Julie Stokes

From 2000 to 2010, Stokes operated Julie S. Stokes, CPA, but thereafter became the chief financial officer of Stokes & Associates. She is also a tax preparer.^[2]

On March 2, 2013, Stokes won a special election to the Louisiana House to succeed fellow Republican Tony Ligi, who resigned from office to become director of the Jefferson Business Council.^[3] By defeating three fellow Republicans, Stokes received 55 percent of the vote to fill the nearly three years remaining in Li's term. Businessman Jack Rizzuto, a candidate defeated by Ligi in 2007, finished second in the 2013 contest with 31 percent of the ballots cast. Allison Bent Bowler, the chief financial officer at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans received nine percent of the vote.^[4] No Democrat ran for the position.^[5]

In her freshman legislative year in 2013, Stokes was rated at 71 percent by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.^[6] Stokes servesdon the Health & Welfare, Labor & Industrial Relations, and Ways & Means committees.^[7]

On November 6, 2018, Stokes finished in fifth place with 163,769 votes (11 percent) in the special election to fill the position of secretary of state, vacated by Republican Tom Schedler. The two top vote-getters, Republican interim secretary Kyle Ardoin and Democrat Gwen Collins-Greenup, met in a December 8 runoff contest.^[8]

Stokes resides in Kenner with her husband Larry and their two children, Brandon and Taylor.^[1] Until her diagnosis of breast cancer in 2017, Stokes was a candidate^[9] for Louisiana state treasurer in the special election scheduled for October 14, 2017 to choose a successor to John Neely Kennedy, who was elected in 2016 to the United States Senate. Stokes underwent five months of chemotherapy^[9] and has been declared cancer-free.^[10]