This is a new post

Celebrating victory after overcoming a campaign season fraught with anonymous attacks and partisan sniping, Wichita Mayor-elect Brandon Whipple promised Tuesday to “return the government to the people.”

“This is for those of you who showed up at the darkest moments of this campaign,” Whipple said to about 100 supporters at his election night party at Headshots Bar & Grill in east Wichita. “If it wasn’t for you, we would not have had this victory.”

In Tuesday’s election, Whipple drew 46 percent of the vote to 36 percent for incumbent Jeff Longwell.

Slightly less than 18 percent of the voters wrote in a candidate for mayor, presumably most of those votes were for Lyndy Wells, who ran a robust write-in campaign after finishing third in the August primary. Turnout was 19.6 percent of registered voters, nearly double the turnout for the August primary. Results are not official until Nov. 15.