Edwin Edwards: The Louisiana Lifer

Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards’s long-shot House bid will likely end in defeat on Saturday, but the longtime politician appears to be savoring the experience of going down as an unapologetic, old-school Southern Democrat.

“My grandparents were Democrats, my father and mother were Democrats, and I grew up during the Great Depression when the country was saved by a Democratic president,” Edwards thundered at a recent campaign event in Baton Rouge.

{mosads}Edwards is among the most colorful figures in Louisiana’s storied political history. He served in the House for seven years before four terms as governor. In 2001, he was convicted on federal racketeering charges from time he spent in office, serving eight years in prison.

He’s 87 and has a 1-year-old son with his wife, Trina, who is younger than him by 52 years. They appeared together on a reality show for A&E that ran for a short time in 2013.

Now, Edwards is running to represent Louisiana’s 6th District against a young conservative upstart politician, Garret Graves, who served in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-La.) administration as head of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. Graves is the heavy favorite in the conservative district. 

The candidates are seeking to replace Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who appears poised to knock off incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on Saturday. Graves and Edwards contrast sharply on the campaign trail, not only because of Graves’s relative youth, but also his positions, which are in many ways aligned with the Tea Party.

In the race, Edwards faces many of the same challenges as Landrieu: He underperformed in the Nov. 4 jungle primary, his early voting numbers are down, and he’s getting beaten soundly on fundraising.

Edwards finished atop the field of candidates on Election Day with 30 percent, but the split Republican field took more than 60 percent, with Graves leading the way at 27 percent.

Early voting records from East Baton Rouge show a big drop off in turnout by Democrats and black voters in comparison to the early voting period ahead of the Nov. 4 jungle primary, while turnout for Republicans and white voters remained relatively steady.

Larger political trends are also working against Edwards; the number of Blue Dog Democrats in Congress has dwindled, and white Democrats from the Deep South are nearly extinct.

But Edwards looks at home on the campaign trail, selling himself as a Louisiana lifer who will still answer the phone when constituents call. He holds the loyalty of supporters who remember him as a governor with an open door who fought for the disadvantaged.

Edwards’s supporters still fiercely defend him as a champion for minority rights. Baton Rouge businessman and former state legislator Joe Delpit recalled to The Hill how much it meant to him that Edwards appointed the first black postmaster in Louisiana.

“I followed Edwin since he first ran in 1972 for governor,” Delpit said. “He was very, very open and had an open administration in which he involved in his Cabinets for the first time black people, women, and he was a champion for the downtrodden and people who were lower income to middle income. He worked for them and he was very inclusive in his selection of people to be on boards and commissions, people of all races, nationalities and genders.”

Edwards has run a populist campaign and still pulls strongly from a base of blue-collar workers. Among his contributors in the last two weeks are the Ironworkers Political Action League and a PAC representing Louisiana River Pilots.

“Not everybody wants to go to college to be a lawyer, engineer or a doctor. Some people want to work for a living,” Edwards said to laughter at a Tuesday debate with Graves.

His supporters say he’s as a Blue Dog willing to buck party orthodoxy, and one who doesn’t shy away from criticizing other Democrats. Edwards says President Obama shouldn’t have taken executive action on immigration, says entitlement programs could probably be scaled back, and has criticized elements of the Affordable Care Act.

Still, Edwards defends the role of government in helping the underrepresented.

“If you’ve got no government, kids would still be working in coal mines … women and minorities would still be in the shadows of our economy and our society, and that’s not right,” he said at the debate. “We need the steady hand of the government.”

Edwards and some of his supporters are skeptical of the circumstances surrounding his conviction, but acknowledge that he likely got caught doing something that was out-of-bounds.

“Don’t get me wrong, Edwin’s never been a saint,” Delpit said. “He’ll tell you that himself.”

But they say he’s paid his debt and learned from the experience. On the campaign trail, Edwards has sought to disarm attacks against his conviction by preemptively poking fun at them. In his Tuesday debate with Graves, he addressed them in a question about net neutrality.

“No I don’t think [the Internet] should be regulated, I think it’s operating well as it is and I’m perfectly pleased with it,” he said. “I have no complaints to make about it, except that it took me a while to learn about it because it all came about when I was in a place where there was no Internet service.”

Still, Graves has Edwards’s legal record at his disposal as an effective campaign weapon. He brandished it at the end of Tuesday’s debate to big applause after Edwards accused him of taking advantage of his position as Jindal’s coastal adviser to steer lucrative contracts to family members.

“Why would he think general corruption is the normal way?” Graves asked after thoroughly disputing the allegations. “Why would someone believe that’s something that happens in the government? Because when they were in government that’s exactly what happened. Things have changed today.”

What hasn’t changed is Edwards’s irascible nature and affinity to let loose with an off-color joke while on the campaign trail. At one stop in Baton Rouge, Edwards introduced his wife, who is a Republican, to the crowd.

“Before I go on, because I want to have peace when I go home, I want to introduce my wife, Trina,” he said. “Now I have to say this. I’m a lifelong Democrat, gonna die a Democrat, but I have nothing against Republicans. For a long time I didn’t really know what to do with them or what to do about them, but I finally found out. You sleep with them.”