In bitter race for New Orleans-based state house seat, candidates attack each other, supporters
A special election for a vacant New Orleans-based seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives has divided advocates for formerly incarcerated people, with a nationally known criminal justice activist on A special election for a vacant New Orleans-based seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives has divided advocates for formerly incarcerated people, with a nationally known criminal justice activist on one side and a prominent New Orleans nonprofit on the other. The high-pitched campaign battle has dismayed some advocates in the criminal justice reform movement, who fear it will set back the larger push to reintegrate people with criminal records into society. Both candidates are Democrats.
Опубликовано : 2 года назад от MATT SLEDGE | Staff writer в Politics
A special election for a vacant New Orleans-based seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives has divided advocates for formerly incarcerated people, with a nationally known criminal justice activist on one side and a prominent New Orleans nonprofit on the other.
Sibil Fox Richardson, an advocate for criminal justice reform who helped plan a bank robbery with her husband, went to prison for it and then fought a long battle to free him, faces restaurateur Alonzo Knox in Saturday’s race to replace state Sen. Royce Duplessis in House District 93.
Knox, who owns a Basin Street cafe, says his opponent has proven herself to be “a scammer and hustler” since leaving prison. Richardson, who runs a nonprofit called Rich Family Ministries with her husband, has focused her attacks less on Knox than on his support from the group VOTE, noting that its leaders were convicted of murder.
The high-pitched campaign battle has dismayed some advocates in the criminal justice reform movement, who fear it will set back the larger push to reintegrate people with criminal records into society. Both candidates are Democrats.
Richardson, a native of northwest Louisiana, was running a clothing store with her husband when they planned a botched bank robbery in 1997. Although Richardson wasn’t on the scene when her husband and another man entered the bank in Grambling, she pleaded guilty to helping him plan it and to attempting to intimidate jurors at his trial.
Richardson says her story since serving three-and-a-half years in prison, which has been featured in the award-winning film “Time,” is one of rehabilitation and reform. She has raised six children while successfully fighting to have her husband freed on parole.
Темы: Louisiana, New Orleans