25 Years Later, Will 2016 See a Repeat of “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important”?

In 1991, Edwin Edwards was running for a fourth term as governor of Louisiana.  He had previously been elected governor in 1971 and 1975.  He was constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term in 1979, but he ran and won again in 1983.  In 1985, however, he was indicted for bribery, etc.  The first trial resulted in a hung jury; he was acquitted in a second trial.  In 1987, he lost his bid for a fourth term.  Apparently, even Louisiana has limits.

Still, in 1991, he was back again.  Louisiana has an unusual election system.  Everybody runs in the same race.  If you get 50%, you win.  If nobody gets 50%, the top two have a run-off.  In 1991, Edwin Edwards lucked out.  While he only got 34% of the vote in the first round, David Duke (the man whose name Donald Trump couldn’t clearly hear) came in second with 32%.  Bumper stickers soon appeared that read: “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important”.  The people of Louisiana did, and Edwin Edwards won with 61% of the vote.  When asked before the election what he had to do to win, Governor Edwards said, “Stay alive.”¹

If Donald Trump gets the Republican presidential nomination this year, I wonder if we will be seeing similar bumper stickers.  Let me emphasize that I am not saying Hillary Clinton is a crook like Edwin Edwards.  Still, when I see all the contributions made by foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation (with Hillary Clinton’s name part of it) while she was Secretary of State, it bothers me.  I am sure it was not illegal, but that does not mean that it was right.  It was unseemly and indicative of an attitude with respect to private gain and public service that I do not find acceptable. 

Still, Donald Trump would be worse.  In 2014, I pulled out some bumper stickers I saved from Connecticut 40 years that said, “Happiness Is a Republican Governor”, and put one on my car.  In 2016, I wonder if anybody in Louisiana will be looking for bumper stickers left over from 1991.  Because this November, “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important” might be the message again.
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¹ Proving the bumper sticker prophetic, then-former Governor Edwards was indicted on 26 counts of racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail fraud, and wire fraud in 1998.  He was convicted on seventeen counts and sentenced to ten years in prison.