Columns
What Will the Mayor’s Race Be About?
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On Friday, Celeste Racette, the founder of Save Century II and a woman who has made herself a constant presence at City Hall over the past few years–especially when anything related to Wichita’s finances or policy decisions that implicate the ethics of those on our city council are being discussed–declared that she would run for mayor. The tagline on her website? “I’ll Restore Your Trust in City Government.” Her focus, clearly, is on issues of 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. The interesting thing is that in making this argument, Racette is putting herself in the same shoes Whipple once wore, since “transparency” was his central argument against the incumbent mayor, Jeff Longwell. Whipple’s accusation then (as you can see on his old website) was that City Hall under the Longwell administration had become “a place of insider deals made behind closed doors,” while Racette’s accusation today 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.
