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Wichita City Council Candidates Want To Grow Businesses In District 1

Candidate Facebooks
Brandon Johnson, left, and Mike Kinard are vying for the Wichita City Council District 1 seat.

Next week, voters get to decide which of two candidates will replace outgoing Wichita City Councilwoman Lavonta Williams in District 1.

Community activist Brandon Johnson and businessman and former school board member Mike Kinard will be on the ballot to represent District 1, which covers mostly northeast Wichita.

See a map of the district here.

The candidates differ on some issues—like what to do with the pool at McAdams Park—but at a recent meet and greet event hosted by Young Professionals of Wichita, both stressed the importance of growing the economy.

“I’m all in on small businesses," Kinard said. "And I believe that we can develop more businesses in Wichita just from the ground up.”

Johnson said Wichita can be an entrepreneurial capital of the country again.

“Our campaign is focused on advancing opportunity throughout the heart of the city," he said. "We believe District 1 is the heart of the city, when you look at Wichita State and the access in the downtown.”

Of the three seats up for election on the Wichita City Council, District 1 was the only race to generate a primary earlier this year. Johnson received 52 percent of the vote; Kinard received 22 percent.

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Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx.

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.