'Unacceptable': Republican County Commissioner Candidate puts Democratic Mayor on blast for 'racist comments' in latest YouTube video

Article - 2 minute read

Republican Candidate for Douglas County District 1 Dr. Justin Spiehs began posting videos to YouTube 13 days ago to get his message out to more people. He has quickly grown a following of 1.33K at the time of this publishing. In his latest video, released earlier today, he put Lawrence Mayor Courtney Shipley (D) on blast for ‘racist comments.’

In the video, Dr. Spiehs shows footage from the Lawrence, KS city commission meeting from Tuesday, September 6, where Mayor Shipley said, “I’ve been the mayor for about six months, and I have spent more time than I can calculate making sure we do not appoint, frankly, all White boards, which is something we have rather a lot of.”

According to 2019 city data, Lawrence is made up of 74.6 percent White people with the second most common race being Hispanic at 6.9 percent. Other races by population in Lawrence include Asian alone (6.9 percent), Two or more races (5.8 percent), Black alone (3.8 percent), American Indian alone (2.0 percent), Other race alone (0.2 percent).

The Lawrence city commission is made up of Brad Finkeldei (White), Lisa Larsen (White), Bart Littlejohn (Black), Amber Sellers (Black), and Mayor Shipley (Hispanic). This makes the city commission board 40 percent White, 40 percent Black, and 20 percent Hispanic.

Dr. Spiehs spoke out against Mayor Shipley’s comments at the city commission meeting that night, as he explains in the video and shows footage of him speaking at the commission meeting.

To see more videos from Dr. Spiehs, check out his YouTube channel here.