Edwin Washington Edwards
Louisiana’s 50th governor, Edwin Washington Edwards, was born on August 7, 1927, and passed from this world on July 12, 2021. He was one month shy of his 94th birthday.
Gov. Edwin Edwards was born in a two-room farm house in the small community of Johnson seven miles outside Marksville, Louisiana, in Avoyelles Parish. His father Clarence was a farmer and his mother Agnes was a midwife credited with nearly 2,000 births. When he was 15, Edwin taught himself electricity and wired his home and many others. He became a Nazarene youth minister. He graduated Marksville High School in 1944 and began his life of public service at 17 when he joined the United States Navy. He became a Navy pilot in California but as his squadron was about to deploy to the Pacific, Japan surrendered and World War II ended. Edwards graduated LSU Law School four years later and married Elaine Schwartzenberg, a classmate at Marksville. They had four children, Anna, Victoria, Stephen and David.
He opened the Edwards Law Firm atop Gremillion’s Drug Store in Crowley in Acadia Parish because his sister, Audrey Edwards Isbell, told him there were more businesses in Crowley. There, the young attorney met lifelong friend B. I. Moody, an accountant, who many times tried to get quick-thinking Edwin to go into business. But Edwards made a name for himself by using his Cajun French to communicate with coastal French Acadians who had oil and gas lands. He brokered fairer deals with energy companies for the Cajuns, many of whom were illiterate.
In 1954, he won his first election as a Crowley City Councilman, serving on Louisiana’s first integrated city council. In 1959, he introduced young Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy to 100,000 festivalgoers at the Crowley International Rice Festival. He noticed that Kennedy genuinely enjoyed himself while connecting with poor south Louisianans with whom he had nothing in common. Edwards realized he inherently had that same gift but knew Louisianans much better. Just three months later, JFK announced for the Democratic nomination for president in 1960.
In 1964, Edwards challenged long-time Louisiana Senator Bill Cleveland and won, immediately becoming a floor leader for Governor John McKeithen. When 7th District Congressman T. A. Thompson was killed in an accident in 1965, Edwards won a seat in Congress, becoming a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson. In a heated debate over cutting farm subsidies at the White House, Congressman Edwards reflexively stood up over the President’s head pleading that farmers had elected LBJ because they believed he understood the plight of America’s farmers. Johnson replied, “That’s good enough for me” and farm subsidies remained in place. Edwards further brokered a deal for South Korea to buy $40 million of Louisiana rice, the largest single sale in state history.
Congressman Edwards became part of Louisiana’s powerful delegation headed by Senators Russell Long and Allen Ellender, and Congressmen Hale Boggs, Otto Passman, Joe D. Waggoner, and Speedy Long, and became one of a handful of southern congressmen to vote for the extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He also appointed Louisiana’s first black postmaster.
In December 1970, Congressman Edwards announced to the Baton Rouge Press Club that he would be a candidate for governor, challenging a field of 18 candidates by mid-1971. His friends called him crazy but they supported him anyway. Edwards flew his own plane, hopscotching across the state three times faster than road-bound candidates. Campaign manager Charles Roemer was first to use computers to plot out demographics to show where stops and campaign ads were needed most. As a result, Edwards came out on top in the Democratic primary over J. Bennett Johnston, Gillis Long, and former Governor Jimmie Davis who had been the odds-on favorite most of the year. In February 1972, he beat Republican David C. Treen to become Louisiana’s 50th governor on May 9, 1972.
Two months later, legendary U.S. Senator Allen Ellender suddenly died and, to avoid all the politicians who begged to fill out Ellender’s term, Edwin appointed his wife Elaine. She was sworn in on his birthday, August 7, 1972, after a private coffee with President and Mrs. Nixon in the Oval Office. Edwards noticed Nixon’s nervousness and much later learned that he had just been notified that the FBI was moving forward with an investigation of the Watergate break-in six weeks earlier.
Governor Edwards immediately fulfilled a campaign promise to replace Louisiana’s bloated 1921 Constitution and initiated CC-73, Louisiana’s first constitutional convention in half a century. During the 1973 legislative session, Edwards successfully beat back oil lobbyists and upped the state’s severance tax on oil from 25-cents a barrel to 12.5% of value. Edwards was first to predict that U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War would result in an embargo. He had been warning while in Congress that the U.S. was becoming more vulnerable by its dependence on foreign oil. In October 1973, OPEC did shut off oil to the United States, creating gasoline shortages and gas lines and driving gas prices from 25-cents a gallon to near $1 a gallon. Prices soared in 1974 by 300%. By half of 1974, Edwards’ tax move flipped the $40 million state budget deficit he had inherited from Gov. John McKeithen to an $88 million surplus. By 1979, Louisiana was the most cash-rich state in the nation while New York City was asking Congress for a bailout to keep from going bankrupt.
