“I give blood for them to make Viagra.” (2011).On the afrodesiac quality of oysters: “I had a dozen last night, and only 10 of them worked.” (2011).The former governor’s additional one-liners over the years include: Campaign bumper stickers read “Vote for the Lizard, Not the Wizard” and “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important.” The same year, Edwards sought humor by referencing decades-old corruption claims against him. He also feigned concern that Duke may be suffering from smoke inhalation “because he’s around so many burning crosses”.“The only thing we have in common is that we’re both wizards under the sheets.”.In 1991, the reputed ladies’ man made these remarks about David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who faced Edwards in a gubernatorial runoff. “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy”.“Treen is so slow, it takes him an hour-and-a-half to watch ’60 Minutes'”.“He said, ‘Don’t you think I think about that?'”Įdwards uttered these lines in 1983, while vying to unseat Republican incumbent Dave Treen for a third term: “I did tell him on different occasions, ‘You know, governor, if you had been a stand-up comedian, you could have been as big as Seinfeld? But no, you had to be governor.'” Honeycutt recalled. Governor of Louisiana (1972-1980, 1984-1988, 1992-1996)Įdwards may have flaunted his swagger most on the campaign trail, with one-liners that lured out-of-state political students to Louisiana. ![]() When he wasn’t evoking “Kingfish” Huey Long, Edwards stood before Marksville’s Nazarene Church as a youth preacher polishing his public reach. When I finished, he looked up at me and said, ‘You’re not going to do that one of these days when I’m governor.’ Again, he was seven years old.” I grabbed him by the ear and took him out to the front porch to give him a talking-to. She said, ‘I had to get him to quiet down. “His mother said that when he was about seven years old, he got to acting up and playing a clown at a party or some gathering. The author of “Edwin Edwards: Governor of Louisiana” told about an acccount he discovered from the former governor’s mother: “When I was 14 years old, I told my girlfriend I was going to run for governor,” he said.īut Edwards’ political ambitions rose long before his teenage years, according to biographer Leo Honeycutt. “But they waited a while to make sure my daddy’s house didn’t burn down.”Įdwards, the son of a Catholic midwife and Presbyterian sharecropper, became a literal power broker for his farmlands - all as he yearned for higher power. “People in the area were amazed and wanted me to wire their houses,” he said before belting out a laugh. He checked out books on electrical wiring from his school library, then tried it at home. When electrification first reached his rural Avoyelles Parish neighborhood in the 1940s, it was a teenage Edwards who turned on the lights. I can’t help it.”Įdwards is no stranger to the property business. “I’m going to be active until I die,” he said from his home office in Ascension Parish. He renewed his real estate broker’s license in 2015 and admits that his flair is often a selling point. They agree on a time, so the 91-year-old former four-term governor jots the appointment onto his desktop calendar, which sits beside a name plate engraved with “illegitimi non carborundum” - a Latin phrase for “don’t let the bastards get you down.”Ĭlients know who they’re getting when they work with Edwards, a populist whose Cajun lilt, coiffed hair, charm and spice have peppered his state’s politics for a half-century. He leans into his desk as a client lists potential dates for them to meet and mull over real estate openings. ![]() Edwin Edwards has his iPhone on speaker mode.
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