Updated: Here’s The Wichita Eagle’s fact check page for 2023 city elections
This page will be updated throughout the campaign as necessary when false or misleading information is circulated.
Oct. 17 - The Wichita Fraternal Order of Police said a mailer sent by the Kansas Democratic Party on Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple’s behalf is misleading.
A Wichita Eagle fact check found some of the information on the mailer requires additional context. Statements made by the FOP at a news conference on Oct. 16 about the mailer were false, misleading or lacking proper context. FOP leaders falsely claimed the mailer said law enforcement supported Whipple. It did not.
They also blamed Whipple for the department’s toxic culture and slower response times, which other investigations have found were caused by other factors.
The Eagle also found the KDP mailer requires additional context, as it says Whipple kept his promises to the law enforcement community. The FOP president said Whipple was not instrumental in the hiring of the 200 or 100 officers he promised when he was running for office. Whipple said the number was unachievable and that the chief of police never brought forth a proposal adding that many positions.
Oct. 5 - A Kansas Democratic Party mailer sent in support of Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple is misleading about challenger Lily Wu’s economic plan for the city.
“Lily Wu’s economic plan: ‘My boyfriend is a real estate developer,’” the mailer says in bold lettering next to a photograph of Wu posing for a photograph with a purse, a jab at Wu’s longtime boyfriend and local developer Stephen Clark II.
That is a real quote from Wu, but it has been taken out of context.
Wu made the statement in response to a Wichita Beacon questionnaire that asked primary candidates, “As a 2023 candidate for Wichita mayor, what is your relationship with real estate developers? What should a mayor’s relationship be?”
Wu’s full response: “Real estate development is necessary for growth. It brings affordable housing, retail, restaurants, hotels and other amenities that help increase our quality of life. That said, our city doesn’t have a good track record with public-private partnerships, which have often meant sweetheart, insider deals, wasting taxpayer dollars for the benefit of few at the expense of many. If incentives are absolutely necessary, they must be transparent, fiscally responsible and hold the developers accountable. Taxpayers shouldn’t be left in the dark, or foot the bill for anything that doesn’t show an exceptional long-term return for our city. My boyfriend is a real estate developer. He comes from a respected, philanthropic family that supports many local organizations. His main investment locally is the Waterfront in east Wichita, which was developed without incentives or taxpayer dollars, but almost all of his business interests are outside Kansas.”
Wu’s economic plan is outlined on her campaign website. It includes creating a city advisory board with members from the city’s “top 50 employers,” being “an ambassador for our city,” cutting regulations on businesses, opposing tax increases and supporting McConnell Air Force Base.
The Kansas Democratic Party mailer also warns that Clark, Wu’s boyfriend, has an axe to grind with the city over a botched Wichita riverfront apartment project from more than a decade ago that put the Clark family and Americans For Prosperity, a conservative group they financially support, at odds with City Hall.
City officials confirmed Clark has not bid on any projects since the 2013 River Vista debacle.
From 2011 to 2013, Clark, who handled the project for Clark Investment Group, had worked behind the scenes with city staff on plans for an apartment complex at First and McLean. Under Clark’s proposal, the city would give Clark Investment nearly 5 acres of city-owned property — appraised at $600,000 — for free.
In exchange, Clark would build a more than $17 million apartment complex and agree to pay $1 million to help build a boathouse for Wichita Festivals and the Wichita State University rowing team. An additional $500,000 would go toward a regional medical simulation center.
Clark’s father, Steve Clark, said at the time that he believed Clark Investment had a “preferred developer” agreement with the city that would allow the company to proceed with the project without any other bidders.
Instead, the City Council extended the deadline for a competing development group that included major campaign contributors George Laham, Dave Burk, Dave Wells and Bill Warren, who later pulled out of the project. They offered $100,000 for the land.
The council awarded the project to Clark’s competitors, who built River Vista using a slew of economic development incentives. Laham, Burk and Wells have continued to expand their city-subsidized projects on the west bank of the Arkansas River near downtown, including assembling land around Riverfront Stadium that was later sold to the city and a planned mega-project at Metropolitan Baptist Church site.
The Kansas Democratic Party mailer says the Clark family “hasn’t given up on securing preferred developer status at Wichita City Hall.”
Clark Investment Group has not submitted any proposals to the city of Wichita since 2013, according to a city spokesperson.
Wu condemned the mailer as “misleading and sexist” in a written statement Friday morning and called it a distraction from Whipple’s record of voting to grant incentives to developers. She also pledged to never use the office of mayor to give preferential treatment to the Clarks or anyone else.
“Brandon Whipple previously stated, ‘Any time you attack my wife as if she’s an accessory to me and don’t acknowledge her as an independent person who actually has a lot of really good accomplishments, I take that as sexist,’” Wu’s statement said.
“Let me be clear,” Wu’s statement said. “As mayor, I will never use the office for preferential treatment, either for myself, friends or family, campaign donors or supporters, or anyone else for that matter. Period.”
Steve Clark, Wu’s boyfriend’s father, said the mailer’s “accusations are false.”
“We do very little in Wichita from a development standpoint,” Clark said. “We have never submitted another bid or proposal to do anything in Wichita on a property in which city government was involved (since 2013). . . . After we invested $200,000 in planning, the city abruptly chose a favored developer. This, after giving us every verbal assurance that the city was 100% in favor of our plan.”
Sept. 29 - At least two Americans for Prosperity mailers sent on behalf of mayoral challenger Lily Wu overstate Brandon Whipple’s role in awarding a federal contract that raised ethical questions and benefited several consultants with ties to City Hall.
“As mayor, Whipple and his team steered a $4 million federal COVID grant to a political insider,” the Libertarian advocacy group’s campaign materials state. “Wichita doesn’t need policies that encourage special interests and waste taxpayer money.”
Whipple and all six other members of the City Council voted to award the Facts Not Fear ICT contract to Community Connections Consulting Services in August 2021 but there is no publicly available evidence to indicate Whipple played a bigger role in the process than any other council member.
In the mailers, Americans for Prosperity cites an Eagle investigation that found the Wichita city manager’s office used outdated data to secure the grant aimed at improving health literacy in Wichita’s racial and ethnic minority populations.
The employee who wrote the initial grant application was later hired by Community Connections to serve as a project assistant, and another woman who is close friends with council member Brandon Johnson was also paid for her services under the contract.
In a release, Whipple’s campaign characterized the accusations levied against him in the AFP mailer as “false” and “outlandish.”
The City Council voted in March to terminate its contract with Community Connections, which spent $1.6 million on its outreach campaign, entrusting the remaining $2.4 million of federal funds to the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita.
June 9, 2023: Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple falsely claimed that violent crime had been cut in half during his term, based on faulty data provided by the Wichita Police Department to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Crime stats were inconsistent in four separate crime data reporting place: on WPD’s website, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s annual report, the FBI’s crime statistics and the department’s LexisNexis Community Crime Map. None of the numbers matched. The only ones that supported a claim of crime being cut in half during Whipple’s term was the FBI’s data, which appeared to be incomplete based on data maintained independently by The Wichita Eagle.
Whipple later removed the false claims from his campaign website. WPD scrubbed its website of the faulty data.
This story was originally published October 2, 2023 at 9:50 AM.