As a result of Edwards’ fiscal prowess, he was solicited through Judge Edmund Reggie to consider running for Vice President on the ticket with Senator Ted Kennedy. Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980. As president, Carter had threatened Governor Edwards that he would send in U.S. troops to nationalize Louisiana’s pipelines if Edwards slowed production to determine Louisiana’s remaining oil reserves. Edwards had railed for years through Nixon, Ford and Carter that the federal cap of $5 per barrel was unfair to Louisiana producers and would kill exploration which would make OPEC even more powerful. All his predictions came true.
By the end of his first term, the Public Affairs Research Council applauded Governor Edwards for fulfilling all the reforms PAR had requested. Complaining that Louisiana’s party primaries required an exhausting three elections and three fundraising efforts and that continually begging for money compromised politicians, Edwards passed legislation to shift to a jungle primary in which the top two vote getters would be in a single runoff, no matter what party. This allowed conservative voters and politicians to shift to the Republican Party and, for the first time, still have a chance to win office.
This shift allowed David C. Treen to become Louisiana’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction. But Treen was beset by a plummet in oil prices and budget shortfalls and lost by a landslide when Edwin Edwards returned in 1983. Edwards took 617 friends at $10,000 each on a fundraising trip to France where he met with President Francois Mitterrand and discussed economic alliances between France and Louisiana, named for King Louis XIV.
But oil prices continued to fall through Edwards third term at the same time he was tried twice by U.S. Attorney John Volz. But Volz was embarrassed when Governor Edwards on the witness stand reminded Volz that he, too, had asked Edwards for a favor, that being to push politically to get Volz a federal judgeship. Edwards was acquitted.
The damage was done, however, and in the 1987 governor’s race, he did not finish first. He conceded the race at midnight and essentially made Congressman Buddy Roemer governor. Four years later, Roemer fell through the crack in the election between Edwards and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. With the backing even of foes and detractors, Edwards won handily over Duke for his fourth and last term. With that election, Edwards became one of only eleven men in U.S. history to win four gubernatorial terms.
He retired from office in 1996, returned to the Edwards Law Firm and formed business partnerships for many clients. To sort out his storied life, Governor Edwards coauthored a bestselling biography with writer Leo Honeycutt, winner of the Louisiana Literary Award. That book was read by Trina Scott in Alexandria who began a pen pal relationship with the former governor, began dating and married in 2011 in New Orleans with Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Kitty Kimball, officiating. Governor and Trina Edwards celebrated the birth of his fifth child, Eli Wallace Edwards, in 2013. Eli will turn 8-years-old on August 1.
Governor Edwards is survived also by his four other children, Anna Edwards, Victoria Edwards, Stephen Edwards and David Edwards and David’s wife, Laura. Also surviving are 12 grandchildren: Douglas Edwards, Scott Hensgens, John Todd Edmond, Dana Edwards Danos (Brannon), Edwin Nolan Edwards (Holly), Stephen Edwards Jr. (Christie), Matthew Edwards, and Allison Edwards, and Christopher Schadt (Lauren), Amanda Edwards Blair (Preston), Kristen Edwards, and Anna Edwards Chandler (Colby).
And 19 great-grandchilden: John Edwards, Grey Edwards, Caroline Hensgens, George Hensgens, Henry Hensgens, Taylor Edmond, Connor Edmond, Sadie and Jolene Danos, Zoe and Nolan Edwards, Theodore and Rose Schadt, Lizzie and Benjamin Moore; Maddox and Coen Chandler; Peyton and Carter Blair.
Governor Edwards will lie in state at Louisiana’s State Capitol on Saturday July 17 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The visitation is open to the public. At noon Sunday, July 18, his body will be carried on an open, horse-drawn funeral carriage from the State Capitol, down 4th Street to North Boulevard, to Louisiana’s 170-year-old Old State Capitol overlooking the Mississippi River. He will be remembered in a private but streamed and televised funeral service.
“I want everybody to remember that I tried to do as much good for everybody that I could,” he said, “and my hope is that I did. I also hope that those I helped will, in turn, help those around them, too.”