On Monday, 86-year-old Edwin Edwards hijaked Louisiana’s 6th District congressional race, turning it into a sideshow for the circus that will be this November’s midterm elections.
He’s witty. He’s sharp. He’s a convicted felon. Only two of those points seem to matter to Louisiana voters, though.
When I wrote last semester on a hypothetical Edwards campaign, it was mostly to highlight some of his finer quips during an otherwise slow news week, but now that the prospect of a Congressman Edwards is real, the situation requires a sterner approach.
Even though the former governor stands little chance of winning a solid conservative district by running on a Democratic platform, he shows us that — even in the 21st century — nothing is out of the question when it comes to our state’s elections.
After all, it was only in 1991 that Edwards — assumed to be crooked — battled out former Ku Klux Klan wizard David Duke in a runoff for the state’s top office. Granted, Mississippi did not outlaw slavery until 1995.
Once again, thank God for Mississippi.
But this is 2014, and the state is supposed to be a reformed oasis of good, do-right politicians.
Edwards seeks to dismantle what little progress we have made toward reputability and, once again, turn Louisiana into the laughing stock of the political world.
Well really, he has already done so.
After his formal announcement Monday that he would run, newspapers around the country published articles bringing the solid red district race into an undeserved place in the national spotlight.
Edwards has made a farce of our political system, and whatever his intentions, he will undermine the real issues that will be raised in this election.
The district is Republican, and it’s going to stay that way.
The other issue here is Edwards’s motivation for running. He knows he’s not going to win, even though he acts like he already has, and he knows that at his age, he will be of little import if he is elected.
What we should really see when we look at Edwards is a child, jealous of the attention Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. Mary Landrieu are receiving, who wants to hog the ink of the state and national media.
I suppose that I — and others of the same mind — are only contributing to this hysteria, if only to prove its absurdity.
Many Baton Rouge residents, though, ought to know their congressional race is being turned into a reality show that — like Edwards’s short-lived A&E series— needs to be canceled.
The founders of this country did not intend for their congressional candidates to reduce the people’s house to ridicule, though many sitting members already do. They intended on it being a place of intellectual debate among the leading minds of the country.
It’s shocking to see just how far from that ideal we have fallen. But before I wax philosophical about the House of Representatives, I have to stop and remind myself that I am in Louisiana, and Edwards has a legal, though not a rational, shot at joining the federal government.
To put this in perspective, he could not even have voted for Barack Obama because he was in prison. Because he is a convicted felon.
Eli Haddow is a 21-year-old English and history junior from New Orleans.