Late ballot counting dims Wells’ hope of catching Whipple in Wichita mayor race

State Rep. Brandon Whipple expanded his election-night lead with the counting of late mail ballots on Friday, apparently dashing Lyndy Wells’ hopes for a miracle comeback in the primary race for Wichita mayor.

Whipple currently is the second-place finish in Tuesday’s primary election, setting the scene for a head-to-head matchup with incumbent Mayor Jeff Longwell in the Nov. 5 general election.

Although he now trails Whipple by 234 votes with about 519 ballots provisional ballots uncounted, Wells said he does not plan to concede until after the final canvass on Thursday.

After Tuesday’s counting, Whipple led Wells by 160 votes.

Wells, a retired banker, told supporters at his election party he hoped to make a comeback with late mail-in votes and provisional ballots remaining to be counted. But the gap got wider Friday.

“It certainly doesn’t look like the case is strengthening,” Wells said. “We were just committing to wait until we got clear through the process and all the votes got counted. At this point we’re probably just going to observe the provisional process . . . and then accept the result.”

Whipple wasn’t claiming victory, either.

“I respect Lyndy and I understand his team worked really hard,” Whipple said. “And if they want to wait until the last vote is counted, I completely understand that.”

The updated count shows Whipple with 5,916 votes to Wells’ 5,682.

Longwell led the field with 7,266 votes.

The votes counted Friday are late mail-in ballots.

Kansas law requires mail ballots to be counted if they are postmarked on or before election day and received by the Friday after the election.

Sedgwick County Commissioners will meet Thursday to count the remaining ballots, almost all of which are provisional ballots cast at polling places on Tuesday.

Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said 521 ballots were counted on Friday and her office’s preliminary count of remaining ballots is 519.

Not all of those will end up being counted, as the commissioners will undoubtedly reject some provisional ballots as being improperly cast.

This story was originally published August 9, 2019 at 3:48 PM.