Could face a ballot challenge from whom?

Qualifying for the November 3 elections begins this Wednesday. This will be a very long ballot.  In New Orleans we will be electing a District Attorney, (is Leon in or no?) a new school board (will the schools even be open by then?),  one US Senate seat (eyes are still on Adrian Perkins, who hasn't decided, and Mitch Landrieu who sometimes changes his mind about these things, and even KCP, maybe?) every US House seat, as always, and of course the Presidential election is in here too but it won't matter in Louisiana.  Also there are many many judges to elect as well.

One thing we're all accustomed to watching out for around this time is the backstage maneuvering meant to dissuade certain people from entering the races or to get them immediately disqualified from the ballot.  If you are seeking to become a candidate and your voter registration isn't up to date, or you didn't dot all the i's on your income tax return two years ago, someone is probably going to challenge your standing to run.

More often that not, that someone is going to be Ike Spears.  Which is why it's interesting that we read in the Advocate last week that someone could challenge potential Criminal District Court judicial candidate Deidre Pierce Kelly. Apparently Kelly lost her bar certification for a period of time four or five years ago and, even though, she has been reinstated for a while, that might still have some bearing on something.  

In 2015, Kelly was suspended for a year from practicing law on the order of the Louisiana Supreme Court, and it ended up taking 19 months for her to be reinstated. If that time under suspension counts towards the eight years, she'd meet the requirement. But if it doesn't, she would fall short.

Reasonable people may ask what is the difference.  The lawyers on Twitter seemed to take it pretty seriously the other day. But that just makes me even less convinced. We'll never be initiated into the many mysteries of the credentialed law talking profession, though, so we can only assume they know what they're doing...

Anyway what is interesting here is we don't know who might issue a challenge against Kelly nor do we know who brought this matter to the attention of the Advocate since it says in the first paragraph, "Kelly has the backing of prominent defense attorneys, a slew of local politicians and influential political consultant Ike Spears," we assume it wasn't him.  Still, it says, "the suspension leaves open the possibility that a lawsuit attempting to knock Kelly off the ballot could be filed after next week." A lawsuit "could be filed" by... somebody. It doesn't say who.  Somebody must have told them they might file one though.  Guess we'll find out if it happens.