Mayoral candidate Darryl Gissel has filed a formal complaint with the Louisiana Realtors Association and Baton Rouge Board of Realtors regarding the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors’ early donation to another mayoral candidate, state Sen. Bodi White.
The complaint comes about two weeks after GBRAR’s governmental affairs committee voted to request the Louisiana Realtors PAC make an early donation to White’s campaign. GBRAR does not have its own PAC but funnels money to candidates through the statewide PAC, which is obligated to honor the request of the local association.
A request for comment from White’s campaign was not returned by this afternoon’s deadline.
The committee’s decision came even though its members did not have an opportunity to interview any of the candidates running for mayor and qualifying for the fall election is still more than a month away.
According to a copy of a 13-page complaint—most of which is attachments—Gissel cites a recent Daily Report article quoting a fellow realtor as saying White was not included in the membership database of GBRAR despite receiving a donation as a realtor.
Gissel says he reached out to GBRAR President Herb Gomez, who in the story acknowledged that White was not listed in the database and said confusion about the mayoral candidate’s status would be cleared up.
According to the complaint, Gissel inquired with the National Association of Realtors about White’s status as a realtor and learned White was reinstated as a realtor on June 17, two days after approval of the GBRAR donation. That also comes more than two years after White was last listed as a realtor on March 28, 2014.
“It is hard for me to believe that there was two years of ‘confusion’ over the failure to bill Mr. White, especially since it appears that Mr. White has dealt with sponsoring real estate bills before the Legislature,” Gissel writes.
Gissel suggests in his complaint that the donation is not a proper one because Gomez signed off on the candidate contribution form, even though he is not an authorized signer for that form.
Gissel is asking for an investigation into White’s use of the term “realtor” on his website, White’s reinstatement to GBRAR and whether it was contrary to bylaws governing reinstatement and White saying on his candidate contribution form that he was a realtor when at the time he was not listed as one.
Baton Rouge realtor and former mayoral candidate Steve Myers told Daily Report two weeks ago that the move to donate to White this early in the campaign and the fact that Louisiana Realtors CEO Norman Morris urged the board to seek the early donation reeked of “stinky politics” and that it was a “railroad job.”
—Ryan Broussard and Alexandria Burris
