#Edwin edwards tv#

Buddy Roemer, Edwards appeared politically finished.īut Roemer suffered political setbacks - voters rejected his tax overhaul package and disliked his switch to the Republican Party. His fortunes had faded by the time he was acquitted the next year: Bowing out of a 1987 runoff when he faced certain defeat against Democratic Rep. Edwards pushed through $700 million in highly unpopular taxes, and his reputation for impropriety caught up with him.Įdwards had seemed impervious to earlier scandals, but in 1985 he was indicted on federal racketeering charges involving hospital and nursing home regulations. “I’ve wanted all my life to be a king, and now I can be,” he quipped during their stop in Versailles. The campaign was briefly suspended by tragedy: Edwards’ youngest brother, attorney Nolan Edwards, was killed by a disgruntled client.Ī grieving Edwards resumed the race and went on to win, then paid off his debts from the $14-million campaign by chartering a $10,000-a-head trip to France for his friends and supporters. “It takes him an hour and a half to watch ’60 Minutes’” was typical. Treen, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and a frequent target of Edwards’ barbs. Changing the severance tax from 25 cents a barrel to 12.5% of value made Louisiana the most cash-rich state in the nation at the time while New York City was going bankrupt, said Honeycutt, his official biographer.Ĭonstitutionally barred from a third consecutive term, he left office in 1980 only to return four years later, after easily defeating incumbent David C. “My dad never saw color and never turned his back on anyone in need,” said his son Stephen Edwards, according to the family statement.Įdwards seized on an oil boom in 1974 to defeat energy interests and fill Louisiana’s coffers, tying oil taxes to price, rather than volume. He appointed more Black Americans to policy-making positions than any previous governor and spearheaded the adoption of a new constitution.

He won the governor’s office in 1972 with help from organized labor and Black voters realizing their civil rights-era strength.

#Edwin edwards tv#

They had a son, Eli, in 2013 - Edwards’ fifth child - and starred in a short-lived reality TV show, “The Governor’s Wife.”Ī lawyer, Edwards began his political career on the City Council in the town of Crowley in 1954 before moving on to the state Legislature, then Congress. They divorced after he went to prison, but he found a third wife in Trina Grimes, then 32, a penpal 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 both 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, a region settled by 18th century French exiles from Nova Scotia who came to be known as Cajuns.