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BATON ROUGE (AP) — Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday accused Republican opponent Eddie Rispone of intending to kick hundreds of thousands of people off Louisiana’s Medicaid expansion program, ending their health insurance coverage, if he wins the runoff election.
The Deep South’s only Democratic governor also struck at Rispone for his tight ties to wealthy GOP donor Lane Grigsby, who faces criticism of election meddling for his failed effort to persuade a Republican state Senate candidate to exit the race by offering to help him run for a judgeship instead. Edwards described Grigsby as Rispone’s “puppet master” and said both men were “dangerous” for Louisiana.
Since being forced into the head-to-head Nov. 16 matchup against Rispone, Edwards has ramped up his hits against Rispone, including launching his first televised attack ad of his campaign.
Edwards appeared outside a north Baton Rouge emergency room to slam Rispone’s Medicaid expansion proposal, which targets the taxpayer-financed health insurance program enacted by the Democratic incumbent. Edwards said the plan threatens access to services, the viability of rural hospitals and health industry jobs.
“Eddie Rispone would rip away their health care,” Edwards said. “And while the hardworking people get punished, we all pay the price.”
Rispone, a Baton Rouge businessman making his first bid for elected office, has said he intends to keep the Edwards-created Medicaid expansion in place, but plans to “freeze” enrollment until he can eliminate millions in wasteful spending he says exists in the program.
Republicans cite legislative audits that documented money spent on ineligible services and people. In one report, the legislative auditor projected Medicaid expansion may have spent as much as $85 million over 20 months on people who earned too much for the coverage.
“Eddie understands that the only way to protect Medicaid for future generations is to reform it,” Rispone spokesman Anthony Ramirez said in a statement. “Unfortunately, John Bel Edwards has mismanaged the state Medicaid expansion so badly that he wasted $85 million dollars of our money giving benefits to people who are not even eligible.”
About 470,000 people, largely the working poor, get health insurance through the Medicaid expansion. Edwards said Rispone’s plan would eventually force an estimated 300,000 expansion enrollees from the government insurance coverage.
Because of income fluctuations among seasonal and shift workers, expansion recipients often rotate in and out of eligibility. If enrollment is frozen, they would be unable to regain coverage after they’ve lost it, even if their income drops back to the eligibility level.
Beyond health care, the Democratic incumbent also panned Rispone’s ties to Grigsby, who encouraged Rispone to enter the governor’s race.
A wealthy industrial contractor like Rispone, Grigsby told local news outlets that he offered to support Franklin Foil in a judge’s election if he dropped out of the competition for a Baton Rouge-based state Senate seat and kept the race from a three-way runoff. Foil didn’t take the offer.
Grigsby wanted Foil to step aside for his fellow Republican opponent, Steve Carter. Foil and Carter, state representatives, were declared tied for second-place in Saturday’s primary and both appeared headed to a runoff against Democrat Beverly Brooks Thompson. But a Thursday recount determined Foil edged Carter out of the Nov. 16 election, according to local media.
Edwards called Grigsby’s offer “illegal.”
“It shows you the mentality that he has, what he believes his place in Louisiana to be,” Edwards said. “Most dangerous for the people of Louisiana, he is the puppetmaster calling the shots with Eddie Rispone. And if that’s the guy that Eddie Rispone is hooked to the hip with, it speaks volumes about how dangerous Eddie Rispone is for the state of Louisiana.”
Rispone’s campaign hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment Wednesday and Thursday about Grigsby.
Grigsby runs an organization called Truth in Politics that has attacked Edwards throughout the governor’s race.

Erica Brown Stubbs, 46, a native of Lafayette and resident of Morgan City, died Monday, Oct. 14, 2019, at Ochsner Medical Center.
She is survived by her husband, Claude Stubbs of Morgan City; father, Bruce Brown and wife Barbara of Morgan City; mother, Nancy Mitchell Levitt of Morgan City; a brother, Jared Duplechin of Morgan City; a sister, Nicole Semmens of Morgan City; and a host of other relatives.
She was preceded in death by her stepfather.
Visitation will be Saturday, 1-4 p.m., at Twin City Funeral Home.
Twin City Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

BERWICK
Housing Authority taking applications for all units from 8:15-11 a.m. and 1:15-3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, and Nov. 7, 14 and 21. Must bring birth certificates and Social Security cards for all members of the household, picture ID for all members over 18 and current proof of income. For info call 985-385-1546.

CONCERT
Community Concert Association presents Dan Miller, cowboy music, at 7 p.m. Oct. 24 at Morgan City Municipal Auditorium. A season subscription for the remaining four concerts for 2019-2020 is $45, adults, $10, students K-12. All tickets may be purchased at the door or online at www.morgancitylive.com. Single concert tickets are $25, adults and $5, students. St. Mary Council on Aging will provide free transportation to and from concerts for senior citizens 60 and over in St. Mary Parish. Call at least 24 hours prior to concert to arrange.

