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Free food and campaign politics. That's at the center of a new ethics investigation into a candidate who's running for a Wichita City Council seat.
Four people are trying to replace former Council member Michael O'Donnell, who left District 4 to take a State Senate seat.
Now a campaign flyer is causing some division between the candidates.
The investigation involves a flyer from candidate Craig Gabel. He's passed it out door-to-door for his campaign, but on the back there is a coupon for a free $5.99 chicken fry dinner or half off a meal at Gabel's restaurant. His competitors feel the flyer is against Kansas law.
"It's got to be fair for everybody," said candidate Josh Blick. "It's got to be fair for Jeff Blubaugh, it's got to be fair for myself and the other candidate and when you use dirty tactics like this, it's not fair."
That's why Blick filed a complaint with the Kansas Ethics Commission.
"We'll know on Monday for sure," Blick said. "They said they would contact me back and let me know for sure."
But Gabel says he did nothing wrong.
"In other campaigns and stuff I cleared this flyer with the ethics department, so I think we are going to be okay" Gabel said. "If for some reason we are not, it will be an itty bitty little technical thing. This is pretty cutting edge what I've done here and like I said, I had cleared this in advance with the ethics department."
The issue hasn't stopped the candidates from campaigning. Both were at a forum with voters in Northeast Wichita Sunday.
Four candidates are running for the District 4 city council seat. The top two vote-getters in the primary February 26th will face off in the general election April 2nd.