Five Republicans jockey to replace O’Donnell on Sedgwick County Commission
Five Republicans are already declaring intentions to run for the soon-to-be vacated Sedgwick County Commission seat of Michael O’Donnell, as continued vote counting shows Democratic candidate Sarah Lopez chipping away at her election-night deficit.
On the GOP side, it shaping up as a five-way battle among Wichita City Council member Jeff Blubaugh; state Rep. Nick Hoheisel; Kathleen Garrison, who finished second to O’Donnell in the August Republican primary for the seat; Cindy Miles, who ran third in the primary; and Jared Cerrulo, a former TV reporter.
O’Donnell, embattled in a scandal over a false 2019 campaign ad and cover-up, set the stage Saturday when he announced he’ll be stepping down from the commission and won’t serve a second term.
O’Donnell’s Democratic opponent, Sarah Lopez, trailed in the election-night ballot count Tuesday by 576 votes. With many ballots yet to be counted, she’s not conceding the race.
In a Wednesday update from the county election office, Lopez had cut her deficit to 399 votes.
But if his election-night lead holds up, O’Donnell’s seat will remain in Republican hands and his replacement will be elected by roughly two dozen Republican precinct committee members from the 2nd District.
The candidates to replace him include:
▪ Blubaugh, the City Council representative for District 4 in southwest Wichita. He said his experience and familiarity with the district makes him the best choice to replace O’Donnell.
Term limits keep Blubaugh from serving another consecutive term on the City Council, and Blubaugh said his claim to O’Donnell’s seat is the most legitimate of any of the candidates because he has won three elections in the district, 2013, 2015 and 2019.
He won election for O’Donnell’s seat on the City Council in 2013 after O’Donnell left for the Kansas Senate.
“I’ve been elected three times, I’m termed out, I still want to serve the community and I think it’s an opportunity that fits me well,” Blubaugh said. “I’ve door-knocked that area, I’ve worked it hard for years and I know what the voters want down there.”
▪ Cerullo, a former television news reporter who works as a freelancer for radio news stations and serves on a City Council district advisory board. He recently filed paperwork to run for the City Council District 3 seat occupied by James Clendenin in 2021 but said he would be just as happy working on the County Commission.
His top priorities are partnering with Sedgwick County to improve public transportation, saving Century II and improving economic development in southern Sedgwick County.
“I believe 47th and Broadway can and should be a major hub of the south side,” Cerullo said. “But, instead, we have a giant, empty K-Mart store that’s been that way for quite a long time. And, you know, why can’t we get someone to pour some money into the area and make a new anchor business like a theater or something big down there that will attract other businesses?”
▪ Hoheisel, a state representative for south Wichita who won his district by 28 percentage points in Tuesday’s election. He said he hasn’t fully committed to pursuing O’Donnell’s seat, but he is interested.
Hoheisel is the chairman of the South Central Kansas Legislative Delegation and said his understanding of the state Legislature would be an asset on the County Commission, especially when it comes to transportation and infrastructure projects.
“I have a good working relationship with the city and the county as far as expressing their views in Topeka and lobbying for their causes in Topeka,” Hoheisel said. “I have experience on the Transportation Committee in Topeka, obviously transportation is a huge issue for the county, and I’m very familiar with the needs down here.”
▪ Garrison, a data analyst/contractor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and also runs the Cottage Venue in Mulvane.
A relative newcomer to politics, she ran an energetic race against O’Donnell in the primary and said as the No. 2 Republican in the race, she’s the logical person to get his office now that he’s leaving it.
She said some others in the race should concentrate on fulfilling their responsibilities to the offices they ran for, instead of trying to jump from one political post to another.
In the final days of the campaign, someone hijacked her name to send out text messages urging Republicans to write her in instead of voting for O’Donnell. She said she did everything she could to let voters know the texts were fake, but was unable to find out who did it because the numbers were disconnected shortly after the messages went out.
▪ Miles, head of the Kansas Nonprofit Chamber, a support association for charitable organizations. Miles said she ran against O’Donnell in the first place because she thought “he needed to go” due to lack of political ethics.
She said she wants to “rebuild some of the image of the party that’s really been hurt by activities such as Michael O’Donnell, Michael Capps and James Clendenin have involved themselves in.”
“I ran a clean campaign and I’m convinced .. . . that campaigning needs to be about what you can do for an area, for a district, for a county, for a city — not about dragging people down and throwing dirt.”
O’Donnell has been under fire for his role in a 2019 smear video that falsely accused Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexually harassing college-age Capitol interns while he was a state representative. O’Donnell was part of a team tied to the attack ad that was launched from behind the shield of an anonymous New Mexico shell company.
The video was an outside effort to boost the campaign of then-Mayor Jeff Longwell.
O’Donnell’s campaign was roiled by a secretly made audio recording, released 11 days before the election, that captured O’Donnell plotting with state Rep. Michael Capps and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin to cover up their role in the smear campaign and instead frame Sedgwick County Republican Party Chairman Dalton Glasscock.
O’Donnell was requested to resign by his four fellow commissioners — three of them Republicans — as well as the Sedgwick County Republican Party and U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, R-Wichita.
On Saturday he heeded those calls, but urged voters to mark their ballots for him anyway in an effort to salvage the seat on the commission for the Republican Party.
County commissioners are paid about $96,000 a year.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 5:01 AM.