MILAN (AP) — European producers of specialty agricultural products like French wine, Italian Parmesan and Spanish olives are facing a U.S. tariff hike due Friday with a mix of trepidation and indignation at being dragged into a trade war they feel they have little to do with.
The tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European goods were approved by the World Trade Organization as compensation for illegal EU subsidies to plane maker Airbus.
The U.S. has some leeway in deciding what goods it puts tariffs on. So while it is taxing European aircraft 10% more, it is walloping agricultural products an extra 25%.
“It’s a nightmare,” says Aurélie Bertin, who runs the 700-year-old winery Chateau Sainte-Roseline in southern France. “We don’t know what will be the result.”
Her rosé wine business has boomed in recent years thanks to American demand for the beverage. She fears her U.S. sales could drop by a third under the new tariffs.
The punitive taxes take particular aim at European agricultural products that have a “protected name status.” Those are goods that can be sold under a name — like Scotch whisky or Manchego cheese — only if they are from a particular region and follow specific production methods. The result is they fetch premium prices, protect cultural heritage and are shielded from competitors.
U.S.-made Parmesan cheese, for example, is not allowed access to the European market as a copycat of the traditional Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano — a barrier that the U.S. milk producers lobby are pressuring to bring down.
Italian President Sergio Mattarella sought to impress on U.S. President Donald Trump during a White House Visit on Wednesday that the taxes may result in a “mere race between tariffs” after the WTO decides Europe’s case later this year over U.S. subsidies to Boeing. Trump was undeterred.
European producers feel they are collateral damage from a political squabble entirely unrelated to their business.
“We consider that we are hostages of politics. We are very, very far from aeronautics, even if our wines are served on planes every day,” said Burgundy wine producer Francois Labet.
The president of the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese consortium, Nicola Bertinelli, said that its members “are embittered because one of the strongest sectors of our economy is being unjustly hit.” He noted that Italy doesn’t even participate in the Airbus consortium of countries that prompted the penalties.
The four stakeholders in Airbus — Spain, France, Germany and Britain — were targeted with more tariffs than other EU countries. Spanish olives, for example, have been singled out, while those from Italy and Greece have been left alone.
That has created additional anxieties, with Spanish olive producers worried that U.S. buyers will turn to buying from Italian companies instead.
The U.S. tariffs appeared to be selectively chosen to hit premium items that well-heeled U.S. consumers could continue to afford even at higher prices and not sectors that would more directly correlate to the unfair subsidies for Airbus, which could put a damper on the U.S. economy, said Gianmarco Ottaviano, an economics professor at Milan’s Bocconi University.
“We don’t see a lot of tariffs on things that Italy is exporting a lot, like machinery. The reason is that this is probably more useful than Parmesan cheese to the U.S. economy,” he said. “You want to punish, but at the same time, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot.”
A tariff is essentially a tax on importers and for small U.S. retailers , they come at a bad time ahead of the holiday season.
WTO-authorized sanctions are supposed to prod the trade combatants into resolving their differences. But Trump, who has labeled himself “Tariff Man,” has enthusiastically slapped import taxes on foreign steel and aluminum and on thousands of Chinese products in separate disputes and has bragged that the levies raise revenue for the U.S. government.
“There should be negotiations,” said Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington and a former U.S. trade official. “Unfortunately, it seems like we’ve got a president who’s tariff happy. That makes it harder to get those kinds of negotiations and remedies in place.”
U.S. wine retailers, distributors and importers already expect some customers to seek alternatives from countries whose products aren’t being taxed. And any signs that customers are balking at higher prices will force retailers to absorb their increased costs.
The vice president of Italy’s main industrial lobby, Lisa Ferrarini, said that European producers could in the longer-term shift exports away from the U.S. market. But director of the Spanish food and beverage industry director disputes that logic, saying, “there is no alternative to the American market.”
European producers and diplomats were still pressing for a last-minute change of heart using all available channels, from social media to diplomacy.
Italy’s agriculture minister, Teresa Bellanova, tweeted a photo to Trump promoting grapes and Italian Parmesan as a healthy snack, and the president of the Emilia Romagna region, where much of the cheese is produced, has launched a social media campaign in support of the product.
Trump, meanwhile, rebuffed Mattarella’s in-person overtures, arguing that Europe “has taken tremendous advantage of the United States.”
France’s finance and economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, will make another attempt to soften the tariff blow when he meets with U.S. trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer in Washington on Thursday. Le Maire told Europe 1 radio he will warn Lighthizer that Europeans would strike back if the tariffs take effect on Friday.
“We, Europeans, will take similar sanctions in a few months, maybe even harsher ones — within the framework of the WTO — to retaliate to these US sanctions,” he said.
—Parker reported from Paris. Daniel Cole in Marseille, France, and Joyce M. Rosenberg in New York and Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.