A Lafayette resident has filed an objection to the qualifications of one candidate for Lafayette's Mayor-President post.
Priscilla Gonzalez qualified to run for the post last week. The petition was filed today in 15th Judicial District Court. It alleges that Gonzalez does not meet residency requirements, which require a candidate to have lived in the area of representation for at least a year prior to qualifying.
Also running for the post are Monique Blanco Boulet, incumbent Mayor-President Josh Guillory and Jan Swift.
The petition alleges that Gonzalez has never filed a tax return in Louisiana, that she drives a car registered in Texas, and that she just registered to vote in Louisiana the day she qualified - which was last week.
If you want to read the petition, scroll down.
Gonzalez told us that she moved to Lafayette in November 2020 to take care of family, and decided to stay. She said she's paid her taxes except for her state taxes, which she has filed extensions for. She said she is up to date on her federal taxes.
She says the challenge is a waste of taxpayer dollars and time, which would be better spent registering people to vote or getting people to the polls. Gonzalez said that she's received threats via telephone and on her social media campaign page.
She also spoke to The Current about the challenge, and told them she is “up for the challenge.”
“They can bring anything they want against me. They just don’t know my history,” she told The Current. “They don’t know I actually sue people for a living.
“I have a case in federal court right now, and there’s nothing more that I love than going to court. … This is fun for me. This is my extracurricular activity,” Gonzalez adds, explaining that she works on a contract basis for personal injury lawyers and people who have been wrongfully terminated. Gonzalez, who has a degree in political science, says she did coursework to become a paralegal but did not complete the certification process. She is not an attorney, the Current reports. Read their whole story here.
We pulled a copy of her lawsuit; it was filed in the Southern District of Texas in November 2022. It accuses the Corpus Christi law firm where she worked for nine years of discriminating against her because she is Hispanic and firing her without cause. The case is set for trial in March 2024, records show.
Our media partners at The Advocate posted a profile of Gonzalez this week. You can read it here. In it, they report that Gonzalez ran for mayor of Corpus Christi in 2020, and that she registered to vote in Lafayette the day she qualified.
Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court Louis Perret told The Advocate that, when Gonzalez first arrived at the courthouse to qualify as a candidate, she was not registered to vote in Louisiana and did not have a valid Louisiana driver’s license.
Gonzalez confirmed that information to the newspaper, and told them she obtained a Louisiana driver’s license and registered to voter and returned to Perret’s office to qualify.
Here's the petition challenging the candidacy:
