" without the political experience to serve on the council.

As for his own background, Gietzen said he doesn't believe the number of legal actions and lawsuits he's been involved in through the years should discourage voters from supporting him.

In 2003, Gietzen was arrested on a charge of child abuse after an incident in which he says he was disciplining his son, then 8 years old, and preventing a troubled 10-year-old neighbor from entering his home. The charge was dismissed.

In 2008, an attempt was made to foreclose on Gietzen's home. Gietzen said a car crash the previous year put him out of work. The insurance claim from that accident is under litigation, as is the foreclosure action, he said, and Gietzen still lives in the home. In another lawsuit, Gietzen sued an insurance company after a student pilot crashed Gietzen's plane. Gietzen is a certified flight instructor.

"I haven't had the best of luck with insurance companies," he said.

In 2009, the City Council denied Gietzen's claim for $96,000 in damages to the basement wall and floor of his home that he says were caused by work on a nearby bridge. Former Mayor Bob Knight asked the council to help Gietzen and endorsed him in this campaign, along with numerous figures in the anti-abortion movement.

If elected, Gietzen says he would push the city to reimburse area residents whose homes have been damaged by the project, but would recuse himself from any vote affecting himself.

In February, Gietzen was arrested for trespassing while distributing anti-abortion petitions outside Westlink Christian Church. He said the charge was dismissed.

Anti-abortion work

Gietzen is proud of the attention he has brought to that movement, showing a visitor his photograph in a newspaper from the Netherlands. He played a big role in organizing near-constant protests outside physician George Tiller's now-closed abortion clinic off Kellogg. He sued Tiller — who was murdered in 2009 — for allegedly striking him with his vehicle outside the clinic, and another time for placing what Gietzen calls a "stink bomb" outside the clinic to discourage protests.

Of that work, he said: "We saved 395 babies' lives, documented."

Craig Gable, who owns Mike's Steakhouse on South Broadway, said he's supporting Gietzen because of Gietzen's dedication to causes he believes in. They know each other through Republican circles.

"He's not one of those people that are going to have one conviction today and another tomorrow," Gable said. "He stands up for his ideas."

Asked if Gietzen could work effectively within City Hall, Gable said, "I think he'd be a tireless advocate for south Wichita. For something he believes in, he's tireless."

This story was originally published March 24, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Gietzen's passion shows in his years of activism."