UPDATE: A district judge Friday evening ruled to disqualify Priscilla Gonzalez from running for Lafayette Mayor-President.
According to 15th District Court Judge Valerie Gotch Garrett, Gonzalez has not lived in Lafayette for more than one year and has not filed her 2022 tax returns as the reasons for her disqualification.
Gonzalez says she will appeal the decision.
ORIGINAL:
The Mayor-President candidate challenged in court this week has filed a motion to dismiss the challenge, saying it is "markedly deficient in providing the requisite evidential foundation."
Priscilla Gonzalez qualified to run for the post last week. The petition questioning her qualification as a candidate was filed Wednesday in 15th Judicial District Court. It alleges that Gonzalez does not meet residency or tax-paying requirements.
Also running for the post are Monique Blanco Boulet, incumbent Mayor-President Josh Guillory and Jan Swift.
Today, Gonzalez filed a Motion to Dismiss the challenge, saying it is "devoid of both legal merit and substantive basis."
The petition is posted below, just scroll down. We've also posted the Motion to Dismiss.
Gonzalez argues in her Motion that the challenge to her qualifications lacks evidence.
"The scales of justice remain markedly unbalanced, as the evidential corpus falls significantly below the threshold required to satisfy this demanding burden," the Motion states. Gonzalez attached a copy of the lease she signed for a residence in Lafayette in February 2021, which she says proves she's been living in Lafayette for more than the year required in the city-parish charter.
The Motion requests that the challenge be dismissed with prejudice, which means it can't be revived. She also asks that the court consider expunging the challenge, and ordering the plaintiff to "reimburse the tax-paying public for the undue burden imposed by this unwarranted exercise of the court's resources."
Also on Thursday, more arguments were filed by the citizen challenging her candidacy.
The Memorandum filed Thursday afternoon says that Gonzalez does not meet the requirement that she be "domiciled" in Lafayette Parish for at least one year. "Domicile" and "reside" aren't synonymous, the memo states. In Louisiana, there are several factors that impact "domicile," and they include addesses on driver's licenses, auto registration, bank statements and voter registration; the address on the person's tax return; where the person gets their mail; where their telephone is listed; how much time they spend there; and if they have utilities there.
The memo argues that Gonzalez ran for mayor of Corpus Christi in 2020; that she was offering Corpus Christi voters a ride to the polls in December 2022; that she didn't get a Louisiana driver's license until the day of qualifying; that she didn't register to vote in Louisiana until the day of qualifying and that her vehicle has Texas plates. It also quotes her responses in an interview she did on Wednesday with a local podcaster.
If you want to read the full memorandum, you can do so by scrolling down.
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, and she verifies that.
Here's the Memorandum, filed by the resident who is challenging the candidacy:
Here's the Motion to Dismiss, filed by Gonzalez:
And here's the petition challenging the candidacy:
