BATON ROUGE — A former state legislator challenging the Mayor-President has outpaced her campaign fundraising, state election records show.

With six months left until the election, mayoral candidate Ted James leads the first round of finance reports with $508,000 in contributions and current Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome sitting at $305,000 in contributions. Candidates are required to report their campaign contributions to the Louisiana Ethics Commission.

“That's enough for him to take on an incumbent and win the race," veteran political consultant Roy Fletcher said. "It's clear that there is a significant number of people with financial needs that are simply expressing their opinion that Broome needs to go." 

James, who served in the state house of representatives before taking a job in the small business administration, said he's not drawing any conclusions at this point in the election season.

"We know that this is going to be a very competitive race, up against an 8 year incumbent," James said. “So we're not taking this as an opportunity to get too excited, where we forget that this is going to be a very long race. I believe that our fundraising numbers show that people of this parish are not only hopeful for new leadership and vision, but they're willing to invest in it as well." 

Sharon Weston Broome, also a Democrat, is running for her third term as Mayor-President.

"Ted’s quick departure from his long held ideals and legislative record, should be enough to give any voter second thought of his true intentions," Broome said. "City hall has never been for sale and never will be for sale to the highest bidders."

Broome's fundraising does outpace her performance over the same period in the past two elections, both of which she won. At this stage in 2016, she had raised more than $114,000. In 2020, it was nearly $82,000. 

The next campaign finance report will come out in August and the election will take place November 5th, 2024.