Endorsement: Wichita City Council District 1 a very close call | Opinion

Sometimes, political endorsement editorials are difficult because both candidates are awful.

Sometimes, they’re difficult because both candidates are really good.

Fortunately for the people of Wichita’s City Council District 1, the latter scenario is the case in Tuesday’s election.

We don’t think the voters can go too far wrong marking their ballot for either Joseph Shepard or LaWanda DeShazer.

Both have a firm grasp of issues facing the 1st District, especially the need for economic development in Wichita’s traditionally Black area, which still struggles from a historical legacy of segregation and real estate redlining.

Both candidates have done the internship for City Council, serving on the District Advisory Board for outgoing council member Brandon Johnson, who can’t seek reelection due to term limits.

Both are smart, well-informed and well-spoken. Both are genuinely passionate about service to the community.

But like voters, we have to pick one. After careful consideration, we’re recommending DeShazer.

What tipped the scale for us are her long experience in community and government service, and her down-to-earth approach to issues.

DeShazer has a long record of service

Since January, DeShazer has been a community engagement specialist for Social Innovation Lab, a nonprofit agency that promotes volunteerism to strengthen families, equip youths to succeed and improve access to food. For two years before that, she worked for the YMCA as a senior program director in community outreach.

Those positions followed 27 years in government administrative jobs, 20 with the Sedgwick County Fire District and seven with the city-supported Old Cowtown Museum.

Two years ago, she started the nonprofit Communities in Action, which provides mentoring and after-school education programs for youth and sponsors free community concerts.

She was a prominent activist in the successful effort to save the McAdams Park swimming pool, which City Hall had planned to demolish and replace with a splash pad for toddlers.

In her advocacy, DeShazer exhibits an ability to take complex city issues and boil them down to the kitchen-table level.

Case in point: In May, the council was contemplating settling with developers for $400,000 of a $1.8 million balance due — on a city loan of $2.5 million — for the Ken-Mar project, a 2009 effort to revitalize the northwest corner of 13th and Oliver.

At the council’s public-comment podium, DeShazer impressively crystallized the issue by comparing it to one time when she forgot to pay her city water bill.

“You know what happened? My water got turned off,” she said. “On top of that, I got (charged) a fee to get it restored. So not only did I have to pay what I owed, I had to pay more, because I didn’t pay what I originally was supposed to pay.”

She said it shows the different treatment that ordinary residents get from City Hall compared to wealthy developers.

“It definitely is a recurring theme,” she said. “Our business developers, they borrowed the money from the city. They never completed the work that was promised. So the whole $2 million was never spent to begin with. Then they sold property.” (The price was about $3.7 million, according to city records.) “So they came out looking pretty good. And so I think they should have paid the money back, and they still would have made a profit.”

The council ultimately decided to reject the settlement and fight for the full amount in court.

Shepard also impresses

Shepard, too, has a solid background for the job of City Council member.

Having experienced homelessness in childhood, Shepard went on to Wichita State University and rose to the position of student body president.

He honed his chops as a tireless advocate for students. He crossed swords with an administration that was substantially increasing the cost of education and campus housing, while wheeling and dealing with big business to develop the university’s public-private Innovation Campus.

He parlayed that experience into a job as director of multicultural engagement and campus life at Newman University, where he built up the school’s program for diversity, equity and inclusion.

He’s also been chairman of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party and served on the boards of HumanKind Ministries, Phillips Fundamental Learning Center and the Kansas African American Museum.

He wants to empower district advisory boards to take a more active role in evaluating proposed development projects and how they impact the citizenry.

“Right now, District 1 is lucky that we have several agents and several developers that come before us (at the DAB) when they want to put a development project or request a zoning change in a neighborhood, but there are times where that’s not the case,” he said. “And there are many times where neighbors are not able to go through that process to protest or, you know, show up and engage with that agent or developer, because they are just busy in life.”

Shepard has longstanding friendships with two of the council’s more conservative members: Mayor Lily Wu and council member Dalton Glasscock. Glasscock served with Shepard in WSU student government, and later was his counterpart as Sedgwick County Republican Party chairman.

On a council that’s now split three Republicans, three Democrats, with a Libertarian mayor, those mutually respectful relationships could come in handy when it comes to negotiating at City Hall.

As we said before, we see both DeShazer and Shepard as candidates who will serve their district and the broader community well.

The campaign hasn’t generated a knockout for either side. But on our judges’ scorecards, we give DeShazer the edge on points.

— For the purpose of endorsements, the Eagle Editorial Board includes opinion editor Dion Lefler, opinion correspondent Joel Mathis, online producer Julie Mah and McClatchy Media executive Tony Berg, who lives in Wichita. The news department is separate from the board.

This story was originally published October 31, 2025 at 5:13 AM.