They divorced after he went to prison, but he found a third wife in Trina Grimes, then 32, a pen-pal who visited him behind bars. Five years later, at 66, he married 29-year-old Candy Picou in a ceremony at the governor’s mansion. He had four children during a 40-year marriage to his high school sweetheart, the former Elaine Schwartzenburg, before they divorced in 1989. Despite his unabashed fondness for high-stakes gambling, dirty jokes and his reputation as a womanizer, he earned a following among Catholics and fundamentalists. Raised a Roman Catholic, Edwards preached in the Church of the Nazarene as a teen and didn't drink or smoke. According to his authorized biography, his father’s ancestors were Welsh his mother’s continental French but Edwards always considered himself a Cajun. 7, 1927, to a sharecropper and a midwife in Avoyelles Parish, in the region settled by 18th century French exiles from Nova Scotia who came to be known as Cajuns. But the dealmaking Edwards had a cooler demeanor.Įdwards was born on Aug. They shared a populist appeal to the state’s downtrodden, and political fortunes that flowed in part from taxes on oil. Silver-haired and gifted with an easy charm, Edwards dominated Louisiana politics in the late 20th century much as Huey P. I’ve rarely seen a wider chasm between the promise for greatness and reality.” “He had everything, and yet squandered it by devoting much of his time to enriching his friends. He could relate to crowds better than almost any politician I ever knew,” Louisiana State University journalism professor Robert Mann said in an email Monday. “He had eloquence, creativity, a razor-sharp mind, executive abilities that many lacked, and leadership skills that many envied. Edwards maintained the case was built on secretly taped and misinterpreted conversations and the lies of his former cronies, who made deals to avoid jail.īut the conviction and the numerous investigations and allegations were an unavoidable stain on his legacy. The federal case that led to his May 2000 conviction involved him taking payoffs from interests seeking riverboat casino licenses during his final term in the 1990s. Infamously, the lifelong Democrat said once said that the only way he could lose to a particularly lackluster Republican was if he were “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.”Ī native of Louisiana’s Acadiana region who swore his 1972 oath of office in French and English, Edwards enjoyed renewed popularity after emerging from prison in 2011 at age 83, with his flamboyant character intact. The "Cajun King” was known for delivering a steady supply of memorable one-liners as well as for his deft political instincts. “I’ve made no bones that I have considered myself on borrowed time for 20 years and we each know that all this fun has to end at some point,” Edwards said days before he died, according to his family's statement. He was 93.Įdwards died of respiratory problems with family and friends by his bedside, family spokesman Leo Honeycutt said, days after entering hospice care at his home in Gonzales, near the Louisiana capital. He maintained the government was out to get him.NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Edwin Washington Edwards, the high-living, quick-witted four-term governor who reshaped Louisiana's oil revenues and dominated the state's politics for decades, a run all but overshadowed by scandal and eight years in federal prison, died Monday. Edwards was caught in an extortion scheme, soliciting bribes to steer riverboat casino licenses to the high bidders. "Tonight Louisiana became first - first to turn back the merchant of hate, the master of deceit," he declared in his victory speech.īut federal prosecution loomed once he left office. Voters obliged, and Edwards won a record fourth term in 1991. Bumper stickers proclaimed: "Vote for the Crook. "However, there was no chance they would ever catch me in either situation." His late-in-life political comeback failedĮdwards did lose the governorship in 1987 to a good government candidate but was back four years later in a contest against former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke that garnered national attention. "But even at that I don't know if I'd have lost had I been caught," Edwards said. "I like to say well maybe so, but now it's rusty zipper."ĭespite repeated allegations of corruption that netted those around him, Edwards appeared for a time above the fray, able to navigate an ethical tightrope even with the feds on his trail.Įver confident in his political tenacity, he famously quipped the only way he'd get beat was if he were caught with a "dead woman or a live boy." "People talk about me, and out of that came things like 'silver zipper,' " he told NPR in 2014.
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