Outside spending pours into Wichita mayoral race. Here’s what we know

2023 Wichita voter guide: What to know about local candidates, where and how to vote

A record amount of campaign cash is pouring into the Wichita mayoral primary election, including dark money that is working to give candidates an advantage without disclosing who paid for it or how much is being spent.

Outside spending by organizations or individuals who aren’t part of candidates’ campaigns can have varying disclosure rules about who is giving and how much.

Dark money campaigns in particular allow anonymous donors to spend unlimited money influencing the election, in contrast with the $500 contribution limits they would be held to if they donated directly to a candidate.

The Wichita Eagle has identified four groups or individuals who have spent money outside of the city mayoral campaigns. Some have disclosed who they are and what they spent while others declined.

▪ Americans for Prosperity — a Koch-backed conservative advocacy group that works as a national power broker in Republican politics — spent more than $66,000 in the first two weeks of July to help elect Lily Wu with mailers, phone calls, text messages and online advertisements. Less than half of that money can be traced to a specific donor.

▪ The Better Government Institute — a nonprofit corporation formed in late May by Save Century II organization leader and former Sedgwick County Commissioner Karl Peterjohn — has been promoting Save Century II founder Celeste Racette through mailers and paid advertisements. A loophole in Kansas campaign finance laws has allowed the group to keep its donations and expenditures secret by avoiding the words “vote for” or other express advocacy.

▪ Matt Goolsby — a managing partner at Market Advisory Group and former Wichita park board member — sent out a mailer this week urging people to vote for City Council member Bryan Frye. He has not yet filed an independent expenditure report, but he told The Eagle he spent $5,000 of his own money on the letter.

▪ Free State Committee — a nonprofit corporation formed in early June by Mayor Brandon Whipple’s friend and Ad Astra Democratic political strategist Levi Henry — sent out advance ballot applications to targeted voters. The group’s mailer does not mention or promote any city candidates. “Get out the vote” drives are not subject to the Kansas Campaign Finance Act.

What effect outside spending will have on Tuesday’s results remains to be seen.

Candidates aren’t legally allowed to control or coordinate with outside groups, and their support can ultimately backfire, as it did in 2019 when The Eagle debunked a false, dark-money attack campaign put together by a group of three Republican officials who supported former Mayor Jeff Longwell.

So far this cycle, all of the outside ads have been positive. But that could change as groups grow more aggressive on or near Election Day.

AFP’s funding blitz for Wu — which includes multiple mailers, online ads and social media promotions and other activities — gives her a definite advantage in reaching more voters more often. Her opponents have said the support of a divisive political group could undermine her campaign promise to unify the city.

Peterjohn’s dark money promotion of Racette has reached thousands of potential voters without disclosing who’s paying for it.

Goolsby’s letter put a personal appeal for Frye in front of an untold number of potential voters. He would not say how many were targeted.

Henry’s voter turnout effort may have helped thousands of potential Whipple voters more easily cast a ballot without disclosing how it was funded.

Other candidates have shunned any form of campaign finance. Candidate and former City Council member Jared Cerullo is self-funding his campaign and has criticized the other candidates’ donations and outside support.

Cerullo and the other four candidates — Julie Rose Stroud, Anthony Gallardo, Shelia Davis (Rainman) and Tom Kane — do not appear to be receiving any help from outside spending.

Wu embraces AFP support

AFP’s support for Wu adds to what was already a record amount of campaign funding for the first-time candidate who quit her TV news job to run for mayor.

Wu, who received $207,202 in donations from Jan. 1 to July 20, raised more money than all other candidates combined, more than doubling the previous record held by Longwell in 2019.

And Wu has embraced the additional support from one of the nation’s most powerful conservative organizations that took a leading role in the rise of the Tea Party movement and strong national opposition to Obamacare, Medicaid expansion and environmental regulations.

Under scrutiny for the AFP support at a recent televised debate, Wu said she was “proud to be supported by a pro-freedom organization.”

“They’re against cronyism,” Wu said.

Wu has pledged not to take part in “backroom deals” and not to show favoritism to political insiders.

AFP’s $66,080 spending on Wu is $703 shy of total spending by Frye, the second-place fundraiser. In the first two weeks of July, the group’s expenses dwarfed spending by Whipple and Racette, more than doubling what they spent combined during the first seven months of the primary election cycle.

The vast majority of AFP’s donations to Wu’s campaign are untraceable. The only named donor on a recent filing with the Kansas Government Ethics Commission was Richard A. Varner, who donated $24,500 — 48 times over the contribution limit if he would have donated directly to Wu’s campaign.

Varner, a Wichita native, has been in the petroleum business for over 40 years, including as chairman of the Pacific Refining Company, a joint venture between Houston-based Coastal Corporation and a Chinese state-owned multinational conglomerate now known as Sinochem. He is now CEO of Navitas Utility Corporation, a natural gas utility company that serves much of rural Oklahoma.

Wu’s longtime boyfriend Stephen Clark II and his father, Stephen Clark — who both also donated to Wu’s campaign — have recently given money to AFP causes, Federal Election Commission records show.

In late November 2021, Clark Family LLC, an entity owned by the younger Clark and Shannon Clark through a irrevocable trust fund, donated $100,000 to Americans for Prosperity’s PAC. Last July, Clark’s father personally donated another $100,000 to the PAC.

Americans for Prosperity did not return a request for comment.

Save Century II work leads to backing for Racette

Racette’s support from The Better Government Institute has included campaign mailers with her photograph and name and a full-page ad in The Active Age newspaper, a free newspaper geared toward people over the age of 55.

