2013.

Meanwhile, Fitzmorris' win will also have a domino effect in the town of Abita Springs, where he is currently wrapping up the first year of his third term in office as mayor. Because there will be two more years remaining to Fitzmorris' term when he leaves office at the end of 2012, he said he expects there will be a special election to fill those years, perhaps in spring 2013.

Riding a wave of voter disenchantment, Fitzmorris toppled Core in a close contest, 50.2 percent to 49.8 percent. Although a scant 122 votes separated the two candidates, Fitzmorris said beating an entrenched assessor is a rarity.

"I felt like we made a little history,'' he said. "She (Core) not only underestimated me, but she underestimated the will of the people.''

Runningas a political outsider, Core won the office in 1991 in a race did not feature an incumbent. Then Assessor Kirk Wascom, mired in a federal fraud investigation that eventually lead to a guilty plea stemming from his years as head of NorthShore Regional Medical Center in Slidell, did not seek re-election.

Though there wasn't an incumbent in the race, Core and the other candidates nonetheless spent much of that campaign hammering the Assessor's Office as being run by political insiders who unfairly and unevenly assessed the parish's properties.

Those very themes played out again this fall -- but this time it was Core's challengers railing against her.

And as she sought a sixth term, she was undone by a raft of criticism ranging from complaints over property assessments to media