Mayor tries but fails to appoint more women to Wichita redistricting commission

The nonpartisan committee in charge of redrawing Wichita City Council district boundaries will continue to have mostly men on it after Mayor Brandon Whipple’s plan to add more women failed by one vote Tuesday.

Now, two women will serve on the seven-member board.

The vote comes after Whipple, a Democrat, took to Twitter last week to voice his disappointment with some council appointees to the commission of electors. In particular, he objected to three appointees: former Republican state legislator and current businessman and talk show host John Whitmer, Republican state Rep. Patrick Penn and Joseph Dozier, who worked for the Texas GOP. The initial appointments included one woman appointed by Whipple.

In response, Whipple tried to appoint four new members to the commission — all women. He said his goal was to diversify it. Usually, the board consists of one member appointed by a council member each, and the chair appointed by the mayor for a total of seven members. However, the number of members is up to the City Council to decide.

Whipple moved to appoint Oletha Faust-Goudaeu, Yeni Silva, Angela Oropeza and Martha Pint on Tuesday. Becky Tuttle, Bryan Frye, Jeff Blubaugh and Brandon Johnson voted against the appointments.

“The bottom line is regardless of your reasoning, regardless of your hurt feelings, regardless of how eloquently you can explain your side, you voted against putting women of color on this board,” Whipple said in an interview with The Eagle. “There is now not a gender balance by any stretch.”

Council member Johnson said that he understands the importance of diversity but he felt in this case the council looked at diversity as an afterthought.

“When we know things are coming we have to be intentional about having that discussion, and making those actions,” Johnson said during the meeting.

In an interview with The Eagle, he said this realization came after conversations with community members.

“There were women of color that I did speak with yesterday, that really made me think about this afterthought piece. ... And the sentiment basically was, you know, yeah, we’ll take it, but how come we can’t be talked about on the forefront?” Johnson said.

There needs to be more direction and conversations surrounding diversity, he said.

“If the intention is to appoint people from different genders, different ethnicities, disability, non disability, that needs to be an effort that’s laid out from the forefront,” Johnson said. “Up until then, there was no direction to add diversity.”

Johnson said he was concerned with the precedent that would be set if the mayor appointed the majority of the commission members.

Tuttle responded to the recent tension that followed last week’s appointments — specifically conversations that happened via social media — and encouraged her fellow council members to not publicly disparage each other’s appointments.

“When we were elected to these positions, one of the privileges that came with that is that we have the ability to elect community members who we personally feel are qualified and represent our community and districts,” Tuttle said during Tuesday’s meeting.

Tuttle appointed Penn to the commission of electors, one of the appointments Whipple disapproved of in a tweet.

Whipple said he took the failed vote personally.

“This is a really bad time in our history to be excluding women and women of color from the table,” Whipple said. “I think that what we saw was more motivated to, I don’t know, I guess jab at me for trying to diversify the board.”

Whipple said that he thought he had enough support to approve the appointments.

“Sometimes in leadership you think you’re leading and then you look behind you and no one is following,” he said.

Johnson said the people Whipple had planned to appoint are qualified, but said never gave Whipple his full support.

“The conversation was basically, you know, ‘I’m thinking about adding more women to this,’ to which I said, ‘Representation is always a good thing,’” Johnson said.

Council member Mike Hoheisel did not make an appointment last week. This week, he appointed Janet Johnson, a former District 3 community service representative who retired last week after working many years for the city.

City Council district boundaries are redrawn every 10 years following the U.S. Census to ensure equal representation. For some citizens, redrawing districts could mean having a different city council member represent them.

The population of each district must fall between 62,942 and 69,568 people. As of the 2020 Census, District 2 falls above the number and District 3 falls just below. All other districts are in range. The committee must make a recommendation to the council by Aug. 31, and the council has to select a new map by the last day of the year.

This story was originally published July 13, 2022 at 12:00 AM.