How the legal fallout from two affairs toppled a mayor and roiled this Louisiana town (2025)

As always, the monthly Pineville City Council meeting began and ended with a prayer on Sept. 10.

What happened in between, however, upended this heavily Christian town in central Louisiana.

Two council members supported a resolution calling on Mayor Rich Dupree to resign after recent admissions that he and his chief of staff both engaged in extramarital affairs with the same city employee. The three other council members did not support the resolution, so it failed to pass.

Dupree, then reading from a statement while addressing what he called “the elephant in the room,” apologized for his “personal indiscretion” and the “embarrassment” it had caused, saying he had been “tempted into crossing a line that’s very clearly drawn by my faith and my responsibilities.” He said his wife had forgiven him, and he vowed to work hard to regain the public’s trust.

On Monday, 13 days later, Dupree announced he would step down on Oct. 6.

“The price is just too high — and the people being targeted and dragged into the mud mean way too much to me to allow it to continue — so I must step aside,” he said in the city council chamber as all five council members looked on.

The scandal has dominated discussion in Pineville, a Rapides Parish town of 14,000 across the Red River from Alexandria.

It’s a story that weaves together complicated questions about the rules for sex in the workplace during the #MeToo era, with the mayor accusing the female city employee of engaging in “predatory” behavior.

Brittany Poston, the employee, has rejected that assertion, adding that revelations of the sexual activity have left her in “a living hell.” She says she is now afraid to step outside of her home.

What’s happened in Pineville is also a story that illustrates how the media landscape has changed in recent years.

Recall Dupree

A newly created Facebook page called Recall Dupree broke the news of the mayor’s indiscretion. But the person behind it has refused to identify himself or herself.

“Too often the truth becomes a casualty to rumor and innuendo, especially when propagandized by unaccountable opportunists who stand in the shadows and hurl their stones in anonymity,” Dupree said in his resignation statement.

Shannon McManus, however, has had no problems becoming the public face for those who wanted Dupree to quit. A longtime Pineville resident who recently moved to Tennessee, McManus fanned the flames of the scandal with more than one scoop on his own Facebook page.

“The podcast is all about so people can understand what their officials are doing in order for them to make informed decisions,” McManus said in an interview.

Dupree’s fall has shocked Pineville.

The city has enjoyed political stability for years, with Dupree’s predecessor, Clarence Fields, stepping aside after winning reelection four times without opposition. In all, Fields served 22 years as the city’s first Black mayor.

A refuge

Pineville residents see their town as a refuge from higher-crime Alexandria, where the population has dropped from 51,000 in 1980 to 44,000 today.

Pineville’s two dominant institutions are Cleco, a big utility that services central Louisiana and Acadiana, and Louisiana Christian University.

In a sign of the legal and political problem he faced, Dupree hired Jimmy Faircloth, a prominent local lawyer who was executive counsel for then-Gov. Bobby Jindal.

When a reporter visited his office at city hall five days before he resigned, Dupree said Faircloth had advised him not to talk to the press, but he was willing briefly to talk up Pineville.

“We have a quality workforce and a great bedroom community,” Dupree said. “We have fantastic schools.”

Dupree, 57, served as Fields’ chief of staff and won the race to replace him in 2022, although by only five votes. Before working for the city, he had helped start and manage two Christian radio stations.

As mayor, Dupree has received high marks for aggressively promoting Pineville as a place for people to live or invest.

Everything changed on Aug. 31 when Recall Dupree posted a confidential response from Vilar & Green, the law firm that represents the city, to a complaint filed by Poston with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. No one has explained how it became public.

'Brief consensual relationships'

Vilar & Green wrote that both Dupree and Doug Gann, his chief of staff at the time, admitted to “brief consensual relationships” with Poston.

In a twist, Vilar & Green wrote that both men accused her “of aggression and what can only be described as predatory behavior by Ms. Poston in which Ms. Poston initiated all physical contact. The evidence supports that Ms. Poston sent them hundreds of unsolicited, graphically explicit and obscene pictures and videos of herself.”