Peterjohn, a Libertarian-leaning Republican who served on the Sedgwick County Commission from 2009 to 2016, forged an unlikely alliance with Racette in a petition drive aimed at saving Century II and the former downtown public library from demolition.

Racette, during a debate earlier this month, said she has no part in Peterjohn’s ads.

“As for Karl Peterjohn, what he does is his own,” she said. “He worked with me on Save Century II.”

Racette, a former Democratic precinct committeewoman, grew up the daughter of an old school Kansas Democrat — Vincent Bogart, a former Wichita mayor and adviser to Democratic Kansas Gov. Robert Docking in the 1960s and 1970s.

Racette cut ties with the Democratic Party in 2021 and is now unaffiliated. But she continues to have strong support from some Democrats.

She has touted her alliance with Republicans Peterjohn and John Todd on the Save Century II petition as evidence that her campaign is bipartisan, focused less on national culture-war issues and more on local accountability and transparency.

But The Better Government Institute’s spending and donors are completely unavailable, leaving voters in the dark about who is funding the promotion of Racette and how much is being spent.

In a phone interview, Peterjohn declined to provide a list of donors or say how much the organization is spending in the city election. He said none of the money was transferred from the Save Century II group that raised money for a petition drive in 2020. Donors to that effort have not been disclosed — and are not required to be disclosed — because the city never held an election on the issue and instead sued Peterjohn and Racette to have their petition thrown out.

“Better Government Institute is an outgrowth of the Save Century II effort because we got sued by the city and needless to say we’re not happy,” Peterjohn said. “Petition the city and get sued? That’s a real slap in the face for the First Amendment.”

Peterjohn said the material his organization has been sending out is not express advocacy and therefore is not legally required to be disclosed under state law.

“We’re just exercising our First Amendment rights like hopefully any other citizen can do, although that seems to be very controversial,” he said.

Letter about police, safety

In support of Frye, Goolsby took a different path. Instead of forming a PAC or a nonprofit organization, he paid about $5,000 in personal funds to reach voters.

His letter — which went out after the campaign reporting deadline — is clearly labeled “Paid for and written by Matt Goolsby.”

In it, he cites Wichita Police Department staffing troubles, saying he is “concerned for the safety of Wichita and our residents” and “I’m not sure why our local newspaper refuses to acknowledge the crisis we are facing?”

The Eagle has reported on Wichita police staffing troubles, officer departures, crime trends and slow response times.

Goolsby urges voters to “do your own research” and provides a link to Frye’s campaign page, after telling people to vote for Frye “if you are concerned about the safety of our city.”

Goolsby said he plans to file an independent expenditure report with the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, as required by state law. He said he did not receive any funding from Frye or anyone else for the mailer.

“I felt like it was necessary to do because I’m not afraid or have to hide who I am or who I support,” Goolsby said. “I just wonder why that can’t be said for whoever is paying for all these other mailers to get sent out.”

Frye said the fact Goolsby is named in the mailer makes it easier for the public to identify any future potential conflicts of interest or favoritism, something that would be nearly impossible if he had funneled the money through a PAC or certain other types of organizations.

“Financial contributions have never influenced my votes and they never will,” Frye said.

Primary voter turnout

Henry, a longtime Whipple supporter and political strategist, took yet another option to impact the Wichita election.

Instead of sending out mailers or running ads for his preferred candidate, he focused on getting ballots to voters.

The mailer Free State Committee sent out does not mention any candidates, political parties or anything else that would be considered partisan. It simply urges voters to “Make a plan to vote in the election held on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023.”

It gives potential voters an advance by mail application and provides information on how to apply online.

“It’s not effective to pair encouraging people to vote with persuasion activity,” Henry said.

Henry said he did not target voters based on political affiliation. But he also acknowledged Democrats turn out at a higher rate to vote by mail.

Democrats have out-requested Republicans on advance ballots by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio in the city election, Sedgwick County Election Office data shows. Advance ballots went to 8,019 Democrats, 4,205 Republicans, 1,354 unaffiliated and 43 Libertarians.

Henry said Free State Committee targeted voters based on whether they were likely to vote in a city election. He said it was loosely based on the “New American Majority” model by the Voter Participation Project and Center for Voter Information, which seek to increase voter participation by unmarried women, people of color and younger eligible voters.

“Party doesn’t come into the equation,” Henry said. “There are a few variables that come into it. I don’t want to break that part of it down because there’s some part of it that’s proprietary. Voting probability is certainly one of those factors.”

Henry said the group sent out thousands of the mailers but would not say specifically how many. He said he has not received permission from his three-person board of directors to disclose who funded the mailer or to say how much it cost.

“No candidates have pledged or given any money for this effort,” Henry said. “I didn’t even solicit them. It gets a little too close for comfort there.”

“We’re not doing any express advocacy,” Henry said. “We’re not trying to educate anybody about candidates. Functionally, pragmatically, it does not work to do any of that with this. So we just don’t — don’t have any plans to. Kind of part of the mission is to not be a partisan organization but instead focus on just getting people to vote.”

Henry said the Free State Committee’s mailer was completely separate from the work of his political consulting business, Ad Astra Agency. That business was paid $3,320 on July 11 by Wichita’s Future PAC — a political action committee controlled by Chelsea Whipple, the mayor’s wife — for “voting reminder telecommunications,” a campaign finance report shows.

“That’s a hard no,” Henry said. “Totally unrelated.”

Whipple said he had no involvement in the Free State Committee’s activities.

“Local elections usually have low voter turnout, so anyone working to help more people vote in these elections is a good thing, even if they aren’t telling people to vote for me,” Whipple said.