Wichita Mayor Whipple takes Hot Ones challenge; eats fiery wings and says funny stuff
It’s not every day you get to watch the mayor of a large midwestern city snarf down eye-wateringly hot hot wings while being interviewed about his personal life.
But that actually happened Monday night at Newman University, where Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple joined two other local notables, Miss Kansas Annika Wooten and Newman basketball coach R.J. Allen, in a “Hot Ones” style challenge.
The event, part of Newman’s basketball homecoming week, was a local takeoff on the hit Web series in which celebrities answer interviewer questions while gagging on progressively spicy chicken wings. A television version of the show premiers Thursday on the truTV network.
Whipple remained largely composed through the first four wings and questions, talking about his New Hampshire origins and his political career at the state Legislature and City Hall. But as the sauces got hotter, the questions got more personal and the answers got funnier.
Student interviewer Olivia Camarena — under the influence of something called Dave’s Insanity Sauce — struggled through a question about Whipple’s wife Chelsea and their three sons.
After some false starts, several swigs of milk and a bowl of ice cream in an unsuccessful attempt to cool down, she finally managed to choke out the question:
“How’d you meet? How’d you have the babies? How’d that happen? I mean, not that, not like that . . . I don’t need to know the specifics of that! I’m sorry.”
After a long laugh from the crowd and several spoonfuls of his own ice cream, Whipple responded: “So how were my kids conceived? Is that what you’re asking?”
He went on to tell a PG-rated story of how he and Chelsea met at a party after he came to Wichita as an AmeriCorps worker. He described their first meeting as a couple of “21-year-olds who are a little buzzed, talking about religion.”
But they hit it off and she invited him on a date, he said.
He showed up in a New England preppy sweater and creased khakis — and she took him to a rodeo where part of the festivities involved bringing out an effigy of then-President Clinton and running over it with bulls.
“I remember thinking to myself ‘Where the heck am I? This is an American president. What is happening?’” he said. “It actually was a pretty cool date, but definitely like a crash course in midwestern politics, I guess. In New Hampshire, we liked Bill Clinton. He came to my high school.”
Whipple’s nose started running after he sampled the final, hottest sauce, called “Da Bomb Ground Zero.”
He gamely slugged through Camarena’s last question “Would you ever consider running for president, so I could say I interviewed the president?”
Whipple responded that he doesn’t think so, because he likes to get things done and “I don’t have a lot of faith in D.C. to do anything.”
“I kind of hate D.C. ,” he added. “I’m not sure I’d be cut out for that. . . . I don’t know if I would ever run for president. But I do know I would definitely win New Hampshire.”
The student interviewers, Camarena and Jenny Duong, matched Whipple wing for wing and got the worst of it, with puffy eyes and flushed faces.
At the end, Camarena complimented Whipple on his tolerance to the volcanic sauces.
“We thought you were going to do the worst and you’re doing great,” she said.
Replied Whipple: “If you question my toughness, you should see the campaign we just ran.”
