Former Wichita City Council appointee Jared Cerullo joins crowded mayoral field

Jared Cerullo, a freelance reporter and PA announcer for the Wichita Wings soccer team, has officially joined the 2023 mayoral race.

Cerullo, a Republican, served nine months on the City Council in 2021, when he was appointed to replace James Clendenin. Cerullo went on to lose the seat by 91 votes to Democrat Mike Hoheisel.

This time around, he said he plans to focus on door-to-door campaigning. Rather than pay $70 in filing fees, Cerullo opted for a petition drive to get his name on the ballot.

“I felt it was more important to meet people where they were at, and they were in their homes, at their neighborhood meetings, in their churches,” Cerullo said in an interview with The Eagle.

He ended up collecting roughly 300 signatures — three times the necessary amount to be included in the Aug. 1 primary.

“We need to stop playing politics with City Hall and get back to the basics of serving our people,” Cerullo said. “Making sure our roads are fixed, our bridges are fixed, our water is clean, our parks are kept up.”

Cerullo has emerged as a vocal critic of Mayor Brandon Whipple, who he frequently sparred with on the City Council, accusing him of stoking division rather than bringing people together.

“The first thing I will do if I’m elected is repair the relationship between the mayor’s office and the police department, which the current mayor has destroyed,” Cerullo said. “I have talked to countless police officers who don’t trust Brandon Whipple because he clearly doesn’t trust them.”

Last fall, the police union called on Whipple to apologize or resign over a recorded spat with an officer at a neighborhood cleanup. The union previously endorsed Whipple in 2019.

Cerullo told The Eagle he has not yet read the Jensen Hughes report, a third-party assessment of the Wichita Police Department in which officers described the city’s cop culture as ‘broken,’ ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘horrible.’

“I have not looked over the complete results, but it clearly shows that there are problems within our police department that need to be fixed,” Cerullo said. “No police department in the country is perfect but we have to have our police department and our fire department — we have to have these public safety departments to help keep us safe. The answer is not defunding police.”

He said police should double down on community outreach efforts and focus on building relationships with residents.

Cerullo said he supports preserving Century II in some capacity, but he would like to see the city’s performing arts find a new home.

“They need to have a new building of their own,” Cerullo said. “But are city residents willing to raise taxes for that kind of development? I’m not so sure. That would be something that would maybe have to be left to a public vote.”

He said he anticipates another organized effort in the next four years to support downtown development with local tax increases.

“I believe there is going to be a strong push by the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan again to tear down Century II or do something downtown for private development that should not be handled on the back of taxpayers at all,” Cerullo said.

He joins a crowded field of mayoral hopefuls, including City Council member Bryan Frye, former TV news reporter Lily Wu and community organizer Celeste Racette, who previously worked as a fraud investigator. Whipple has said he plans to run for re-election, but he had not yet filed with the Sedgwick County Election Office on Tuesday.

The filing deadline is noon Thursday.

This story was originally published May 31, 2023 at 5:23 AM.