Who’s trying to buy your vote on Wichita sales tax? The world may never know | Opinion
This started out as such a simple story.
It was originally supposed to be about the general absurdity of a state law that doesn’t require ballot-measure campaigns to disclose who’s funding them until months after the election, when the reports don’t do anybody any good in terms of deciding how to vote.
Today, a year to the day after Wichita voters narrowly rejected a $450 million school bond, we still don’t know how much was spent by whom to influence our votes, because both the “Yes” and “No” campaigns blew off a Dec. 31 deadline for reporting their campaign contributions and expenditures.
And we may never know who’s paying for all the ads you’ve been seeing urging you to vote for or against a 1% Wichita sales tax.
But in the course of reporting that story, I found out that the Republican political operative who ran last year’s “No” campaign in the bond election — and is running the “Yes” campaign for the upcoming March 3 sales tax election — is already in a court diversion program for violating a state statute that prohibits “corrupt political advertising.”
During the bond campaign last year, Ben Davis, the owner of Cato Consulting, mailed unsolicited, partially filled-out absentee-ballot applications to voters.
It’s OK to do that, but those solicitations did not have the printed disclosure required by state law, including who’s paying for the mailing, their address and the disclaimer “This is not a government mailing. It is from a private individual or organization.”
The district attorney’s office agreed to let Davis settle the case through the diversion program, which defers prosecution and allows for misdemeanor charges to be dismissed if the defendant keeps a clean record for a specified period of time — six months in Davis’ case, according to court documents.
Failing to file the spending report on the bond campaign could be another violation.
Davis registered a political action committee — Wichita United for Better Education — to oppose the USD 259 bond issue in December 2024.
About a week ago, he filed papers officially terminating the PAC, but has not filed its statement of contributions and expenditures, according to Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Laura Rainwater.
Davis initially said he didn’t think he had to file, since he had dissolved the PAC, but in a later interview he said he will file the disclosure that was due Dec. 31. As of Tuesday, he hadn’t.
The other side in the bond election hasn’t performed any better.
Yes For Wichita Kids incorporated as a not-for-profit entity with the Secretary of State’s office. It has also failed to file the campaign finance disclosure forms that were required on Dec. 31.
The chairman of Yes for Wichita Kids, Bradley Dyer Jr., an executive with Credit Union of America, did not return a phone message and an email seeking an explanation.
Hiding political campaign donors
The hide-the-donors trick is echoing today, as Wichita voters are casting early ballots in a March 3 special election to decide whether to levy a 1% sales tax for seven years. If it passes, it is projected to collect $850 million to fund new convention and performing arts facilities, shelter for the homeless, improvements at police and fire stations and property tax abatement.
Pro-sales-tax campaign TV ads and mailers do say “Paid for by Wichita Forward,” but appear to fall short of a state law that also requires them to include “the name of the chairperson or treasurer of the political or other organization sponsoring” in the advertisements.
Wichita Forward organized itself as a 501(c)(4) “public benefit” nonprofit corporation. Such groups are allowed to support political campaigns, but it’s not supposed to be their only reason to exist.
Under federal law, 501(c)(4)s generally don’t have to report their donors, making them a favorite conduit for those who want to influence elections by funneling anonymous dark money to political campaigns.
Kansas is one of a handful of states that requires disclosure beyond what the IRS requires — even if it does come 10 months too late.
Rainwater said her office just receives and files the paperwork submitted by campaigns, and cannot enforce the disclosure rules.
She referred me to District Attorney Mark Bennett for questions on that.
He said his department doesn’t routinely review campaign filings, but will take action when public complaints are received.
“I’ve not been asked to review that (failure to file December reports) yet, but I will do so in light of your bringing it to my attention, and we will see,” Bennett said.
On Thursday in a separate case, Bennett opted not to file charges against Davis’ company for a January mailing on behalf of the sales tax campaign, that gave incorrect information on the date that absentee ballots must be returned and the opening time of election-day polling places.
He ruled that the error was a result of a mixup between Cato Consulting and a contractor, Hexcode Marketing.
“Both parties assert that the errors contained in the mailer were identified by Cato Consulting in writing before the mailer was sent to the printer,” the DA’s office said in a written statement. “Hexcode Marketing sent the incorrect mailer on to be printed without taking corrective action to fix the mailer, which the company attributes to human error while attending to other tasks.”
With this amount of campaigning crammed into this short a period of time, it was pretty much a certainty that ethical corners would get cut, and that T’s would get dotted and I’s would get crossed, instead of the other way around.
After engineering the campaign period to be as short as possible — the last half of December, January and February — Wichita Forward has saturated the city with TV ads and slick mailings.
I’d estimate that watching one old movie and one new(er) episode of “Hell’s Kitchen” on Sunday, I saw their “Watch Wichita Win” ads at least 25 times. I could practically recite them by now.
Sprinkled among the “Yes” ads were significantly fewer for the “No” side, often running back-to-back with “Yes” ads.
The “No” campaign has also organized around a 501(c)(4), called Save Taxpayers Vote No Coalition, meaning they too could try to shield the identities of their donors next December.
So far, the group has complied with state disclosure law, identifying former Sedgwick County commissioner Karl Peterjohn as treasurer in its advertisements.
State lawmakers need to fix this
The one bright spot out of this sordid affair is that we might get some long-needed action from the Statehouse to bring more transparency to who is trying to influence our votes.
Human candidates running for office have to disclose their contributions and spending before their elections. And the Legislature has tightened the rules further in recent years, requiring day-by-day reports in the days leading up to Election Day.
But the rules on ballot measure elections, tucked into a different statute, have yet to catch up.
I spoke with three legislators, two Republicans and a Democrat, and they all indicated support for reform.
“I’m like, you get one cent, you should have to disclose it. If you spend one cent, you should have to disclose it,” said Rep. Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth Republican who chairs the House Elections Committee. “Transparency is a good thing. It builds confidence in elections when people know where all the money’s coming from.”
He said it’s too late in the current legislative session for his committee to originate a bill. But he said he would talk to his counterparts on the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee, a “blessed” committee that can introduce and act on bills at any time during the session.
The Senate just passed a bill requiring disclosure of travel expenses of the governor and other statewide officeholders, said Sen. Oletha Faust Goudeau of Wichita, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Local Government, Transparency and Ethics.
“Had we known (about the issues with ballot measures), we could have included this piece. Wow,” she said.
Republican Sen. Elaine Bowers of Concordia, who chairs the committee, said she’ll also be talking with her colleagues about the weakness of the rules on ballot-measure campaign disclosure.
“You’re pointing out something to me I did not know,” she said. “I like disclosure, particularly like we do as legislators.”
She said if getting some reform can’t be done this year, she’ll try to schedule an informational hearing later in this session with an eye toward running a bill next year.
If it comes to that, sign me up as the first to testify.
By March 3, voters in Wichita will have been asked to approve $1.3 billion in new government spending, between the bond election and the sales tax election.
For a city of our size, that’s a huge amount of money. And we should never be in a position where we have to decide such momentous issues without knowing who’s trying to pull our strings.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 5:11 AM with the headline "Who’s trying to buy your vote on Wichita sales tax? The world may never know | Opinion."
