Edwin Edwards met for an hour Tuesday with Gov. Buddy Roemer to discuss what was expected to be Roemer's endorsement in Edwards' gubernatorial runoff election against David Duke.
Edwards, a Democrat seeking to regain the governorship, and his campaign aides have negotiated since the Oct. 19 primary to win Roemer's support in the runoff. Edwards finished first with 34 percent in the primary, followed by Duke and Roemer, both Republicans, with 32 and 27 percent, respectively. Roemer switched parties in March.After the meeting, Edwards said that Roemer would have an announcement in a day or two, and that he would leave the content of Roemer's announcement up to him.
The 412,000 voters who supported Roemer in the primary hold the key to victory in the Edwards-Duke runoff election, and Edwards has predicted several times that he will receive Roemer's endorsement.
A newly conducted statewide poll made public Monday night showed Edwards with 46 percent of the vote, Duke getting 42 percent, and the remaining 12 percent undecided. Each candidate said the poll results favored his candidacy.
While Duke had no public appearances scheduled Monday, Edwards spoke in Baton Rouge, then flew to Shreveport to acknowledge the endorsements of Bennett Johnston and John Breaux, Louisiana's Democratic U.S. senators.
In his Baton Rouge address to the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association, Edwards attacked what he called several "bogus issues" Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, has raised. Those include ending affirmative-action programs, requiring drug tests for welfare recipients, and curbing illegitimate births and food stamp programs.
Louisiana's only state-required affirmative-action program calls for hiring a certain percentage of minority-owned contracts to build roads as mandated by federal law. To quit that program, as Duke suggests, would cause Louisiana to lose more than $300 million annually in federal highway funding, Edwards said.
"It'll never happen, because the Legislature would not permit that and the people would not want it," Edwards said. "It would mean the loss of many jobs and good roads."