Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards spoke recently with columnist Stephanie Grace about his achievements, his regrets and his hopes — and predictions — for what the Jeff Landry era will bring. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Grace: After you were elected in 2015, you told me that you managed to win as a Democrat in a Republican state because you oppose abortion and favor gun rights, which you called “bellwether issues” for voters that enabled them to hear the rest of your message.
So what I'm wondering in 2023 is this: Is it still true that someone like you can win, with polarization having solidified so much since you first took office?
Edwards: I do think it's basically true. It's a little different, clearly, than it was eight years ago. The ideological divide between Republicans and Democrats is probably more pronounced today.
But other things are different. For example, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. And so the analogy is, the dog caught the car.
And as you know, it's not been a winning issue for Republicans around the country. I don't think there's a state yet that has voted on this issue where the pro-choice side didn't win, and I think that’s going to play out in Louisiana to some extent too — not necessarily on the whole issue, but on the exceptions for rape and incest. I think that's just a matter of time, because overwhelmingly Americans and Louisianans favor those exceptions. And it's a way for the pro-life side to say, “OK, we did catch the car, and we hear you.”
And by the way, I don't want to talk about it purely in political terms. I happen to believe that the exceptions are the right thing to do. I don't believe you should tell a crime victim who's pregnant only because of the crime perpetrated against her that she, and if she's underage, her parents, their pastor, their doctor have no role in deciding what's going to happen.
Grace: Have you evolved, or have you just started talking about this since the Dobbs decision?
Edwards: I don't know that I ever had a contrary position; it just wasn't a relevant topic of discussion until after the Supreme Court case. Louisiana has a statute that was passed before I was even in the Legislature, a ban on abortion with certain exceptions for the life and health of the mother but without exceptions for rape and incest. And so that was going to be the default position of the state.
Before the Supreme Court did what they did, you typically said you were pro-life or pro-choice. And now I think it's obvious that there are lots of gray areas.
A true no-brainer
Grace: I’ve been hearing you say since 2016 that expanding Medicaid was the best decision you made. Do you still believe that?
Edwards: No question. Over half a million working poor Louisianans have health insurance. That's a good thing. It helped address our record budget problems that I inherited, that $2 billion budget deficit. That too is a good thing.
And without trying to be too over the top, it is the sort of thing that I believe, as a Catholic as a Christian, that we are to do. Your first two questions were about abortion and Medicaid expansion. I believe my position on both those issues emanates from a pro-life viewpoint. I don't think St. Peter is going to ask us whether we grew government, but we've been told in Matthew 25 we're going to be held to account for how we treat the least among us.
Grace: What do you think when you look at the map and very few states around us, even states that many in Louisiana consider aspirational like Florida and Texas, haven't expanded Medicaid? Ron DeSantis was actually asked about Florida’s high uninsured rate at a presidential debate, and he pulled out the old anti-welfare rhetoric — you know, people need to work.
Edwards: Those things are either born out of ignorance, or carelessness. Neither speaks well of the person who makes those sorts of statements. These are working poor people; the reason they didn't have insurance was because they were working poor. If they were the poorest of the poor, if they didn't work, they would qualify for Medicaid. And if they worked a job that paid better, they could afford insurance, or maybe have it as a benefit of employment.
I don't believe that anybody in Louisiana thinks the reason to move to Florida is because they haven’t expanded Medicaid. On the other hand, if you look at other Southern states that haven't expanded Medicaid, they have struggled to keep their hospitals open, especially their rural hospitals; we haven't lost any in Louisiana.
Before, we were allowing uninsured people to go to the hospital when they were at their sickest, which typically meant they were in the emergency room, the most costly and least effective way to manage disease. And we were paying 40 cents on the dollar from the general fund for that. Medicaid expansion is 10 cents on the dollar coming from the hospitals that have assessed themselves. That savings helped us to overcome the fiscal challenges that we had when I became governor.
'You just need to be aware'
Grace: Climate wasn't a big topic in the 2015 election, but you set a 2050 net zero emissions goal and said you hoped to be far enough along when you leave office that progress can't be reversed. Are you?
Edwards: It was not a big issue in 2015, but look at what's happened since. In 2016, 56 parishes were declared a major federal disaster from flooding that didn't come from a named storm, it came from two afternoon thunderstorms that stuck around for multiple days and dropped record amounts of rain. Then we had unprecedented numbers and severity of hurricanes, including the two strongest storms ever to hit our state. We've had winter storms, we've had droughts, we’ve had wildfires and we have a low Mississippi River that is allowing saltwater intrusion to come in and threaten our drinking water as far north as Jefferson Parish. I mean, you just need to be aware of what's happening.
Then you listen to the scientists, who say this was the hottest year ever recorded; 95% of climate scientists believe climate change is real. So we have a moral obligation, because we are suffering the effects of climate change more than any other state.
But the reason I believe we're going to be successful in maintaining this approach is because it is producing record amounts of economic investment. And no matter where you stand on the climate, everybody appreciates investment, economic development, jobs, careers. We've had $55 billion worth of low- and no-carbon energy projects announced in Louisiana. Look at (economist) Loren Scott's recent economic development forecast, a net new 80,000 jobs over the next two years based on projects that are in the pipeline. So what governor, what Legislature, is gonna say, “Oh, we don't want those jobs”?
