A special election will take place later this summer for the position of Warren County Auditor. This comes due to a petition being submitted by the Warren County Democratic Party to force the election after the board appointed David Whipple to the post in early June. The election will likely feature Whipple against current Deputy Auditor Kim Sheets, who was placed on 60-day Administrative Leave by Whipple last week.

Whipple tells KNIA News his reaction to Facebook posts that have been spread around regarding the 2020 election and other conspiracy theories.

‘When I heard that people were passing my social media posts from 2-3 years ago around, I went in and deleted those things because I had a public profile before, and I didn’t want my friends to go through any kind of the same drama that I’m gonna go through with these things here, so that’s why I got rid of them. That controversy, unfortunately kind of, I feel like it was a fear-tactic to get people to sign the petition thinking there was an election denier, whatever that even means, election denier. The fact is, Joe Biden is the President. I don’t like it, I voted for the other guy but we are where we are. We went through the democratic process, and that is where we are at and we are going to have to deal with that for the next couple years here until people speak again.”

Whipple tells KNIA News he felt it was necessary to place Sheets on administrative leave to not put the office staff in an awkward position regarding office loyalties.

“It’s really hard to build a team in here if the staff don’t know who to follow. They could fear that they give me too much loyalty and then Kim would have a retribution and they wouldn’t have a job after that or vice-versa, they give me too much loyalty or Kim whichever, it certainly wouldn’t work out well for them. To get rid of that uneasiness, to work on building this team, so that we can get to business, I had to ask Kim, I had to put her on administrative leave.”

Whipple also said after a meeting with Sheets, she offered to use her accrued vacation time, but Whipple offered the Administrative Leave, which has full pay and benefits.

To listen to the full interview, tune in to today’s Let’s Talk Indianola.