Two candidates have withdrawn from the election for Senate District 5, leaving only a single challenger to incumbent Sen. Karen Carter Peterson.
Ronald Brown Jr. of Metairie and “Fox Rich” Richardson have both withdrawn from the race, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office.
Allen Borne Jr., a Democrat from New Orleans, will now be the only challenger to Peterson on the ballot.
On Thursday (Aug. 16), Richardson posted a video message on Facebook — where she has more than 6,000 friends and followers — explaining that she withdrew because she discovered after filing that one of her most recent years’ state taxes had not been properly filed.
“Our accountant reached out to us yesterday and informed us that because of some glitch that they had in their electronic filing system, one year of our Louisiana state taxes did not get filed,” Richardson said.
She corrected the tax problem immediately, she said, but the situation left her in a “quagmire” with respect to the Senate bid: “It put us in a place of being disqualified if someone from the community were to contest the fact that on Thursday when we qualified, we took an oath that all of our taxes for the last five years had been filed.”
Brown could not be reached for comment immediately on Friday morning.
