Radio host posts photos of school board member in drag; pics were from a charity show
Update, Oct. 27: The photos and post have been removed from the Facebook page for John Whitmer’s radio show.
Original story:
The race for Wichita school board took a bizarre turn over the weekend when a right-wing talk show host posted pictures of an incumbent school board member dressed in drag.
The pictures posted by KNSS talk radio host John Whitmer on his show’s Facebook page are actually from events where school board member Ben Blankley dressed up once a year to raise money for local charities, including the Alzheimer’s Association and the Wichita Children’s Home.
Blankley, an aircraft engineer with Spirit AeroSystems, has an extensive background in community theater and even met his wife during one production. He said agreed to perform in the annual charity drag show because he was asked by a group of friends and fellow actors who are gay.
“They’d pick a charity, I would participate in that, did it for a bunch of years,” he said. “The last one that I did, it was actually (to benefit) the Alzheimers Association of Western and Central Kansas.”
The show was in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“They had reached out to me to participate in that, so I did,” he said. “We had a good time, had a good turnout, raised a bunch of money and that was basically it.”
Whitmer, a former Republican state legislator, has used his radio show and its Facebook page to support a four-candidate slate recruited and supported by the Sedgwick County Republican Party.
Those four candidates, Brent Davis, Hazel Stabler, Cathy Bond and Diane Albert, are running together in an effort to take majority control of the board by unseating incumbents Blankley, Ron Rosales, Mia Turner and Julie Hedrick.
Blankley and Albert are matched up head-to-head in the race for the District 1 seat.
All voters in Wichita USD 259 get to vote on all four seats that are up for election this year, regardless of where they live.
Whitmer’s Facebook post of the pictures of Blankley in drag was an attempt to influence the election.
The pictures were captioned: “Incumbent USD 259 school board member Ben Blankley has a hobby, do you think Wichita area parents might want to know about this BEFORE they vote on November 2nd?”
Whitmer said he talked with Blankley and confirmed that it was him in the pictures, which were provided by a third party.
But Whitmer said when he posted them, he didn’t know they were from charity theatrical shows.
“I confirmed with Ben that they were him,” Whitmer said. “I made sure they were actually authentic, that it wasn’t somebody that was faked or anything.
“I’m not passing judgment on him, or his lifestyle choices or whatever,” Whitmer added. “I think Wichita parents might want to know and so that’s what I posted.”
The post drew more than 600 comments by Monday afternoon, the majority criticizing Whitmer and/or telling him to mind his own business.
“I know your intention was homophobic and transphobic and to shame, but society says they’re tired of your brand of hate,” wrote Liz Hamor, a longtime Wichita LGBT-rights advocate and diversity consultant. “And this is going to increase awareness of Ben’s generous, fun, and courageous leadership qualities. Well done!”
Later, in an interview, Hamor said she was heartened that Whitmer’s post backfired on his own show’s page.
“Probably 95 to 98 percent of the comments are supportive of the LGBTQ population, so I don’t think that went the way he intended it to go,” she said.
While he is not an LGBT person himself, Blankley considers himself “a pretty strong ally for LGBTQ people.”
“I even got an award for it, for advocacy at Spirit — I got one of their leaders in diversity awards in 2019,” he said.
Blankley said he participated in high school theater but didn’t have time to act in college because of the demands of earning an engineering degree.
After he graduated and got his job at Spirit, “I started volunteering at (Wichita) Community Theatre and the folks there liked what I was doing and then they invited me to join their board of directors,” Blankley said.
“I was heavily, heavily involved and that’s how I met my wife, actually,” he said. “We were both doing a show at Community Theatre and we met each other there, so it’s been a really positive impact on my life.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2021 at 7:11 PM.
