Wichita councilwoman’s censure case reflects badly on county GOP | Opinion
Is Wichita City Council member Becky Tuttle too open minded to be a modern Republican?
We’ll find out Thursday.
That’s when the Sedgwick County Republican Party will consider whether to censure Tuttle for failing to hate a group of people that the GOP’s “core constituency” hates.
Tuttle’s a thoughtful and moderate voice on the council, and while I don’t always agree with her, her comments and votes show she takes the job seriously and tries to do the best for our community.
I could sit here and defend Tuttle all day.
But that would serve the purposes of her adversaries in the county GOP organization.
Make no mistake about it: Becky Tuttle’s not the one on trial here. The Sedgwick County Republican Party is.
The proposed censure resolution — anonymously submitted by someone on the GOP precinct committee — is scheduled to be voted on Thursday night.
It lists four proposed grounds for censure against Tuttle. Three of them are patently absurd, so I’ll save them for later.
Transgender proclamation core of complaint
The only real reason anybody’s coming after Tuttle is that she voted for a City Council proclamation honoring Transgender Day of Visibility.
This, the censure resolution says, is “an action perceived by many within the party as inconsistent with the traditional values and platform upheld by the Sedgwick County Republican Party, thereby raising concerns about her commitment to representing the party’s core constituency.”
I’ll say this for whoever wrote that: They’re concise. It’s hard to cram that much malicious drivel into such a short statement.
▪ “Perceived by many within the party?”
Since when is a City Council member responsible for what partisans perceive? It’s a nonpartisan office — although admittedly, the wall between partisanship and service to the community has been crumbling for years and partisanship is winning big time.
▪ “Inconsistent with the traditional values platform upheld by the Sedgwick County Republican Party?”
I guess bigotry can be defined as a “value” of sorts, but it’s probably not something to brag about in educated company.
▪ “Raising concerns about her commitment to representing the party’s core constituency?”
Hello? It’s not Becky Tuttle’s job to represent the party’s core constituency, whomever they may think they are. It’s her job to represent everybody in Wichita’s 2nd Council District.
The censure resolution begins and ends with stating the party’s “unwavering commitment” to “individual liberty.”
I’d submit that if such a commitment actually existed, this resolution wouldn’t.
It’s pretty hard to claim you’re for “individual liberty” and then turn around and actively deny it to people whose gender orientation isn’t what you think it ought to be — not to mention Becky Tuttle’s individual liberty to choose not to despise them.
The people behind this resolution don’t give a flying fig about anyone’s “individual liberty.” The only thing they care about is power — the power to make the lives of LGBTQ+ people as uncomfortable as possible, and to pressure everyone else to go along with their narrow-minded views.
A few weeks ago, I defended Mayor Lily Wu’s right not to support or sign the proclamation supporting Transgender Visibility Day.
Today, I am just as strongly supporting Becky Tuttle’s right to support it.
The dumb reasons for censure
As I mentioned earlier, the other three stated reasons for GOP committee members calling for a censure of Tuttle are laughable. They include:
1) She voted in favor of installing a couple of expensive outhouses in downtown city parks.
I’m not a big fan of the price tag for the “Portland Loo” project. But it is worth noting here that Tuttle was responding to years of requests from downtown business owners, nearly all of them Republicans, for public toilets so that park users and homeless people stop sneaking into their businesses to use the facilities.
2) She voted in favor of looking into historic registry designation for the Crown Uptown Theatre, which could make it more difficult for the Tulsa investor who bought it two years ago to demolish it. Owner Mike Brown has tried to pull permits to tear down the theater because the city won’t raise his allowable seating capacity from 850 to 2,000, well above what the fire marshal says is a conceivably safe number for the 97-year-old building.
3) Here’s the weirdest flex of all: The resolution says Tuttle “continues to support” the city’s public art program, which sets aside a whopping 2% of spending on public projects for a little bit of aesthetic improvement.
Maybe somebody over at the county GOP forgot this was a Republican idea when it passed the council on a 6-1 vote in December of 2019. The mayor at the time was Republican Jeff Longwell, and he led a council made up of six Republicans and one Democrat.
So, to summarize, Becky Tuttle has supported public art and public toilets, and is against out-of-state speculators buying Wichita landmarks and tearing them down.
That, and she doesn’t share the warped desire that some have to erase transgender people from Sedgwick County society.
A few years ago, in more reasonable times, nothing Tuttle has said or done would have even been remotely in question for Kansas Republicanism.
This week, we find out if the Sedgwick County Republican Party stills supports freedom of thought, or if it’s been taken over by extremists who want to dictate how we live, who we can love, who we have to hate.
One way or another, the GOP precinct committee men and women will be sending a strong message Thursday night.
For all our sakes, let’s hope they send the right one.
