Onetime lawman Murphy Painter is again running for Ascension Parish president against incumbent Clint Cointment — and it has already become a rough-and-tumble race.
Painter, a former top official in the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office and onetime leader of Louisiana's alcohol and tobacco control office, ran for the open seat in 2019. But he dropped out of the runoff after a recording spread online that allegedly showed him covering up a rape investigation; the false claims were later investigated, and no wrongdoing was found.
In the same statement Thursday in which he announced his campaign for parish president, Painter responded to new accusations: that he pretended to be an active sheriff's deputy and intimidated workers at the parish registrar's office while trying to get information on a political candidate. The statement says the accusations are political mudslinging.
"The obviously incorrect and skewed information written about Mr. Painter (which is defamatory) by an unknown person hiding behind an anonymous Face Book page is another instance of the dirty politics in Ascension spreading false rumors about Mr. Painter to continue to harm his reputation in the community simply because he is running for Parish President against Clint Cointment," Painter said in a statement from his attorney, Kim Segura Landry. "(It is) the same tactic Mr. Cointment and his political supporters used in the last election. Or, perhaps, the purpose is to take the focus off of the...
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