Edwards runoff win made some history
Published 7:00 pm Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Gov. John Bel Edwards Saturday became the first Democrat to win a second term since Edwin W. Edwards did it in 1975. Louisiana voters have always had a short taste for reformers, and although John Bel Edwards might not be considered a true reformer, he shook up the status quo.
Working with a majority Republican Legislature for four years hasn’t been easy for the current governor. However, he managed to work well with enough GOP members and his Democratic colleagues to get the state back on a sound financial track after eight years of budget juggling by the previous administration.
The first problem was finding revenues needed to close a $2 billion budget shortfall that all of them faced in 2016 when they took office. It was done by raising the state’s 4 percent sales tax to 5 percent for two years and eliminating some tax exemptions. A 7-year, 0.45 percent increase when the extra 1 percent sales tax went off the books has produced welcome budget surpluses.
Edwards also expanded Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for poor and low-income citizens, when he first took office. The state now has one of the lowest uninsured populations in the country, but the expansion has been under constant attack by some GOP members of the state House.
Mark Ballard of The Advocate said in a column before Saturday’s runoff that in order to win the general election Edwards would have to overcome history and math. He did both. Ballard reminded his readers that Sam Houston Jones of Lake Charles, who served from 1940 to 1944, had to fix up Louisiana after the Longs. He instituted competitive bids for state contracts and passed laws that stopped state government workers from having to kick back part of their salaries to Huey Long’s slush fund.
Robert F. Kennon (1952-56) got the state to replace paper ballots with voting machines to curb election fraud and began a crackdown on illegal gambling.
Buddy Roemer (1988-92) sponsored creation of the Revenue Estimating Conference, ended budgetary dedications that limited legislative control of available revenues and got the state out of financial difficulties.
Governors were limited to one term when Jones and Kennon were in office. Roemer had to run against Edwin Edwards and David Duke of Ku Klux Klan fame, and failed to make the runoff in 1991. John Bel Edwards had difficult problems just like those three governors. However, an analysis of Saturday’s results by The Advocate indicates Edwards did overcome history and picked up the critical votes he needed to win a second term.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards arrives to address supporters at his election night watch party in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Nov. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
