County rejects election complaint in O’Donnell-Lopez race, charges Whitmer $175
A Sedgwick County panel rapidly and unanimously shot down a complaint by John Whitmer, a Republican talk show host who had challenged the residency of 2nd District County Commission candidate Sarah Lopez.
The panel ruled Lopez, a Democrat, lives in the 2nd Commission District and can stay on the ballot challenging incumbent Michael O’Donnell.
The panel went on to assess Whitmer $175 in investigative charges for filing what it determined was basically a baseless allegation.
Chief district attorney’s investigator Kelly Otis said he and another investigator spent “three to four, maybe five hours” on investigating Whitmer’s complaint. He also debunked claims O’Donnell has made about Lopez’s living arrangement.
“There is no evidence whatever that she does not live in the district,” said Sheriff Jeff Easter, a member of the three-official panel.
The other members of the panel, District Attorney Marc Bennett and Chief Deputy Election Commissioner Sandra Gritz, quickly concurred with the sheriff that there was no reason to even deliberate the case.
Then, they slapped Whitmer, a KNSS radio host, with the bill for the time it took to investigate his complaint.
Bennett said he felt Whitmer had forced an investigation without providing any tangible evidence and a fee was appropriate, “to dissuade that from happening in the future.”
Despite an invite, Whitmer, a former paid campaign worker for O’Donnell, didn’t appear at Monday’s hearing to represent the allegations he’d made against Lopez.
Nor did O’Donnell, who would have been the prime beneficiary had she been removed from the ballot.
Whitmer said he was surprised that the county panel was assessing him for investigation costs, because that’s not done by state officials when complaints are raised on state level offices.
“I guess I’ll talk to the folks who asked me to look into this and we’ll pool our resources,” to pay the investigation costs, he said.
Whitmer, a former state representative and Republican precinct committeeman, filed the complaint, alleging that Lopez’s name appeared on websites as a Democratic precinct committeewoman for her former neighborhood in Kechi.
He said he brought the complaint at the behest of others on the 2nd District Republican precinct committee who wanted to remain anonymous.
“I trust Marc Bennett and I trust the sheriff and they clearly did their due diligence and I trust the outcome,” Whitmer said.
But he objected to the allegation being characterized as a frivolous complaint.
“It was a legitimate complaint expressed by precinct committee people who were legitimately concerned,” he said. “And now it turns out those concerns were unwarranted.”
Whitmer, who has repeatedly challenged local government to cite him for not wearing a protective face mask at his eDrop packing and mailing business, said, “It’s no more concern than somebody who’s worried about, you know, catching the coronavirus, or worried about kids not being able to participate in school athletics. It’s a fear.”
Casey Yingling, a lawyer representing Lopez, accused Whitmer of making the complaint without adequate evidence and asked that he be required to pay the cost of the investigation and her attorney fees.
“As a radio host, what is his real motivation here,” Yingling asked during the hearing. “Is it content or is it the voters of Sedgwick County?”
“It’s time to take a stand here today,” Yingling said. “If you don’t take a stand here today and say this is a waste of time and assess costs to Mr. Whitmer, he will have no repercussions and he will do this again.”
After the hearing, Yingling said the objection board’s decision was fair and should curb further objections without evidence.
“It creates the possibility for a conviction by accusation, and we can’t have that,” she said. “If John Whitmer decides to get a wild hair and file an objection to every Democrat on the ballot, or some wild Democrat decides to file an objection to every Republican, then we’re up here for several days wasting time on baseless accusations,” she said.
Whitmer replied, “Casey Yingling’s a partisan hack” and said he hadn’t even discussed it on his show Sunday night on KNSS. “I have plenty of content,” he said.
Bennett said it was beyond the panel’s authority to grant legal fees, but that it was appropriate to charge for the time it took investigators to delve into the complaint.
Otis testified that all evidence — including utility bills, mail service, voter registration, rent receipts and even a home visit — indicated that Lopez lives at a home in the 2nd District and is legally on the ballot. Whitmer and O’Donnell provided no further evidence besides additional allegations made to Wichita Eagle reporters, he said.
“There was an article in the Wichita Eagle, and I read that to kind of get more information,” he said. “There was more information the the Eagle site than there was in the actual complaint.”
Otis debunked allegations made by O’Donnell that Lopez lived rent-free in the basement of a friend’s house and didn’t pay for utilities.
“There’s no evidence of that whatsoever,” Otis said.
Lopez said that she has lived in a home near 47th Street South and West since February. The 2nd District covers Haysville, Clearwater and parts of southwest Sedgwick County. She provided utility bills, school records, voter registration forms and her lease agreement to The Eagle and to investigators for the Objections Board.
“(Lopez) answered every question that we had — very cordial, very professional. The attorney was very professional as well,” Otis said of Lopez and Yingling.
After the ruling in her favor, Lopez said that she was glad Whitmer was charged a fee.
“It’s going to be good to have that as a deterrent from people doing this again without any evidence. It’s obvious there was no merit to the claim.”
Although the bar is low to instigate a residency challenge, requiring only a formal complaint with no evidence, they are rare in Sedgwick County.
The last local candidate to face a residency challenge was O’Donnell.
His name was removed from the City Council ballot in 2007 after it was discovered he lived at his parents’ house in Bel Aire, a suburban city northeast of Wichita that’s well outside the boundaries of the southwest Wichita City Council district for which he was running.
Lopez said she would have preferred to face her accusers, but she wasn’t surprised that they didn’t show up to the hearing.
“I wish they should have (shown up), so they could have explained their side of things more. It would be nice to hear an explanation.”
Lopez said the no-show reflected poorly on O’Donnell, whose office is next door to the Sedgwick County Courthouse board room where the meeting was held.
“I think it’s a bad look for O’Donnell right now, and it definitely shows his level of maturity and it shows that he has been more focused on these political games than doing his job.”
O’Donnell did not return a call for comment.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 11:27 AM.
