Former Gov. John Bel Edwards, left, joins former gubernatorial candidate Shawn Wilson, right, and others for the Holy Thursday lunch.
Radio host Jim Engster introduces former La. Gov. Edwin Edwards, who announced his bid to run for the 6th Congressional District at the Belle of Baton Rouge Casino during a meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club on March 17, 2013. (Photo by Chelsea Brasted, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Ed Anderson Jr.
Clockwise from bottom left, Rep. Dustin Miller, D-Opelousas, Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, Rep. Robby Carter, D-Amite, and Rep. Matthew Willard, D-New Orleans, chat on opening day of the regular legislative session, Monday, March 11, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
Louis Lambert is seen speaking to constituents in Lafayette on Oct. 23, 1979, when he ran for Louisiana governor. Lambert is one of 11 who will be inducted in 2024 to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
Former state Rep. Joe Delpit, in yellow, is pictured with relatives Dexter Delpit, left, Desiree Delpit, second from left, and Tommy Delpit, right. Delpit, who owns Baton Rouge fried chicken institution the Chicken Shack, was the first African American to serve in a leadership position in Louisiana Legislature since Reconstruction. He will be inducted in 2024 as a member of the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame. (Photo by Brianna Paciorka, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Regent Richard Lipsey, of Baton Rouge, on Sept. 26, 2018. Lipsey is one of 11 who will be inducted in 2024 to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
Dan Borne, former Louisiana Chemical Association president and LSU Tigers game announcer. Borne is one of 11 who will be inducted in 2024 to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
Former Gov. John Bel Edwards, left, joins former gubernatorial candidate Shawn Wilson, right, and others for the Holy Thursday lunch.
Radio host Jim Engster introduces former La. Gov. Edwin Edwards, who announced his bid to run for the 6th Congressional District at the Belle of Baton Rouge Casino during a meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club on March 17, 2013. (Photo by Chelsea Brasted, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Ed Anderson Jr.
Clockwise from bottom left, Rep. Dustin Miller, D-Opelousas, Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, Rep. Robby Carter, D-Amite, and Rep. Matthew Willard, D-New Orleans, chat on opening day of the regular legislative session, Monday, March 11, 2024, at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, La.
Louis Lambert is seen speaking to constituents in Lafayette on Oct. 23, 1979, when he ran for Louisiana governor. Lambert is one of 11 who will be inducted in 2024 to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
Former state Rep. Joe Delpit, in yellow, is pictured with relatives Dexter Delpit, left, Desiree Delpit, second from left, and Tommy Delpit, right. Delpit, who owns Baton Rouge fried chicken institution the Chicken Shack, was the first African American to serve in a leadership position in Louisiana Legislature since Reconstruction. He will be inducted in 2024 as a member of the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame. (Photo by Brianna Paciorka, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Regent Richard Lipsey, of Baton Rouge, on Sept. 26, 2018. Lipsey is one of 11 who will be inducted in 2024 to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
Dan Borne, former Louisiana Chemical Association president and LSU Tigers game announcer. Borne is one of 11 who will be inducted in 2024 to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame.
When Jim Engster hosted his talk radio program in Baton Rouge on Feb. 20, 2013, one of his guests was a little-known state representative named John Bel Edwards.
They covered the political topics of the day until Engster caught Edwards off guard with a question: “Are you running for governor?”
“Jim, that’s an interesting question,” Edwards replied, stumbling over his words before adding, “I do intend to run in 2015.”
Edwards’ offhand comment caused the state’s major newspapers to bury the news, depriving him of the attention he desperately needed as he launched his long-shot candidacy. Nonetheless, Edwards famously won the 2015 governor’s race and triumphed in his reelection bid four years later.
Engster and Edwards are being inducted into the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame on Saturday night with five others. They are former Times-Picayune political reporter Ed Anderson; former state Rep. Joe Delpitm, of Baton Rouge; former Louisiana Chemical Association President Dan Borné; former state Sen. Louis Lambert, of Ascension Parish; and Richard Lipsey, a megadonor and former chair of the state Board of Regents.
Also being inducted is the Carter political family of St. Helena Parish, which includes a former sheriff, a former judge and state Rep. Robby Carter, D-Greensburg.
The Louisiana Political Hall of Fame, based in Winnfield, home to Huey and Earl Long, now numbers 243 with the latest inductees, said Randy Haynie, a Baton Rouge lobbyist who chairs the board. The latest group was chosen by a panel that includes John Georges, owner of The Times-Picayune | The Advocate.
Going back 50 years, John Bel Edwards and his father Frank Edwards have crossed paths with the other inductees in myriad ways.
Robby Carter’s grandfather, R.D. Bridges, served as St. Helena’s sheriff while Frank Edwards was sheriff in the 1960s and 1970s in neighboring Tangipahoa Parish.
Frank Edwards’ purchased his 9-year-old son’s first gun, an Ithaca Featherlight 20 gauge pump shotgun, from Steinberg’s Sports Center, a downtown Baton Rouge store owned by Lipsey.
Lambert and Frank Edwards served as delegates at the 1973 convention that drafted the state’s constitution.
Each inductee has been at an LSU football game and heard Borne calling out the action on the field as the public address announcer at Tiger Stadium.
