8/9/2023 0 Comments Married gov edwin edwards wifeChanging 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, who worked alongside his father in the Edwards Law Firm, 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 African 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. Nothing bothered him except bothering other people,” Trina Edwards said.Īccording to the statement, she said his dying words were to his 7-year-old son: “Eli told him every night, ‘I love you.’ And he told Eli, ‘I love you, too.’ Those were his last words.”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 had a son, Eli, in 2013 - Edwards’ fifth child - and starred in a short-lived reality TV show, “The Governor’s Wife.” “I would have walked into prison a happy man had I known how it was going to end,” he said at his lavish 90th birthday bash in 2017. 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.
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