Anatomy of a smear campaign, Part 3: Broken politics, broken alliances
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 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 key players have already revealed plenty of back-room political chicanery and infighting, including:
▪ 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 or unwelcome person.
▪ A political counter-attack by Capps against the county party, targeting its chairman, Dalton Glasscock, who Capps now says masterminded the plot.
▪ 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 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:
▪ Wess Galyon, president and chief executive of the influential Wichita Area Builders Association.
▪ Jason Watkins, a former state representative, now a lobbyist for Sedgwick County government and the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce.
▪ Dave Wells, owner of Key Construction, which has built numerous city-paid 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 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 talk-radio station, and told show host John Whitmer that it was Glasscock who had green lighted the anti-Whipple video.
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.
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:
▪ Whipple, who sued Colborn
▪ Abbie Hodgson, former chief of staff for the House minority leader’s office in the Legislature
▪ Glasscock, to retestify on his actions related to the Protect Wichita Girls video
▪ Yingling, Whipple’s campaign lawyer and adviser
▪ Rep. Tom Burroughs, D-Kansas City, former House minority leader
▪ Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, 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 multi-state 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.”
