Michael O’Donnell returns to Kansas Capitol as lobbyist for Evergy, Steven brothers | Opinion

Disgraced ex-politician Michael O’Donnell will once again be walking the hallowed marble floors of the Kansas State Capitol, this time as a lobbyist representing Wichita’s Steven brothers and Evergy, among other clients.

I’ll give him this: He’s got chutzpah.

O’Donnell, if you didn’t know or have forgotten, is the former Sedgwick County commissioner who resigned his seat one step ahead of the district attorney ousting him from office for political corruption.

He’s got some heavy hitters on his lobbying client list, according to his filings with the secretary of state’s office:

▪ Steven Enterprises, owned by brothers Rodney and Brandon Steven, whose business empire includes Genesis Health Clubs, the Wichita Thunder hockey team, various car lots and other concerns.

▪ Evergy, the state’s dominant power company, which serves 1.7 million customers in Kansas and Missouri.

▪ Phoenix Home Care and Hospice, which provides in-home medical and counseling services in Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

▪ Wichita mobile home magnate Paul Treadwell.

▪ Kansas Natural Remedies, which bills itself as “Kansas’ premier indoor hemp cultivator.”

In his new job, O’Donnell will be seeking favors for them from the politicians he once served alongside.

Before he was elected to the County Commission, he served a term as a state senator and before that, as a Wichita City Council member.

His political career was scandal after scandal.

As a senator, he got caught supplying booze for underage Wichita State University students at a fraternity party, earning himself the title of “everyone’s favorite politician” from the website totalfratmove.com.

Then there was the time O’Donnell got caught using a borrowed, marked church-school van for a beer and whiskey tailgate in the parking lot at a Kansas City Royals game.

O’Donnell’s commission colleague, Richard Ranzau, publicly accused him of trying to steer county business to friends and campaign contributors.

Also as a county commissioner, O’Donnell was prosecuted on federal charges of campaign finance fraud and money laundering during his time there and in the state Senate.

He beat that rap, but was later fined by the state Governmental Ethics Commission after admitting to nine violations of Kansas law, including diverting campaign funds for personal use and fraudulent campaign reporting.

Four friends from O’Donnell’s past have testified under oath that he wrote them checks, ostensibly as his “campaign workers,” although they didn’t do anything for O’Donnell beyond cashing the checks and giving him back the money.

The commission fined him $25,000, which was reduced to $12,500 because he paid promptly.

A record like that would be a career killer for an ordinary politician, but it all just bounced off O’Donnell.

False political ad led to lawsuit, resignations

What finally did O’Donnell in as an elected official was a fabulously false, fabricated and fraudulent campaign ad and the cover-up that followed it.

The ad targeted the mayoral campaign of Brandon Whipple, using paid actresses shown in silhouette, posing as Capitol interns and reading allegations of sexual harassment. Problem was, those allegations had been made against Republican lawmakers, not Whipple.

We knew that right away, because the quotes were cribbed from a story originally reported by Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle staff writers. While the harassing legislators weren’t named in the story, we knew who said what to whom.

Who made the ad was shielded by a bogus limited liability company registered in New Mexico, but we were able to trace it back to three Wichita Republican politicians, O’Donnell, then-state Rep. Michael Capps and then-Wichita City Council member James Clendenin.

When the ad backfired, and Whipple sued for defamation, the young filmmaker who made the commercial released a recording of O’Donnell, Capps and Clendenin conspiring to frame Dalton Glasscock, then chairman of the Sedgwick County Republican Party and a close friend of O’Donnell.

After that revelation, Capps was voted out of office; Clendenin and O’Donnell ducked out and resigned rather than face ouster charges from District Attorney Marc Bennett.

In one of those weird only-in-Wichita moments, Republican precinct captains appointed Glasscock to fill out the last month or so of O’Donnell’s unexpired term. Now, Glasscock is running for the same Wichita City Council seat that O’Donnell left to run for Senate in 2012, as a pawn in then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s plot to purge moderate Republicanism from the state Legislature.

Since quitting the County Commission, O‘Donnell bounced around gigs at the Mayflower Clinic and Splurge Magazine before landing a who-knows-what-he-does job with the Stevens.

I called O’Donnell to ask him about his budding lobbyist business, but he hasn’t returned my phone calls in years, so I wasn’t expecting anything.

It’s not a surprise that the Steven brothers are among O’Donnell’s top lobbying clients — they’ve been joined at the hip for ages. The street address on O’Donnell’s lobbyist registration form is a Genesis club and his email is a genesishealthclubs.com account.

Rodney Steven’s been pushing for more than a decade to get his lucrative health club business exempted from taxes, like the nonprofit YMCA system. That nonsense actually got through the House and Senate earlier this year, but Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed it and lawmakers couldn’t muster enough votes to override her. Oh well, there’s always next year.

The big surprise is that Evergy has gotten involved with the circus of sleaze that’s been Michael O’Donnell’s political career.

When I called Evergy, I had two basic questions: Do you know who Michael O’Donnell is? And if so, what were you thinking?

They sent me back this written response:

“Wichita and Sedgwick County are an important part of Evergy’s service area. Michael O’Donnell is from Wichita and knows the local leaders and issues. We have retained him in a limited capacity to advise, as needed, on issues impacting Wichita and the surrounding area. In the course of this work, he may meet with area lawmakers, so registration as a lobbyist is appropriate.”

Evergy confiscated electrical tower maps at meeting

I think we can all agree that Wichita and Sedgwick County are an important part of the service area. And O’Donnell is from Wichita and knows the players.

What I cannot imagine is anybody in Wichita wanting him to be advising Evergy on any level when it comes to our electric rates, or where Evergy puts more of its God-awful eyesore high tension towers to feed megawatts to businesses in Wichita State University’s shiny new Innovation Campus.

The Innovation Campus, by the way, is where Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, has a high-paying who-knows-what-he-does job of his own.

Evergy’s reputation for honesty — never its strong suit — has already been further tarnished by a disastrous northeast Wichita neighborhood meeting Tuesday at WSU, where about 20 Evergy employees showed the latest tower plans and then confiscated copies that residents tried to take home with them.

Since then, readers have been emailing me smartphone pictures of the maps that they smuggled out of the meeting.

It’s hard to see how injecting Michael O’Donnell’s considerable baggage into this mess can help Evergy or the neighborhood in any way.

But maybe that’s not the point.

O’Donnell’s been involved in so many shady political dealings for so long that he probably can be very effective when it comes to arm-twisting Republican legislators on Evergy’s behalf.

I’m not saying that O’Donnell shouldn’t have a job. He’s got a right to make a living somewhere.

But with his track record, that somewhere shouldn’t be anywhere near city, county or state government.

We’ve all seen that movie and know how it ends.