And if they said it, it'd be because they're still thinking that we're a traditional oil and gas state and that’s our future. Well, the oil and gas companies themselves are investing a bigger part of their portfolio every year into low and no carbon energy, so the transition is underway. You can either embrace it now and maximize benefits from it, or you can put your head in the sand, and in a few years you're going to look up and you've been left out.
Grace: Do you think the new administration gets that?
Edwards: Yes. Obviously, I'm concerned about the way Jeff Landry has talked about the energy transition and climate change. But at the end of the day, there are some other states doing this too, where the governor talks that way but also says “but we're an all-of-the-above state when it comes to energy.” That's what the energy transition is. You're going to continue to produce fossil fuels, but over time in ever diminishing amounts while clean and low carbon energy accelerates.
And I think that's what's going to enable him to continue in the direction that we're going, even while — quite wrongly in my estimation — continuing on occasion and depending on who he’s talking to to say that climate change is a hoax and the cost to decarbonize is not worth it.
Grace: Another area where I assume you're hoping for pragmatism is on fiscal issues. There’s now talk of eliminating the income tax, and we don’t know if the Legislature will renew the .45 cent temporary sales tax that helped you get out of the hole. Are you worried some people haven't learned from your experience?
Edwards: Look, certainly I’m concerned because one of the key achievements — not just for our administration but for the state, in a bipartisan effort working with the Legislature — was to right the fiscal ship.
And there’s a reason that super PAC supporting Landry ran ads against (former chief of staff Stephen) Waguespack tying him to (former Gov.) Bobby Jindal. It was because of the fiscal problems created during the Jindal administration. So, do you think that a campaign that would run those ads would then make the same types of mistakes? I'm hopeful that they won't.
And I know you in the media tend towards the dramatic, that a fiscal cliff on the .45 cents is on the way. Well, first of all, it need not go away. They can keep it if they want, or they can keep some of it. But even if it does, that's a revenue loss of $600 million. We had $1.3 billion in excess revenue from last year. We were trying to put the state on a glide path through economic growth and diversification, so that if the .45 goes away, it won't eat into the core priorities of our state.
Now, you can screw that up. For example, there's nothing about the income tax that means we absolutely have to keep it, but if you're not going to keep it, you’ve got to replace it. Because when you boil it down, most people who say we need a taxation system that looks more like Texas, they’re saying they don't have an income tax. But they don't also say that we need to have a very high property tax that the state collects, because it right now the state collects none, or that they apply their sales tax to a slew of services that we don't, or that they have multiple toll roads.
And so if you want to get rid of the income tax, that may work just fine. But what are you going to replace it with? And if you don't replace it, what are you going to cut? The people of Louisiana deserve to know that. And if you haven't thought all that through, if you're not absolutely confident it's going to work, you really ought not to do it.
Lesson learned
Grace: You’ve preached fiscal responsibility for eight years now. But some people still point out that, when you were in the Legislature in 2008, you joined Republicans in voting to eliminate the Stelly income tax increases. What were you thinking?
Edwards: I believed that if we needed to raise more revenue in the future, we would do it. I didn't realize that Bobby Jindal was going to run for president, and be so philosophically opposed to new revenue that he would instead choose to lead the largest disinvestment in higher education in our state's history and all the other things that happened. And that's what happens when you are a first-year lawmaker. You can be naive and wrong, and I have admitted that a thousand times since then. But we've got a lot of first-year lawmakers and a first-year governor coming in...
Grace: So you're a cautionary tale?
Edwards: Yeah.
Grace: We're entering a period of total Republican control in Louisiana government. Is there anything you could have done, or should have done, to better position Democrats? Or are the trends just too strong?
Edwards: There are always things you could have done differently, or better. Louisiana is pretty much where our neighbors have been for some time, so there are some people who believe that this was inevitable.
And so I have thought about this a lot. As a Democratic governor of Louisiana, you can either put the focus on Democrats, or you can put the focus on governor. I tried very hard to be very, very bipartisan, in the way that I related to and worked with the Legislature and local government, but also in the way that I related to the various administrations and the Congress in Washington.
I have no doubt that our eight years will be regarded as successful in a lot of key ways. I guess my hope was that demonstrating success, as a Democrat working through bipartisanship, would have enabled more Democrats to be better positioned to be elected in Louisiana. We haven't had as many elected as I would have liked, and I guess I bear some responsibility for that. But my focus has not been on the politics in the party, it really has been on results and bipartisanship.
Grace: What's the most important advice you've got for Jeff Landry?
Edwards: I would say to really take stock of where we are today relative to where we were eight years ago. Why were we in trouble? And what have we done in order to first create fiscal stability, and then economic growth and diversification?
Invest in our critical priorities like education, transportation and health care. And resist the impulse to make decisions that would erode your ability to continue things that are clearly better.
Look, Jeff Landry and I do not see the world the same way. But I can't imagine he doesn’t want to invest in universities and community technical colleges. I can't imagine he doesn’t want to maintain the largest ever state general fund support for early childhood education. Are we not going to get teacher pay to the Southern regional average, K through 12?
I would just encourage him to take a hard look at those things, and then make sure he doesn’t do anything in the short term that sounds good or fits with his basic philosophical beliefs, but that threatens them over the long term.