Anonymous Wichita staffer interrupts Mayor Whipple with a profane insult

An unidentified Wichita city staff member interrupted a City Council debate on Friday to call Mayor Brandon Whipple a “dumbass.”

The staff member was attending the meeting virtually, over Zoom, while the City Council and City Manager Robert Layton attended in person to review the agenda for next week’s council meeting. Video of the exchange does not show which of the 10 virtual attendees muttered the swear word.

Whipple was talking about an off-agenda item raised by City Council member Brandon Johnson about whether council members should use ranked-choice voting to fill vacant council seats. Johnson said he wanted to discuss it after a prolonged replacement process last year when the council selected Jared Cerullo to fill the seat that had been held by James Clendenin. Clendenin had resigned over his involvement in a smear campaign against Whipple and a former local GOP Chairman Dalton Glasscock.

Whipple was floating the idea of electing District Advisory Board members instead of appointing them, which he said could make the council replacement process more democratic. The District Advisory Board chooses up to three finalists for vacant seats, and the City Council votes — sometimes multiple times — until a winner is chosen.

“DABs used to be elected, kind of like precinct committee people are,” Whipple said. “So precinct committee people are actually elected representatives of their community when they replace a senator or a statehouse person. In our system —”

That’s when an unidentified male staff member virtually cut in to say Whipple, a former Kansas representative, should have “stayed up in the statehouse, dumbass.”

Whipple paused briefly, asked “What was that?” and continued talking about the council member replacement process.

After the meeting, Whipple told The Eagle he did not hear the full insult.

“I just heard someone say ‘statehouse,’ and I thought staff was trying to add to the discussion,” he said. “So I paused for a second, kind of waiting for them to finish their thought.”

Whipple said he does not know who said it. “I have an idea of who it might have been,” he said, “but I’m going to ask the city manager to look into it.”

City Manager Robert Layton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Whipple and five of the city’s six council members attended Friday’s agenda review in person. City Council member Bryan Frye missed the meeting because he was attending a Wichita River Festival event.

Whipple said the insult was “definitely inappropriate” but “ultimately, everyone has a right to their opinion.

“I’ve been called worse,” Whipple said. “While it was a vulgar insult, this is probably a good reminder to folks to click mute while they’re on Zoom.”