The District 5 City Council campaign of Dennis Clark has hired an attorney related to allegations that fellow candidate Ladarius Price has not lived in the district for the required year.
The campaign said, "We have exponential amounts of factual evidence proving that Mr. LaDarius Price, City Council District 5’s candidate, will not have lived in District 5 for a year at the time of the election, and is therefore ineligible to run under the city charter.
"In order to preserve the integrity of this election, it is our lawful and civic duty to bring to light this apparent attempt by Mr. Price to fraudulently qualify for office. We have privately asked Mr. Price to do the right thing for this community and step down from the race, but to no avail. After threats on our candidate, and no acknowledgement of the evidence presented, we have begun the process of filing an official complaint with the Hamilton County Election Commission, as well as the Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office to further review these matters."
Jacob Strawbridge, Clark campaign manager, said, “Mr. Price quotes himself as a 'District 5 lifer', but we have proof he doesn’t live in the community at all, and actually lives outside of the city. All I’ve seen is his ability to make up false accusations of Mr. Clark, and threaten to hurt him. We do not take threats kindly, and are taking the utmost care in maintaining the well-being of Mr. Clark.
"As for the entirety of the campaign, we are focused on running a fair, clean election with policies that we believe will help all Chattanoogans, but especially our neighbors in District 5. We just want to ensure the integrity of this election is respected, and hold accountable those running for public office.”
The campaign said it "has retained attorney Rebecca Little, of Little Law PLLC, and has requested official documents verifying Mr. Price’s residency from the Hamilton County Election Commission. Once these documents are obtained and reviewed, we will be taking further action to request a hearing in front of the Election Commissioners. In recent days, multiple candidates have qualified for the election, yet remain silent regarding the residency matter."
The group said Mr. Clark "challenge those opponents to help the community maintain the integrity of this election, do what is in the best interest of our District 5 neighbors, and uphold the decency and ethics of this election process."
Others running in District 5 are Isiah Hester, Alan "AJ" Holman Sr., Leanne Jones and Cynthia Stanley-Cash.