And each one has eaten at the Chicken Shack, a family-owned business started by Delpit’s father in Baton Rouge in 1937.
“The Chicken Shack still has some of the best fried chicken anywhere,” John Bel Edwards said.
Delpit was the first African American to serve in a leadership position in the Legislature since Reconstruction when he served from 1984-88 as speaker pro tem. In all, he served in the House from 1976-92 and also served as master of ceremonies at the 1972, 1976 and 1984 inaugurations of Gov. Edwin Edwards.
Anderson and Engster have interviewed all of the inductees at one point or another.
Anderson, who worked for The Times-Picayune from 1969-2012 and died in 2015, covered Lambert during his best-known campaign, in 1979, when Lambert competed against a strong field to succeed Edwin Edwards, the two-term governor.
Lambert was 38 at the time, having moved from the state Senate to serve on the five-member Public Service Commission. He was campaigning for the right to succeed Edwards along with Lt. Gov. Jimmy Fitzmorris, House Speaker E.L. “Bubba” Henry, Secretary of State Paul Hardy, state Sen. Sonny Mouton of Lafayette and U.S. Rep. David Treen, the only Republican.
The hard-fought primary ended with Treen narrowly running first. Lambert claimed a spot in the runoff against him after overcoming a court challenge from Fitzmorris, who blamed Lambert’s 3,000-vote lead on election irregularities.
Fitzmorris, Henry, Hardy and Mouton all endorsed the Republican candidate at a time when the state was heavily Democratic.
“Lambert does not relent on his pro-Democrat, Republican-takeover-of-Louisiana theme,” Anderson reported late in the runoff. “Lambert’s rationale is simple: there are more registered Democrats in the state than there are registered Republicans.”
Treen edged Lambert by only 9,500 votes and became the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
“It was traumatic,” Lambert recently said about the defeat. “For a couple of months, I bush hogged to get it out of my head,” on a pasture he owned in Prairieville.
Lambert later spent a decade serving as a state senator and is proudest of sponsoring the legislation to create River Parishes Community College in Ascension Parish.
Lipsey, who founded Lipsey’s, a sporting goods and firearms distributor, has been a major donor to Republicans. Then-Gov. Bobby Jindal put him on the Board of Regents.
Lipsey supported then-Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne in the 2015 gubernatorial primary. After Dardenne finished fourth and failed to advance to the runoff, Lipsey joined Dardenne in crossing party lines to support Edwards, a Democrat.
Edwards kept Lipsey on the Board of Regents and counted on his support when he ran for reelection in 2019.
On one of then-President Donald Trump’s visits to Louisiana to campaign against Edwards, Lipsey paid for a full-page newspaper ad that ran in several media markets.
It contained a photo of young Edwards with the shotgun, along with text from Lipsey saying he was a Trump supporter who also was backing the reelection bid of a governor who supported gun rights.
“That turned out to be a very effective way to neutralize the impact that Donald Trump had,” Edwards said.
Borné covered the Capitol for two years for WAFB-TV, served three different senators in Washington — Allen Ellender, Elaine Edwards and Russell Long — worked as a top aide to then-Gov. Edwin Edwards in his second term and spent nearly 30 years as president of the Louisiana Chemical Association before retiring in 2016.
His final year overlapped with John Bel Edwards’ first year as governor, and they tangled over tax policy.
Borné strongly opposed Edwards’ executive order to trim a popular tax giveaway to manufacturing companies known as the Industrial Tax Exemption Program and to allow local government officials to decide whether to grant it.
Borné, a deacon in the Catholic Church, now sides with Edwards on the issue.
“Looking back, it was a good decision to give local governments a say-so in a part of the exemption,” Borné said recently.
Edwards has overlapped most with Robby Carter, who both preceded him as the representative of District 72 (after term limits kept Carter from seeking reelection in 2007) and succeeded him (in 2015 after Edwards was elected governor).
Their hometowns of Greensburg and Amite are only about 15 miles apart.
The two men first worked together on the plaintiffs’ committee representing people forced to evacuate from Amite when a train carrying chemicals derailed there in 2002.
They teamed up again during Edwards’ eight years as governor, repaving Highway 16 from Amite through St. Helena Parish, providing $30 million to expand the St. Helena Parish Hospital and opposing the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to build the Darlington Dry Reservoir, which would have forced the resettlement of poor residents who lived in the western part of St. Helena Parish.
“We were able to do a lot together,” Carter said.
Edwards got past his 2013 political fumble with Engster to establish a unique journalistic partnership together from 2016-2023. For 93 months in a row, Edwards appeared on “Ask the Governor” with Engster, a program that the talk radio show host said hasn’t been duplicated in any other state in recent years.
Like anyone else who has appeared on Engster’s show, he expresses amazement at Engster’s memory for birthdates, election results, middle names and other arcane details.
Edwards can now laugh about how he announced his campaign for governor in 2013.
“You want to do that in a well-coordinated fashion and hit all the major media markets and show support from key people and lay out your vision,” the former governor said. “But I did not anticipate the question and had not thought out the answer. Still, the campaign proved successful. So maybe it was the best way.”
Email Tyler Bridges at tbridges@theadvocate.com.
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
News Tips:
nolanewstips@theadvocate.com
Other questions:
subscriberservices@theadvocate.com
Need help?
Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.
We recommend switching to one of the following browsers:
