The $630,000 mayor: Can Lily Wu keep her boldest promises? | Opinion

In the final election-night scene of the classic 1972 political drama “The Candidate,” senator-elect Bill McKay (Robert Redford) asks the consultant who masterminded his campaign “What do we do now?”

He doesn’t get an answer, before being mobbed by well-wishers and ushered out of the room.

I was reminded of that scene Tuesday night as former TV reporter Lily Wu stomped incumbent Brandon Whipple to become Wichita’s next mayor.

Wu’s campaign was fueled by a record-shattering $630,000 in campaign spending, including a whopping $192,000 spent by the Koch Industries front group Americans for Prosperity.

The campaign was simultaneously vacuous and brilliant.

Wu spread a blank canvas across the city, inviting Wichitans to project their hopes and dreams upon it. And project they did.

She positioned herself as the “outsider” in the race, although her list of campaign donors is a veritable who’s who of the city’s business and development elites.

On the trail, Wu was welded to a single focus-grouped issue: more police officers (though not necessarily better ones).

In fact, there wasn’t a question asked in the campaign where Wu couldn’t circle back around to well-practiced lines about “public safety” and the need to hire 100 or more additional police officers.

I find myself wondering what Wu will do the next time the police get caught circulating racist text messages about wanting to “chilli whop” some Mexicans or hunting that well-known slur for Black Americans. Or when a teenager in mental crisis dies because police throw him in jail instead of taking him to the hospital where he belongs. Will she find it in herself to confront that, or will she look the other way?

As I write this, there are 14 Lily Wu mailers on my desk, a small fraction of the avalanche of postcards that have inundated local mailboxes for the past half a year.

The one at the top of the stack promises that Wu will “bring down our cost of living.”

Why not? Inflation is biting us all. But if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s this: If the Kroger Corp. decides to reduce the price of beans and bacon at Dillons (and I’m not holding my breath), it won’t be because of anything Lily Wu does or doesn’t do.

The next one asks “Why trust City Hall?” and quotes a 2019 headline from an Eagle article: “Wichita’s mayor steered multi-million-dollar water plant contract to friends.” Left unsaid in the ad is that the mayor who did that was not Brandon Whipple, but his predecessor, Jeff Longwell, and it was probably the biggest reason that Whipple beat Longwell four years ago.

But the campaign is over, and now the hard work of government begins.

One of Wu’s most oft-repeated promises was to end the culture of sweetheart deals at City Hall.

In that, she’ll find she has my unwavering support — whether she wants it or not.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of watching tax money being diverted to guaranteeing developers’ profit margins on their pet projects, and our public land, parks and parking lots being handed over to private interests to benefit them instead of the citizenry.

The question now is whether Wu can make good on her promise to end all that. To do it, she’ll have to bite a lot of the hands that fed her campaign. Is she up to it?

Time will tell whether this marks a moment of actual reform or simply a different set of wealthy campaign donors taking their turn at the trough.

Before the ink was dry on the election returns, Americans for Prosperity sent out this not-so-subtle reminder of their role in bringing Wu to the ball: “AFP-KS was able to make a combined total of more than 247,000 voter contacts through digital ads, door knocking, mailers, and telephone outreach.”

Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson (also a subsidiary of Koch Industries) was at Wu’s campaign party, comparing her to Donald Trump. In mayoral debates, Wu expressed her pride in being endorsed by a “pro-freedom” organization.

In reality, Americans for Prosperity stands strong for three goals: tax cuts for the rich, destruction of the public school system and elimination of regulations that protect ordinary citizens from sketchy business practices.

Like the fictional Bill McKay, Lily Wu will inevitably be asking someone “What do we do now?”

For all our sakes, let us hope that someone is not AFP.