Karen Carter

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Louisiana House of Representatives, 93rd District
Karen R. Carter

Born	November 1, 1969
Residence	Louisiana
Political party	Democratic

Karen Carter (born November 1, 1969) is a Democratic politician from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was a candidate for U.S. Congress in Louisiana's 2nd congressional district (map) in the mid-term election of November 2006. Carter challenged incumbent Democrat Bill Jefferson, who is currently the subject of an FBI investigation, and several other candidates. She finished in second place with 19,972 votes (21.6% of the total votes cast), and therefore she and Jefferson entered a runoff round of voting on December 9, 2006. Jefferson prevailed by a large margin.

Karen Carter was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Ken and Gwen Carter. Her father was one of New Orleans’s first black property tax assessors and a prominent political figure in the city. Carter graduated from Mercy Academy, and received a bachelors degree in intenational business and marketing from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1991. Carter then returned to New Orleans to receive a law degree from Tulane University in 1995. She is a practicing attorney with the firm Wilkerson and Henry.

Carter is a political protégé of Jim Singleton, a former city councilman and the leader of the powerful BOLD political organization. With the help of BOLD, Carter was elected in 1999 to the Louisiana state legislature as a representative for the 93rd district, which encompasses New Orleans’s CBD, the upper French Quarter, and parts of Central City and Mid-City. In the state legislature, she was one of the most vocal supporters of a plan to reform the New Orleans public school system by putting it under state control, and was a backer of the levee board consolidation bill. Carter is a member of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council.

In the 2006 Congressional election, Carter received endorsements from prominent Republican businessmen Joe Canizaro and Boysie Bollinger. She was also endorsed by both the Louisiana state and Orleans Parish branches of the Democratic Party, a normally unusual development given that the parties usually support their incumbent members, but with the recent allegations against Jefferson, it was not a big suprise. She centered her campaign around the argument that Jefferson's corruption scandal left New Orleans with a lack of credible and respected representation in Congress. Jefferson, in turn, accused her of profiting from no-bid “sweetheart” contracts with the New Orleans City Council as their legal advisor for utility regulation.

Carter lives in New Orleans’s Warehouse District. She is engaged to be remarried after a previous divorce, and has no children.