Why My Red State’s Election Is Not a Referendum on Trump
The Louisiana gubernatorial race means everything for the state’s most vulnerable people — and really, that’s enough
There’s a lot of myth-making about Louisiana politics. Our larger-than-life former governors, Huey Long and Edwin Edwards, were famous for their quick tongues and moments of madness. Our current junior U.S. senator, Republican John Kennedy, is known to imply he drinks weed killer. For outsiders who fetishize the Louisiana mythos, today’s gubernatorial election contains plenty of fireworks: Namely, will we re-elect our current governor, conservative Democrat John Bel Edwards, the son of a small town sheriff, or will we tear everything down and opt for Republican Eddie Rispone, a reactionary oligarch.
There’s a lot of national pressure on this race, in terms of the voting and in terms of how the results are interpreted afterwards. But efforts to extrapolate larger meaning from this race — as pundits and reporters seem determined to do — are ultimately doing everyone a disservice.
There’s as little substance in the national analysis of the election as there is in the Duck Dynasty personna some Louisiana politicians put on.
