Picking Clendenin’s replacement on Wichita City Council is not as easy as it sounds
Amid a dangerous pandemic and with an ordinance that seems to invite open-meetings violations, the Wichita City Council on Tuesday will start the process for selecting a council member to replace James Clendenin, who resigned under fire for his role in a corrupt political ad.
To fill the open seat, the council will have to figure out how candidates can collect 100 signatures in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic without putting themselves or others at undue risk.
And they’ll also have to reconcile how participants can comply with a city ordinance that implies a closed process that could violate the Kansas Open Meetings Act.
Cities can and regularly do fill vacancies with a simple majority vote of the city council.
Ultimately, the Wichita appointment will be confirmed in that same manner, but not before a lengthy process of nomination petitions and screening by the District 3 Advisory Board, which primarily represents the southeastern part of the city.
Under the city’s procedure, anyone wanting to be considered for the appointment to replace Clendenin has to gather the signatures of at least 100 registered voters in the district.
Then, the District Advisory Board is supposed to screen the candidates and narrow the list to four or five.
The City Council is supposed to choose the new council member from the list provided by the District Advisory Board.
Under ordinary circumstances, the candidates would simply go door-to-door soliciting signatures to justify their consideration for the seat.
But amid the pandemic, the city is trying to create an alternate route to do that using teleconferencing.
“Candidates may host virtual video meetings with qualified electors signing individual pages, witnessed in real-time on screen by the candidate or individual circulating the petition,” the staff report said.
However, the report raises as many questions as it answers, because even if the candidate or their designee witnesses the signatures electronically, they’ll still have to somehow provide paper copies for the county election office, which will count and validate the names on the petition.
“Electronic copies of the signatures may be submitted to the City Clerk,” the report said. “However, the Sedgwick County Election Commissioner will require that paper copies of the signatures be obtained.
“It is recommended that staff allow three business days following the deadline for the submission of all paper copies to the City Clerk. Paper copies of petitions received after that deadline will not be counted.”
City staff is recommending 5 p.m. Jan. 26 as the deadline for signatures.
Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said Monday that it’s not entirely clear whether they’ll need to have original signatures or if copies on paper will be acceptable.
There’s really no state law to guide the process, she said.
As for counting and verify the petitions, “we do that kind of as a courtesy” to the city, she said. “We pretty much let the city make the rules.”
There’s nothing in state law that requires signatures to nominate City Council replacement candidates. But Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple said he sees that as a non-negotiable requirement, even with the pandemic.
“Those that want to represent people, you need to go out and at least convince a hundred people that you should be considered for nomination,” he said. “In my opinion that’s the most important part of this process because it’s the purest part, it’s the most democratic part.”
He said the signature requirement tends to weed out “those who just want to run because they’re on ego, who don’t want to do the work to represent the people.”
The remote signature gathering is a work in progress and likely to be refined when the City Council meets Tuesday, Whipple said.
Another potential glitch in the process is a requirement that the District Advisory Board “nominate in writing, in alphabetical order and not by any ranked order of preference, not less than four and not more than five candidates for the City Council to consider.”
The last time a council seat came vacant — when then-council member Pete Meitzner was elected to the Sedgwick County Commission — District 2 Advisory Board members filled out ranked-choice ballots that were later counted by city staff, who passed the top five vote-getters on to the council.
Their scores had to be publicly released, because the advisory board is not allowed by state law to take actions by secret ballot. The top vote-getter, Becky Tuttle, was selected by the council.
Chief deputy city attorney Sharon Dickgrafe said in an e-mail that the ballots will be signed by the board members to avoid violating the open-meeting law.
“The DAB members’ recommendations and/or scores would be subject to public review, however any ranking would not be provided to the City Council as part of the staff report,” she said.
The vacancy in District 3 became official Dec. 31, 10 days after Clendenin announced he would resign rather than face a formal proceeding seeking to oust him from office.
District Attorney Marc Bennett announced that he would seek to oust Clendenin over his role in a political scheme to fund and release a video ad smearing Whipple, who was then a mayoral candidate, with false allegations that he had sexually harassed college-age female Capitol interns while serving as a state representative.
Clendenin, along with former county Commissioner Michael O’Donnell and state Rep. Michael Capps, funneled contributions for the false ad through a nonprofit charity Capps controlled and hid their roles in the operation behind an anonymous shell company created in New Mexico.
They were later caught in an audio recording plotting to dodge the backlash over the smear campaign by framing then-Sedgwick County Republican Party Chairman Dalton Glasscock.
The City Council is scheduled to formally start the process to replace Clendenin at its meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the meeting is closed to the public. It can be viewed at the city’s Channel 7 on Cox Cable, online at www.wichita.gov or on the city’s YouTube page.
Persons wishing to address the council by remote teleconferencing can do so from viewing rooms at the Century II Convention and Performing Arts Center.
