BATON ROUGE — The woman who previously started a recall petition against the East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President is now working to recall Governor Jeff Landry.
Marian Gbaiwon Hills, who describes herself as a Baton Rouge community advocate and activist, started the petition Monday.
Any registered voter can start a petition to recall an elected official. For a statewide elected office, the petition must get signatures from 20 percent of registered voters within 180 days to trigger a recall election. For this petition, that would be 20 percent of 2,504,416, said Trey Williams, a spokesman for the secretary of state. That amounts to about 500,883 signatures.
The Registrar of Voters then has to certify each signature. After that, a recall election is scheduled. Normally, the governor would be responsible for calling the election, but the secretary of state takes over that role when the recall petition targets the governor, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The petition says Hills and vice chair Katilyn Stepter want the governor recalled because the governor’s “pattern of actions and statements that undermine fair representation, misalign priorities away from community needs, and emphasize punishment over meaningful solutions that address the root causes affecting Louisiana communities.”
The petition uses the same language to explain the reason for the recall.
The group will be taking signatures Tuesday at Hills’ office at Geaux Create Studios, 2320 Drusilla Lane, Suite F. People interested in signing the petition will need to present an ID, either a physical ID or via LA Wallet.
According to data from the Secretary of State’s office dating back to 1966, no recall effort targeting a statewide elected official has succeeded in triggering a recall election.
If a recall effort fails, the Secretary of State’s office said, no other person can try to recall the same official for 18 months.
Former governors John Bel Edwards, Bobby Jindal and Kathleen Blanco all faced unsuccessful recall efforts during their time in office.
Hills is also chairwoman of a recall effort that began in January targeting Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sid Edwards.
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