Monique Blanco Boulet, daughter of the late Gov. Kathleen Blanco, will become Lafayette's first female mayor-president after she unseated incumbent Josh Guillory in a runoff election Saturday.
With all 134 precincts reporting, Boulet appears to have defeated Guillory, holding him to one term as the leader of Lafayette Consolidated Government.
Boulet received 52% of the votes cast, compared with Guillory's 48%, with 2,267 votes separating the two, according to final but unofficial results from the Louisiana Secretary of State.
Thirty percent of the 157,429 registered voters in Lafayette Parish cast ballots in the race.
"I have to thank the voters most of all. We get to decide,” Boulet said. “I am humbled. I will represent our entire community. People want a healthy economy for our families and a safe community. I will represent everyone to solve our complex problems. It’s OK if we disagree. We will come up with solutions together."
Boulet told supporters Saturday night that her team soon will announce the formation of a transition committee.
“This administration will be open, accessible and transparent with the public and press," she said. "Our transition team will be run in the same manner as we seek input and involvement from everyone and prepare to take action as soon as I’m sworn in. We have a lot of work to do."
In the October primary, Guillory finished first in the three-person race with 40% of the vote compared with 34% by Boulet. Third place finisher Jan Swift recently said she was voting for Boulet and encouraged her supporters to do the same. It appears Boulet picked up crucial votes from Swift's supporters and flipped several crucial precincts.
Guillory's term started with the firing of the police chief. He's on the sixth chief in four years. In his third month in office, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Louisiana, forcing the closure of businesses and schools. It ended up bringing a windfall of federal funds to the city and parish to help governments recoup lost revenue.
His four years in office were plagued with controversy surrounding multimillion dollar drainage projects, lawsuits and allegations of wrongdoing that are being investigated by at least one state agency and the FBI.
Boulet grew up in a large Lafayette family, the daughter of the late Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the late Raymond Blanco, who coached football at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and became a dean and vice president there.
She was a Democrat until September 2022, when she switched to the Republican Party.
She spent the past seven years as CEO of the Acadiana Planning Commission, where she grew the struggling agency into an organization that was instrumental in revitalizing communities in part by obtaining federal funds and building coalitions.
The quasi-governmental agency under her leadership has been instrumental in plans to revitalize the intersection of University Avenue and Cameron Street and the entire University Avenue corridor. It also was involved with the Acadiana Rural Fiber-to-the-Home initiative and a recently announced major solar power project in Iberia Parish.