Sedgwick Commission: Democrat Sarah Lopez losing to yet-to-be-named Republican
After leading throughout election night, Democratic Sedgwick County Commission candidate Sarah Lopez has apparently lost her bid to win the seat that embattled incumbent Michael O’Donnell has announced he will resign.
If the count holds up, it means a small group of Republican Party leaders in south Wichita’s 2nd District will choose the next commissioner.
The final unofficial count shows O’Donnell with 50% of the vote to Lopez’s 48% with 576 votes separating them.
In a brief election-night speech, Lopez declined to concede with an unknown number of provisional and late-arriving mail votes yet to be counted.
“It is a little too early to call it,” Lopez said. “Until we see the last vote counted, I’m not going to concede to him (O’Donnell).”
O’Donnell has declined to answer any questions from The Eagle through the waning days of the campaign and did not answer his phone when called for comment Tuesday night.
Among the big winners in the race was Sedgwick County Republican Chairman Dalton Glasscock.
O’Donnell, one of three officials who plotted to frame Glasscock for a 2019 smear-campaign video, will be leaving office — but his seat will stay in Republican hands and Glasscock ends his chairmanship on a high note.
Glasscock is not seeking re-election to his party post, so the next chairperson will be named on Thursday and preside over O’Donnell’s replacement after he makes his resignation official.
O’Donnell has not yet specified to the party when he will actually resign, Glasscock said.
He said the 576-vote margin is very likely too large for Lopez to overcome with late ballots.
“Nothing in 2020 surprises me and I think District 2 showed they wanted a Republican to hold that seat,” Glasscock said. “And that’s exactly what they’re going to get when the precinct captains convene and choose a replacement for Commissioner O’Donnell.”
The stage was set for the Wichita area’s most unusual election on Saturday, when O’Donnell announced that he would not serve a second term on the commission even if won the race at the ballot box.
O’Donnell has been under fire for his role in a 2019 smear video that falsely accused Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple of sexually harassing college-age Capitol interns while he was a state representative. O’Donnell was part of a team tied to the attack ad that was launched from behind the shield of an anonymous New Mexico shell company.
O’Donnell’s campaign was roiled by a secretly made audio recording, released 11 days before the election, that captured O’Donnell plotting with state Rep. Michael Capps and Wichita City Council member James Clendenin to cover up their role in the smear campaign and instead frame Sedgwick County Republican Party Chairman Dalton Glasscock.
O’Donnell was requested to resign by his four fellow commissioners — three of them Republicans — also the Sedgwick County Republican Party and U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, R-Wichita.
On Saturday he heeded those calls, but urged voters to mark their ballots for him anyway in an effort to salvage the seat for the Republican Party.
Now, the party’s precinct committee men and women, a small group of GOP office holders and activists, will get to choose O’Donnell’s successor.
At the polling place at Reliance Community Church in west Wichita Tuesday, within the 2nd District, Jacob Hall set up a table in the lobby to pray for and with the incoming voters.
He said he was primarily praying for peace because politically, “we all know tensions are super high.”
Republican voter Diana Smith said the scandal definitely influenced her decision not to vote for O’Donnell.
“I didn’t have anything against the guy” going into the race, she said. “But when all this came out . . . he doesn’t need to be in public office. They need to keep their dirty laundry at home.”
A significant share of voters interviewed by The Eagle on Tuesday didn’t know about the audio recording or O’Donnell’s announcement he’d step down from serving a second term.
“I voted for Michael O’Donnell,” said Zachary Linn. “I think he’s been a really good Sedgwick County Commissioner and he has really good values.”
When he was told that O’Donnell has already committed to stepping down, he said “That’s too bad.”
“I still wouldn’t vote for Sarah Lopez,” he said. “Sarah Lopez is involved in really radical movements like BLM (Black Lives Matter).”
O’Donnell and the Kansas Republican Party had sent out mailers with an altered Eagle photo to support a claim she is anti-police — although she was actually praying with Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay at a Black Lives Matter rally when the picture was taken.
In campaign mailers and an O’Donnell commercial, the police chief was cropped out and Lopez’s picture was spliced into scenes of urban destruction — including a stock photo of a burning Los Angeles Police car. That state GOP mailer called Black Lives Matter a “domestic terror organization.”
Roger Haffa said he voted for O’Donnell because the Democrats campaigned too aggressively for Lopez.
“I just got sick and tired of all the text messages from the Democrats,” he said.
Voter Tanni Owens said she voted for O’Donnell because his name was on a list of candidates endorsed by the pro-life group Kansans for Life, which she took to the polls with her.
Lopez voter Eric Wilson said he doesn’t like either party, which he called “two sides of the same coin, a lot of BS.”
He said he usually votes for the Democrats because they’re slightly closer to his beliefs than the Republicans.
This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 7:48 PM.
