He’s already the first mayor Louisiana’s newest city has ever had, but Dustin Yates is now going to be St. George’s first elected mayor.

Without even having to run a race.

Yates, who was appointed mayor in the initial organization of the city by Gov. Jeff Landry last year, is the sole candidate left for the post in the election set for March 29.

A St. George mayoral candidate has reportedly withdrawn from the race.

On Tuesday, Republican candidate Jim Morgan withdrew from the race. He said in a statement, “Today I’m announcing that I’m dropping out of the race for the mayor of St. George and will suspend all my campaign activities. After a couple of weeks of trying to mount a campaign against an extremely well-funded opponent, I can see the writing on the wall. I want to continue to be a voice for solutions for St. George.”

Morgan was intended to run against Republican Dustin Yates in the March 29 elections.

According to court records, Morgan was accused of prostitution in 1996. Morgan pleaded guilty to the charge. The first offense for soliciting prostitution is up to six months in jail and up to a $750 fine, according to Louisiana law.

He currently serves as the board commissioner for the St. George Fire Protection District.

Yates, who is St. George’s interim mayor, will now run unopposed and will be the mayor of the city.

During the March 29 elections, St. George residents can still vote on council members, according to the Secretary of State website.

There were a couple of other potential candidates floating their names out there, but Morgan was the only one who went public for any length of time. Now that he’s out, Yates is in for the next four years.

The most impactful consequence of this is that with Yates and Sid Edwards in place for the next four years as mayor of St. George and mayor-president of Baton Rouge, the key players are in place to negotiate a settlement between the city-parish and the new city as to tax revenue collected in St. George but not remitted to the new city between November 2019 and, essentially, the present. There is a lot of reason to believe this can be negotiated amicably, which wouldn’t have been the case had Edwards not knocked off Sharon Weston Broome in December.