Among those who weighed in on the legacy of former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards after his death at the age of 93, perhaps no one has as much insight as the man who interviewed him extensively for his authorized biography.
Leo Honeycutt published “Edwin Edwards: Governor of Louisiana” in 2009, and he joined WWL Radio after Edwards’s passing on Monday.
Honeycutt said Edwards’s upbringing imbued him with a sense of justice for the poor, describing his early work helping level the playing field when it came to oil and gas leases in the Cajun-dominated parts of the Louisiana swamps.
“Because he could speak their language and he could also deal with the oil people in New York,” Honeycutt said, “He really got a reputation there for sticking up for the people who really didn’t have the chutzpah to fight the monolith of the corporation.”
“He got good deals for them where before they were pretty much giving away their land,” Honeycutt said.
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Honeycutt also credited Edwards for keeping the NFL’s Saints in New Orleans by facilitating the team’s sale in the early 80s.
“Edwards called up Tom Benson and said, ‘Look, I want you to be part of a group that will buy the Saints and keep them in Louisiana,’” Honeycutt said. “So Benson tells the story of how he went down to the conference room to meet with [former Saints owner John] Mecom. And he said, ‘Where’s everybody else?’ And John said, ‘You ARE everybody else.’”
Eventually, Benson would spearhead a group that bought the Saints in 1985, keeping them from relocating to San Antonio.
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Honeycutt said Edwards was hesitant to detail the events that led to his incarceration in his biography, but that he relented in the end.
“We came to an agreement on that,” Honeycutt said. “And I assured him that everybody already knew almost all the bad, so you might as well hit it head-on. And he eventually agreed with that.”