LAPLACE, La. — At least two formal court challenges have been filed against a state House candidate who brazenly admits he doesn’t live in the district he is seeking to represent, just hours before a legal deadline to do so and a day after WWL-TV first reported questions about his eligibility.
Albert “Ali” Burl III, a longtime St. John the Baptist Parish School Board member, filed paperwork last Friday, Aug. 10, to run for the open District 57 seat in the House of Representatives, which covers portions of St. John and the entire west bank of St. Charles Parish.
In those papers filed with the St. John Clerk of Court, Burl listed his domicile, or primary residence, in Garyville, the entirety of which is in District 81.
The Louisiana Constitution requires candidates to live in the district for at least a year before running for legislative offices. But the Clerk of Court’s Office does not currently have the power to reject someone’s candidacy unless a qualified voter in the district pays a fee and files a lawsuit in district court.
State law gives voters until 4:30 p.m. on the seventh day after the qualifying period ends to file such a lawsuit – in this case, Thursday, Aug. 17.
At least four of the seven other candidates for the District 57 seat said Burl shouldn’t be allowed to run, but none of them was willing or able to file a lawsuit by Wednesday. One opponent, Burl’s fellow school board member Russ Wise, said on Wednesday that he didn’t want to lose his decade-long friendship with Burl.
“I reached out to him and told him I was considering the challenge,” Wise said. “’Do what you think you have to,’ he told me, ‘but I think I can win.’ A small part of me hopes he can.”
On Thursday, just a few hours before the deadline, Wise joined with another candidate, Sylvia Taylor, who is an attorney, to file the lawsuit officially challenging Burl’s candidacy Thursday afternoon.
Taylor confirmed she filed it shortly before 2 p.m. and shared the costs with Wise.
Another candidate, Shondrell Perrilloux, later filed her own lawsuit contesting Burl's candidacy. She said it cost her $600.
After initially declining comment, Burl sent a statement Thursday evening accusing his opponents of filing a frivolous lawsuit. He said he interprets the Louisiana Constitution to give him the right to run in District 57 because it says a voter, “may qualify as a candidate from any district created in whole or in part from a district existing prior to reapportionment if he was domiciled in that prior district for at least one year.”
Burl lives in Garyville, which was in District 81 before reapportionment and remains in District 81 after the lines were redrawn. But he claims that because some other parts of the old District 81 became part of the new District 57, that gives him a right to represent District 57 in the Legislature.
He also told WWL-TV on Wednesday that he believes he is qualified to run in District 57 even though he lives in Garyville. Asked why he would be qualified, he said he wouldn’t say unless he’s under oath in court.
Challenges over candidates’ domicile are not uncommon, but they almost always involve claims that a candidate lied about his or her residency, which is not the case with Burl.
In 2015, WWL-TV’s Katie Moore reported that Troy Brown, the winner of Senate District 2 representing the same area of the River Parishes, appeared to live outside the district. Brown told the station he claimed dual residency in Napoleonville and Geismar, and the Senate agreed to seat him in 2016.
Brown was forced to resign a year later over domestic violence charges.
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