Racette in the race for Wichita mayor; what could it mean for Whipple, Frye? | Commentary

There’s going to be a mayoral contest in Wichita this year. What will the candidates run on?

On Friday, Celeste Racette, the founder of Save Century II and a constant presence at City Hall, declared that she would run for mayor.

The tagline on her website? “I’ll Restore Your Trust in City Government.”

Her focus is financial oversight and ethical integrity — both of which she says she had hoped to see improve under Mayor Brandon Whipple, whom she supported when he ran in 2019, but neither of which she thinks has.

In making this argument, Racette is putting herself in the same shoes Whipple wore, since “transparency” was his central argument against the incumbent mayor, Jeff Longwell.

Whipple’s accusation was that City Hall under the Longwell administration had become “a place of insider deals made behind closed doors,” while Racette’s accusation is that City Hall has lost the trust of Wichitans due to “insider handouts, poor judgment, and backroom deals.”

The particulars are different, of course.

Whipple’s tenure hasn’t involved anything like the secret deal Longwell orchestrated to build a new stadium to attract minor league baseball to the city, much less the seeming favoritism involved in the city awarding hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts for a new water plant to Longwell’s friends.

Rather, Racette’s case builds on what she sees as Whipple’s refusal to hold City Manager Robert Layton accountable when it comes to city finances, particularly regarding landmarks like Century II, as well as the alleged self-interest in Whipple’s approach to the Ethics Advisory Board which he pushed to create.

Given Racette’s prominence among those suspicious of the often-hidden details in the financial arrangements the city loves to make, it’s likely she’ll be able to make constructive use of the unfortunately still widespread presumption of corruption and short-sightedness in City Hall.

Whipple, as the incumbent, won’t be able to.

So what will be his argument for re-election be?

Since one of the few complaints that have actually come before the Ethics Advisory Board involves the mayor himself, that might not be an accomplishment he chooses to focus on.

But he’ll be able to claim some arguable successes; leading the city through the pandemic certainly counts.

I also suspect Whipple will lean into the progressive politics which his own history as a Democratic state legislator leads many voters to associate him with anyway, his complicated but ultimately successful push for a city-wide non-discrimination ordinance being foremost.

In recent mailings from the mayor’s office, his support for continued efforts to expand Medicaid and combat domestic violence are highlighted, as well as how those efforts are “drawing opposition from insiders.”

Whipple has always been open about his willingness to think in a more explicitly political, and therefore partisan, way when it comes to city government, though he hasn’t used his position to advance any serious plan for changing the city charter and thus making that willingness less controversial.

I definitely wouldn’t expect to see such proposals during the campaign.

But since the opponent most observers expect to be his main challenger — council member Bryan Frye — is a well-connected Republican, Whipple associating his progressive goals with his mayoral role, despite its official non-partisan character, could draw distinctions that may be electorally helpful.

Or maybe not: Wichita may be changing, but it’s still certainly not a liberal city.

Still, with his best arguments from 2019 possibly being turned against him by a passionate outsider like Racette — very much as Whipple himself was an outsider to city politics when he first ran — the political aspect of his campaign may, despite the consternation they cause to those who insist (sometimes hypocritically) that party agendas have no place in city politics, be essential to him.

Time will tell.

Russell Arben Fox teaches political science in Wichita.