The roguish governor who played fast and loose
Edwin Edwards 1927–2021
Edwin Edwards defied easy categorization as hero or villain. A silver-pompadoured politician beloved for his wit and charm, the three-term Louisiana congressman and four-term governor was a populist who championed the disadvantaged, promoted racial inclusion, filled state coffers by revamping oil taxation, and improved social services. But Edwards was also a gambler and womanizer who played fast and loose with governing ethics. Asked about accepting illegal campaign contributions, he said they were illegal to give, “but not for me to receive.” He famously remarked he was bulletproof unless caught in bed with “a dead girl or a live boy.” After scores of investigations, Edwards was convicted in 2000 of taking payoffs for casino licenses and served eight years in prison. “In life, politics, and hunting, I play by the rules,” he once said. “But I take all the advantages the rules allow.” Edwards was born into poverty in Avoyelles Parish, La., to a sharecropper father and Frenchspeaking mother who worked as a midwife, said The Washington Post. After a stint in the Navy
Air Corps, he earned a law degree from Louisiana State and set up a practice in Crowley, developing “a reputation as a defender of minorities and the poor.” Edwards spent a decade on Crowley’s city council before moving to the state legislature, then to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrat won his first term as governor in 1972 and was easily re-elected. After a “hiatus because of term limits,” he returned in 1984, said The Wall Street Journal. A year later he was indicted on racketeering charges but acquitted, after a trial that included testimony about cash-stuffed suitcases. Edwards won his final term in 1991, running against Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke—“We’re both wizards under the sheets,” Edwards quipped—and portraying himself as the lesser of two evils. “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important,” read one campaign sticker. He had been out of office for four years when the law caught up with him.
Following his release from prison, Edwards “enjoyed renewed popularity,” said The New Orleans Advocate. Political clubs invited him to speak, “men clapped him on the back, and women asked him for a kiss.” He married for the third time, to a woman 51 years his junior, and had a son at 85. “People realize that public officials are human and we have our faults,” he said. “And if we don’t try to be hypocritical or sanctimonious about it, I think they’ll forgive us for it.”