Wichita City Council censures Clendenin, O’Donnell and Capps for scandal cover-up
Wichita’s City Council censured James Clendenin on Tuesday afternoon for his role in a plot to falsely accuse Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexual harassment and then try to shift the blame to Republican Party leaders when the smear campaign backfired.
Clendenin’s involvement was revealed in a secret recording released Friday showing the south-side council member plotted a cover-up with Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell and State Rep. Michael Capps. On the recording, they discussed how to frame Sedgwick County GOP Chairman Dalton Glasscock for a falsified and anonymous video ad that attacked Whipple during the 2019 mayoral race.
The council unanimously passed a resolution, 5-0, condemning Clendenin’s actions, saying he violated the city’s code of ethics. Vice Mayor Cindy Claycomb said the council had no authority to remove Clendenin from office. The council also condemned O’Donnell and Capps. Clendenin abstained from voting on the resolution and Whipple recused himself from the proceedings.
“If it were me, I would not stay in that seat because Wichita deserves better,” council member Brandon Johnson said.
Clendenin said he would cooperate fully with an ongoing district attorney investigation into whether his conduct rises to the level that would trigger ouster proceedings to remove him from office.
Facing that probe and Whipple’s defamation lawsuit, Clendenin declined to make any substantive comments about either case.
“Due to the pending legal matter, I’m just looking forward to the legal process and what comes through that,” he said.
Clendenin did not announce any plan to resign, referring to a written statement he issued Monday saying he planned to continue to the end of his term.
Although he did not participate in the discussion or vote, he remained in his seat at the council dais throughout the proceedings.
After the meeting, he explained that “I felt like it was important for me to face my colleagues. I’m not running from anything and so that’s why I made the decision I made today.”
Whipple, who also recused himself from the measure, left the room entirely during the discussion.
City Council member Jeff Blubaugh vowed that the council would work to clean up future campaigns.
“We’re all going to work together and we’re going to come up with some kind of clean campaign contract or something to where none of us are caught up by this type of behavior,” Blubaugh said. “We need to focus our campaigns on what we do right for the community, instead of spending months and months trying to dig up dirt on people or fabricating things. ... We’ve got to turn this around. We don’t want Wichita known for this.”
Council member Becky Tuttle said voters should decide whether Clendenin stays or goes.
“As a City Council, as the municipal governing body, we have no ability to remove someone from office,” Tuttle said. “So we just want to make sure that we highlight that the voters ... made their choice for Council member Clendenin when they voted for him. And they are the only ones who are able to change that decision.”
Johnson said he listened to the approximately 50 minutes of recordings seven or eight times over the weekend and got more angry each time.
“Trying to frame innocent individuals and going along with their plan is disgusting to me and I don’t think that type of behavior is worthy of holding a public office,” he said. “That to me was just the lowest of the low.”
Asked if he thinks Clendenin should step down, Johnson said “I think he should.”
Johnson said he would step down if he were in Clendenin’s shoes.
“I know that I probably wouldn’t have that choice,” said Johnson, the only African-American serving on the City Council or Sedgwick County Commission.
“There’s always higher expectations I think, on a black elected official,” he said. “If I was caught on tape, it probably wouldn’t be a question. As we’ve seen more and more people calling for resignations over this weekend, I believe that had it been me, by that morning it would have been universal.”
According to the resolution passed Tuesday, the City Council “condemns the behavior of the (Capps, Clendenin and O’Donnell) as heard in the recording as reported by local media, fully supports the investigation into these three officials ... and demands Council Member James Clendenin to consider the will of his constituents in the City of Wichita’s 3rd District as he makes decisions about the future of his term as a City Council Member.”
The 3rd District Advisory Board has called a special meeting at 6:30 Wednesday evening to discuss Clendenin’s actions. It will be livestreamed on the District 3 Facebook page.
Calls for resignation
The censure, although it stops short of calling for a resignation, adds the City Council’s voice to a growing chorus calling for Clendenin, O’Donnell and Capps to consider stepping down.
The Sedgwick County Republican Party, Wichita Chamber of Commerce and Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Estes have called on all three officials to step down.
O’Donnell is the only one of the three officials that’s up for re-election next week.
None of the trio of Wichita Republican officeholders has voluntarily stepped down. Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett is investigating whether they can be removed.
The Sedgwick County Commission is expected to follow the city Wednesday morning at a special meeting, when O’Donnell’s role will be discussed.
Sedgwick County commissioners have issued a unanimous call for their colleague Michael O’Donnell to resign.
In contrast to the county, the City Council had been silent since the audio recording was released Friday.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, council members held an extended, 40-minute executive session to “discuss legal authority of municipalities relating to public officials.”
Whipple, who was the target of the smear campaign, recused himself from the discussion and vote.
When the council returned from the closed meeting, Vice Mayor Cindy Claycomb called for a special meeting at 4 p.m. to “discuss a resolution regarding public officials.”
Also on Tuesday, Sedgwick County Commission Chairman Pete Meitzner added his name to a growing list of Republican officials calling for the resignations of the three GOP officials involved in the scandal.
It marked a departure from a Monday statement in which Meitzner said he was “saddened, angered, and disappointed” by the actions of O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin, but suggested the right course was to “respect everyone’s right to due process and let the case continue without Commission involvement.”
The three officials are currently embroiled in a civil defamation lawsuit brought by Whipple and under investigation by District Attorney Marc Bennett, who will decide whether their actions constitute grounds for legal action seeking to oust them from office.
The resignation demands follow Friday’s reveal of an audio recording made by Matthew Colborn, the young video entrepreneur who made the “Protect Wichita Girls” video targeting Whipple in his 2019 race against incumbent Mayor Jeff Longwell.
Meitzner said the circumstances had changed since his first statement.
“Last night, a second recording was released of Mr. Capps threatening members of the Republican Party,” Meitzner said. “Let me make my stance clear, if I was involved in conduct or actions such as this, I would resign effective immediately and urge those involved to do the same, immediately.”
Meitzner is the fourth and final member of the County Commission to call for O’Donnell’s resignation. O’Donnell is also being challenged by Democrat Sarah Lopez in the Nov. 3 election.
The attack ad lifted accusations from a Kansas City Star/Wichita Eagle story about alleged sexual harassment of interns by Republican senators at the Kansas Capitol, and wrongly transferred those accusations to Whipple, a House Democrat.
The ad, launched from behind the shield of an anonymous New Mexico shell company, was quickly proven false by Eagle reporting and Whipple filed his civil lawsuit to find out who was behind it.
The audio recording released Friday offered detailed evidence of plotting by O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin to falsely accuse Sedgwick County Republican Party Chairman Dalton Glasscock of masterminding the project.
Colborn, at that point a trusted member of the group, secretly recorded the meeting. His lawyer released the recording on Friday after Whipple’s lawyer dropped Colborn as a defendant in Whipple’s defamation lawsuit.
O’Donnell’s attorney filed a response in the lawsuit late Monday denying that O’Donnell was “the driving force behind the conspiracy” as Whipple has alleged. He also denies trying to frame Glasscock and requests a jury trial.
This story was originally published October 27, 2020 at 1:55 PM.
