It was take-your-shot at Monroe independent Mayor Friday Ellis last week, in the courts now and maybe later at the polls, early.
As previously threatened, the three Democrats on the City Council, plus local publisher Roosevelt Wright, filed suit against Ellis, as well as Republicans Gov. Jeff Landry and Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill, plus new Monroe fire chief Timothy Williams. This involves the selection of Williams by Landry for his post that a new state law allowed. Ellis had mentioned that the City Council, led by the Democrats, twice turned down (for conflicting reasons) Ellis nominees for it, including Williams, to GOP state Sen. Stewart Cathey, who then authored and had passed into law a bill giving the governor the power to appoint the official from qualifiers for cities about Monroe’s size (only Alexandria also could qualify) when conflict between a mayor and council dragged on for too long.
The suit goes all over the legal map, alleging both race-based claims prejudicial against blacks and violation of home rule provisions. To say the least it is a long shot in arguing just because a majority-black populated city didn’t have a black fire chief appointed that racial discrimination occurred, and in its claiming the state usurped home rule powers when in fact state law supersedes conflicting charter provisions.
Ellis as mayor had a more existential threat to his office levied with the filing of a recall petition on Oct. 24. That gives organizers until Apr. 23 to gather the slightly under 7,500 signatures required under state law for a jurisdiction with the number of voter registrants Monroe had in October.
The chairwoman of the effort, Edith Hudson, said she filed it because Ellis was ignoring Monroe’s south side, or the districts of the three Democrats, claiming disappointment in saying she had supported Ellis in his initial mayoral campaign, although a review of her social media posts indicate her political views as being far closer to one of Ellis’ opponents in 2020 and 2024, Democrat former Mayor Jamie Mayo. Another former opponent in 2020, Democrat Marie Brown, three years ago expressed much the same complaint when she filed a recall petition against Ellis in 2022 that went nowhere.
While this effort appears better organized than the 2022 one, the odds of close to nil in it succeeding mirror that the suit for success. Not even 10,500 voters even cast a ballot for or against Ellis last year, who won with 64 percent, and the southside barely registered a quarter turnout while a third of voters citywide participated in the mayor’s race.
Historically, only a fraction of Louisiana local recalls even made it to the polls, and once there the majority fail. Further, none of the successful ones since 1966 involved a jurisdiction of more than 15,000 people; Monroe has more than three times that number of residents.
But that’s not the ultimate goal of the effort. Rather, it’s part of a long line of attempts by various people, in and out of office, to delegitimize Ellis as mayor to lead to his desisting or defeat in the next mayor’s election, who are politically active individuals who cannot abide in having anybody other than a black liberal in the mayor’s office. That Ellis, who is white, added about 10 percentage points to his column in 2024 from 2020 shows that strategy hasn’t yet worked, but when there’s political power at stake with a majority black voter base to rally, don’t expect it to stop any time soon.
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