In the following days, local power brokers repeated the mayor’s narrative that put the blame on Poston.

She stayed silent, even after someone subsequently leaked her EEOC complaint to Recall Dupree.

Five days before the mayor’s resignation announcement, she took a corner seat at Tamp & Grind, a downtown Alexandria coffee shop, and told her story.

Poston said she was raised in central Louisiana by her aunt, who lived an itinerant lifestyle. In one year, they moved 14 times.

Poston said she was married at 15, pregnant at 16 and divorced at 18. She was 25 when she received her high school degree from online studies.

Supported by student loans, she obtained an undergraduate degree from LSU-Alexandria in psychology in 2021 when she was 31. She’s now halfway through getting a masters in counseling from an online university, she added.

Billing clerk

Poston began working for the city of Pineville in February 2023 as a billing clerk for the utility department.

Several months later, she was promoted to a newly created position: director of operations and special events.

By then, Poston said, she had begun what she described as a consensual sexual relationship with Gann, the mayor’s chief of staff. She said she sent him photos and videos of herself at his request but said the city attorney's response grossly exaggerated the number.

Gann, 54, had entered city government when Dupree took office.

In an interview, Gann declined to discuss many of the details but said: “There have been plenty of examples through the Bible where folks have fallen short. We’re making sure we follow what God has for us and making sure we see the blessings that come to us from this. We are healing today and are praying for everyone who is involved.”

Poston said that Dupree learned her second marriage was falling apart, so he let her stay at a condo he owned in Pineville, initially rent free. After two months, she began paying $500 per month, she said. The mayor also let her be one of the few Pineville employees with a city-owned car, she said.

Poston said the mayor learned of her affair with Gann and asked her for the same, both in his office and elsewhere.

“He’d have me park somewhere,” she said. “It became either I do these things, or it was hell.”

For a time, she said, she was caught in the middle with both men wanting her to be with one and not the other.

In October, according to Poston’s EEOC complaint, she “began expressing discomfort and desire to end the sexual or romantic relationships with the Mayor and Mr. Gann. By December 2023, Ms. Poston had entered an exclusive and monogamous relationship with a new partner and explicitly ended her relationships with the Mayor and Mr. Gann.”

'An ultimatum'

In February, Poston won high marks among residents for how she organized the annual Mardi Gras parade, several residents said.

In March, according to her EEOC complaint, “the Mayor gave Ms. Poston an ultimatum — she could either accept a demotion or be in a subordinate position to Mr. Gann. The complaint said Poston resigned because Dupree created a workplace that was 'hostile' and 'intolerable.'”

She quit her job with the city in March, filed the EEOC complaint in May and now works from home for a private company.

Asked about her end goal, she said, “I want people to know what was going on” and called the mayor’s resignation “a relief.”

She said she rejected a $25,000 settlement offer contained in a July 19 letter from Randall Keiser, an attorney in Alexandria representing the city of Pineville.

The scandal has thrust the five city council members into uncharted waters. They earn $1,000 a month for their part-time jobs and typically deal with complaints that neighbors have left out their trash bins after garbage pick-up days.

Council member Mary Galloway offered the resolution on Sept. 10 asking the mayor to resign. She works part-time at the Pineville Senior Citizen Center after spending 37 years as a paraprofessional for the local school system.

“We have rules” was all that Galloway would say, taking a break from helping an elderly woman piece together a puzzle at the senior center, when asked why she wanted him to resign.

Galloway, as the mayor pro tem, will become mayor at least temporarily when Dupree resigns. The council will choose the mayor’s successor. The election to fill the final year of Dupree’s term will take place in the spring.

Kevin Dorn, who supported Galloway’s resignation resolution as a city council member, noted that he was a year ahead of Dupree when they attended Pineville High School and said they are friends.

But Dorn, a furniture salesperson, said Dupree’s resignation was in the best interests of everyone involved.

“We have to work together to assure the citizens that Pineville will keep moving forward, that we will deal with all matters that may arise with professionalism, that we will make sure that people will continue to invest in the city and that the infrastructure projects will continue,” he said. “Pineville is a great place.”