By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – Three candidates who have qualified to run against St. Tammany Parish President Pat Brister in her re-election bid have motivated the incumbent to come out fighting for a second term.
Brister found herself in a somewhat unexpected election for a second term with qualifying concluded last week for the Oct. 24 primary. Three political unknowns registered to run against her for the parish president’s job.
For months leading up to qualifying there had been virtually no names surfacing who would take on Brister, making many political observers expect her to win a second term unopposed.
Instead, Republican Karen Champagne from Mandeville, along with Margie Vicknair-Pray and Kevin Coleman, both claiming “No Party” and members of the Concerned Citizens of St. Tammany (CCST), qualified for the election and have sent Brister into election mode if she plans to serve a second term.
Not surprisingly, two of the three candidates have jumped on the fracking topic as a key campaign issue, after Brister became embroiled the past year in the controversial oil and gas drilling possibility for St. Tammany Parish.
Coleman, a lifelong attorney who moved to the North Shore after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had the strongest criticism for Brister on the matter, saying “she took what Helis Oil said hook, line and sinker. After she met with them, she practically welcomed them into the parish with open arms.”
Pray, a Lacombe resident who has never run for public office before, worked in the oil and gas industry and has seen fracking operations first-hand with a former company she was employed with.
“I have seen fracking first-hand and believe me, it is not something we want here,” she said. “When I first heard them talking about drilling one well I just laughed. They will not drill one well. They will drill thousands and everywhere they do it they have to bulldoze 10 acres of land. They will connect all the pipes underground and it will be a major threat to our water supply in St. Tammany Parish.”
Brister responded by saying “the people who are saying we have not opposed this don’t have the facts. It’s a bit ridiculous for them to comment about our approach to fracking.
“What they fail to acknowledge is that the decision on the permit is not in our hands, it is the Department of Natural Resources. We challenged it on a zoning basis and then appealed the case. We have an ordinance ready for our Parish Council to protect our environment and we have contacted LSU about doing underground water testing before it starts.”
Brister said “it’s not my place to have a personal opinion about whether I’m for or against it. My responsibility is to do all I can to protect our parish.”
Coleman said it is her lack of a stronger stance that could be disastrous for the parish.
“If fracking comes here it is suicide for us,” he said. “What community wants to risk their water and air, especially here in St. Tammany where the EPA has documented the fact all our water is supplied by a single aquifer serving the entire parish.”
Champagne, who ran against Brister four years ago as a political newcomer, finished second in the five-person field in 2011. Brister won in the primary with 73 percent of the vote, Champagne was second with 13 percent, and three other candidates shared the remaining 14 percent.
“I am running again for the same reasons as before,” she said. “There is a lot of discontent in the parish with the parish president, mainly due to the way she keeps spending our increased revenue, rather than reducing taxes and millages.
“Brister is part of the good ole’ boy club. They don’t listen to the little guys and they make all these sweetheart deals for big business, while it is the little guys who are paying all the taxes,” she said.
On the fracking issue, Champagne said “I would not fight to keep it out.”
Champagne has worked in the insurance business for six years, as well as working for many years with her husband in their private business.
“I’ve got a lot of experience in administration and bookkeeping due to our business,” she said. “We’ve got to do more in this parish to help the little guys succeed.”
Brister said she wants a second term since she believes her record in the first years speaks for itself.
“If you look at the first three-and-a-half years we have done a lot in this parish to move it forward,” she said. “We’ve worked on drainage issues, we have done a lot to improve traffic and we have created more stringent zoning rules. Four years is not a long time to fix everything in a parish, but I believe we have done a lot and we want to do more in the next four years.
“The bottom line is that we have maintained the quality of life in the parish, made sure we have jobs and have worked on things every day to move the parish forward,” she added.
Coleman saw it from a different perspective and agreed with Champagne that Brister is part of the former leadership which is not as transparent as needed.
“Everything she touches is suspicious,” Coleman said. “There are things that are bordering on intentional criminal conduct, the way information is hid, and it all goes back to Brister.”
Coleman said that both he and Pray are members of Concerned Citizens of St. Tammany and realize they face an uphill climb to beat the well-known incumbent. But he said the response to his candidacy is rapidly changing his idea of whether he could win.
“If you would have asked me two weeks ago if I could win I might not have been so confident,” he said. “But now, I believe I can win because of the response I’m hearing. I’m like a lot of people—angry at the way things have been run by Brister. And I’m motivated by my love of St. Tammany. I think that in the end Brister will crash and burn and I can win this.”
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