With only about an hour left to qualify, candidates continue to trickle into the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office this afternoon to sign up to appear on the Oct. 24 ballot—but no unexpected twists have stirred up things at the top of the ballot, where Louisiana has wide open races for governor and lieutenant governor.
While a pollster for New Orleans businessman and The Advocate owner John Georges told Daily Report this morning that Georges continues to seriously mull a run for governor, Georges has yet to qualify.
Georges is out of the country, but he has filled out the necessary paperwork to qualify and his attorney will file for him later today at the Secretary of State’s office should he decide to run, confirms pollster Verne Kennedy, who does polling for Georges.
The list of those running for governor grew to nine candidates today, but no one outside the four major candidates who have been campaigning for months—Republicans Scott Angelle, Jay Dardenne and David Vitter, and Democrat John Bel Edwards—has yet to emerge.
No party candidates Beryl Billiot of Kentwood and Jeremy “JW” Odom of Natchitoches have qualified, as has Eric Paul Orgeron, whose party is listed as “other” on the Secretary of State’s website tracking candidate qualifying in every race. Also running for governor are Democrats Cary Deaton of Metairie and SL Simpson of Shreveport.
Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal is term-limited. And with Dardenne, the lieutenant governor, running to move into the governor’s mansion, that creates a heated competition for the state’s No. 2 job, in which Mayor Kip Holden remains the lone Democrat to qualify as of this afternoon. He’s running against Republicans Elbert Guillory, Billy Nungesser and John Young.
