St. Tammany Parish residents seeking to oust Coroner Christopher Tape formally started the process on Tuesday that could lead to his removal from office.
Now the clock is ticking:Organizers have 180 days to collect at least 35,057 signatures from qualified St. Tammany voters to force a recall election for voters to decide whether to remove Tape from office.
Slidell residents Jean Cefalu and Cheryl Rousselle Martinez walked into the Secretary of State’s office in Baton Rouge around 11 a.m. Tuesday to file the petition.
“It’s going to be a lot of work,” Cefalu said of getting 20% of the qualified voters to sign. “And we’re ready to work.”
Removing Tape from office will indeed be an arduous task. No recall effort has succeeded in removing an elected official from power on the northshore in at least the last 20 years. And a high-profile effort last year to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell fell thousands of signatures short.
“We're hoping to make history," Cefalu said.
Tape, who was elected last year after running unopposed for the coroner’s position, has come fire after WWL Louisiana reports revealed he had been indicted on six counts of child sexual assault in New Mexico in 2002. The indictment was later quashed when a New Mexico court ruled prosecutors had taken too long to formally charge Tape. Tape has maintained his innocence.
“I certainly respect the right of the people to do that,” Tape said Tuesday of the recall. “But I think if I'm given the opportunity to do the job I've been elected to do, the voters will be satisfied."
Tape hasalso been sharply criticized by northshore legislators and other officials for his controversial decision to end the sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) program, which is run out of the St. Tammany Coroner’s Office and employs specially-trained nurses who provide medical treatment and evidence collection services to survivors of sexual assault in a five-parish region.
Tape appeared to walk back his decision to end the program last month, but the nurses had already been fired. A St. Tammany Parish judge has also granted a temporary restraining order forbidding Tape to end the program, following a lawsuit contesting his decision.
Since Tape took office last month, Cefalu and Rousselle Martinez, whose names now appear on the official recall petition, have been busy organizing the recall effort. They had originally planned to file the petition on the day Tape took office, on March 24. But on the advice of local elected officials, they delayed by almost a month in order to get everything organized.
“We have an organizational chart,” Cefalu said. "They’ve recruited volunteers by (St. Tammany Parish) Council district and assigned people to collect signatures from different areas of the parish. We have our volunteers’ names and email addresses so we can keep in touch with them. We have people who we call ‘runners’ who are going to be picking up the signatures from other volunteers once or twice a week.”
She said they have had signs printed, which will be placed strategically near areas where signatures will be collected. They have plans to run TV advertising.
The St. Tammany Parish Council has formally asked Tape to resign, as has the 10-member northshore legislative delegation.
“I think I speak for all of us here: We’re fully supportive of the process. The behavior and the judgment of Dr. Tape has proved that he is not the right person for the job,” said Rep. Stephanie Berault, R-Slidell. “I have been encouraged by the outpouring of support for the effort from the community.”
Cefalu and Rousselle Martinez are both survivors of childhood sexual assault. And for them, having a coroner in office with what they believe to be credible allegations of sexual assault against him is unacceptable.
“For sexual assault victims, being the coroner is not just about doing autopsies, it's about integrity and it's about being a good person and a good physician,” Cefalu said. “And he's neither.”
This isn’t the first time there’s been an effort to recall the St. Tammany Parish coroner. Peter Galvan, the former coroner who wound up spending more than two years behind bars on state and federal theft and conspiracy charges, was the target of a recall effort that started in 2013.Galvan resigned in October of that year as the recall continued.
Meanwhile, the recall effort targeting Cantrell in 2023failedafter organizers fell about 18,000 short of the number they needed. Among thetens of thousands of signatures that were tossed out were those of several cartoon characters, including Shrek, Scooby Doo, and Mickey Mouse.
Email Alex Lubben at alex.lubben@theadvocate.com or follow him on Twitter, @AlexLubben.
