An upcoming electoral contest with a backstory became even more interesting last week, driven by a rare political opportunity – an open judgeship, with this on the state’s highest court, no less.
Due to a reapportionment itself controversial because it involved Republicans essentially surrendering a safe seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court, a new majority-minority district without an incumbent that split Monroe and moved south into splitting Baton Rouge attracted three black Democrats in a race this fall. One, First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge John Michael Guidry, was getting a second shot at a spot on the state’s highest court after having run a strong campaign almost a decade ago in a different district that was not M/M. Terms that don’t come up often (of ten years length), an age limit of 70, and that incumbents basically never lose means his second chance is extraordinary.
Guidry, backed by business interests, almost found himself the winner by default almost immediately after qualifying. Someone connected with Guidry sued to remove the other two candidates from the ballot, Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Marcus Hunter and Louisiana Housing Corporation Chief of Staff Leslie Chambers, who is drawing support from trial lawyer interests. Both were argued not to have paid state income taxes in the past, where legally they must have done so to file candidacies, and also that Chambers wasn’t domiciled in the district.
Democrat District Court Judge Don Johnson didn’t boot either off the ballot, despite that indisputably both had returns filed late and not received by the state prior to qualifying. Both argued that they thought the reruns had been accepted, even though Hunter had two years’ worth filed the day before qualifying began. But ever since the Supreme Court allowed Democrat former Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins to stay on the ballot despite falsely attesting to a majority of queries on his qualification papers for a reelection attempt in 2022, it has become difficult to disqualify anyone.
This isn’t the only questionable financial matter Hunter has found himself involved with. In 2019, at a tax sale he bought a distressed property at 114 Texas St., Shreveport. The building, in place since at least the last decade of the 19th century and 80 years later was a popular entertainment venue, had been vacant for over two decades. At the time of purchase, it had deteriorated to the point potentially it could not be salvaged.
Hunter then did nothing with the property for three years, although he said he had plans to convert it to low-income housing financed through the LHC, prior to Chambers’ association with it. Back then, his ally Stephen Jackson, now a Democrat state representative, sat on the LHC Board of Directors then representing that area as a parish commissioner; since his election to the Legislature, he was replaced. Jackson himself made news, that he rather would not have, by his conviction last year before his election of impersonating a police officer and still has ongoing legal problems set for adjudicating.
By Jun., 2022 the Shreveport Historic Preservation Commission recommended demolition as Hunter apparently dithered. Then, in Sep., 2022 the building mostly burned, from a fire that looked to be arson, perhaps started by vagrants but never determined. The city began demolition proceedings that Hunter opposed, but which a court ordered in October that happened shortly thereafter. The lot now sits empty, still owned by a partnership registered at Hunter’s Monroe address with seemingly no plans afoot for it.
Judicial contests in Louisiana can turn on unusual circumstances, since in theory the job involves judicial decisions, not policy-making, that leave voters in a vacuum of information about how well someone will serve on the bench, with only a policy-making cue, party label, to guide them. As well, unlike candidates for legislative and executive offices or appointees, judicial candidates don’t have to file public financial disclosure information, so only rarely does the public get an idea about their financial dealings.
If those campaigning on behalf of his opponents (technically, judicial candidates can’t conduct their own campaigns, so surrogates do so) want to paint Hunter, a former state representative who, as many lawyers in the chamber desire, escaped to the much higher-paid/full-time job of judge, as sloppy with financial affairs as a means of casting doubt on his competence as a jurist, he certainly has given them the ammunition to do so.
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