BATON ROUGE — A petition to recall Mayor-President Sid Edwards has failed, getting only a tiny fraction of the signatures that would have been necessary to trigger a recall election.
East Baton Rouge Parish Registrar of Voters Steve Raborn said the petition needed 47,297 verified signatures. His office has not yet verified the signatures, but Marion Gbaiwon Hills told the registrar’s office that the paperwork she submitted this week had 2,193 signatures.
That means the petition had only about 4.6 percent of the signatures needed.
Edwards said that means that about one percent of the parish’s residents signed it. He said he’s seen some of the names and will get a full copy of the petition next week.
“Curiosity is there,” he said. “But I wasn’t upset with Ms. Hills. ” It was simply her right to promote democracy.”
In a social media post Thursday, Hills said she was proud of the effort even though it didn’t succeed.
She said she submitted the paperwork and watched the registrar’s staff scan in each page of the petition. She said she then cried all the way back to her office.
“They weren’t tears of defeat. They were tears of relief, pride, honor, and accomplishment,” she wrote. “Although we did not get the number of signatures required to trigger a special election for the EBR Mayor-President, this fight is far from over.”
Hills said her effort to recall the mayor-president was the catalyst for recall efforts targeting Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill.
Those petitions began May 13, so they can continue to seek signatures until November.
Hills said she is looking for as many as 25,000 volunteers for her organization Louisiana Deserves Better to pursue those petitions.
“If each volunteer collects just 20 signatures, together we can gather the numbers needed to move these statewide recalls forward,” she wrote. “I refuse to accept that this can’t be done. Louisiana has more than enough people who care about the future of this state. The opportunity is there. The path is there. Now we need people willing to step up.”
A Facebook page said Hills is running for mayor-president in 2028.
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