O’Donnell replaced on Sedgwick County Commission by the man he tried to frame
Former Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell will be replaced by Dalton Glasscock, the man O’Donnell and two other Republican officials tried to frame for their own actions in a false political smear campaign last year.
Glasscock, until recently the chairman of the Sedgwick County Republican Party, was selected by a committee of party stalwarts Monday night to fill the remainder of O’Donnell’s current term, which ends Jan. 10.
“Thanks for your trust over the next 40 days,” Glasscock told the group of Republican precinct committee members from the commission’s south Wichita-based 2nd District. “Let’s get to work.”
In a brief campaign speech, he focused on his relationships with local GOP officials, which he said made him the best candidate to hit the ground running for the brief term on the commission.
In Monday’s mini-convention, Glasscock won the majority of the precinct committee members on the first ballot, with 16 votes.
Former TV news reporter Jared Cerullo got eight votes; Delano neighborhood activist Christopher Parisho got three and real estate entrepreneur Jason Carmichael got one.
The seat opened up when O’Donnell resigned Nov. 13, rather than face legal proceedings by District Attorney Marc Bennett to remove him from office for official misconduct.
Glasscock’s ascension to the commission comes five weeks after a secretly made recording revealed O’Donnell plotting with Wichita City Council member James Clendenin and state Rep. Michael Capps to frame Glasscock for a false ad campaign they launched during last year’s Wichita mayoral race.
That ad falsely accused Brandon Whipple, now Wichita’s mayor, of sexually harassing Capitol interns while serving as a state Representative in Topeka. The charges made in the video were lifted from a Kansas City Star/Wichita Eagle story about complaints against other legislators.
The three politicians went to great lengths to conceal their involvement in the bogus ad, including the creation of an anonymous shell company in New Mexico to press the attack.
David Thorne, who took over the chairmanship of the county GOP about three weeks ago, called the actions of the three “a stain on the integrity of the Republican Party.”
Under state law, the Republicans were required to select a replacement commissioner within 21 days of O’Donnell’s resignation.
Although the term will be short, Glasscock will help to guide the spending of tens of millions of dollars in federal funds sent to the county as relief aid for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Those funds must be spent by the end of this year or returned to the federal government
On Jan. 10, the seat will change hands and party affiliation, with the beginning of the term of Democrat Sarah Lopez, who beat O’Donnell in the November general election.
Shortly after the audio surfaced of O’Donnell scheming with Capps and Clendenin, O’Donnell announced that he would not serve a second term if he beat Lopez.
In the waning days of the campaign, he urged his supporters to vote for him anyway so his long-term replacement would be appointed by Republicans and keep the seat in GOP hands.
This story was originally published November 30, 2020 at 8:52 PM.
