Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone’s campaign manager said Wednesday that the Republican challenger lost because Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards is a strong candidate and popular governor.
Bryan Reed defended the Rispone team’s strategy of trying to nationalize the race, linking Rispone to Donald Trump and repeatedly describing the moderate Edwards as a liberal similar to Democratic Party leaders in Washington. But Reed said polling showed Edwards maintained strong approval ratings, despite repeated GOP attacks.
“On Election Day, our exit poll had John Bel Edwards’ approval rating at 56%,” Reed said. “And so what we were doing is we were asking the voters of Louisiana to fire somebody they liked, that they thought was doing a good job. That is very difficult.”
Edwards won Saturday’s runoff election against Rispone by 40,000 votes, getting 51% to reach a second term that begins in January.
Reed spoke at an LSU event debriefing strategists who worked on the campaigns for Edwards, Rispone and the primary’s third-place finisher, Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham. Though Rispone regularly panned Edwards’ tenure in office, Reed said the campaign believed it couldn’t win a referendum on the Democratic governor’s job performance because voters liked him.
“Our pathway to victory was making an ideological choice. It needed for us to be a conservative versus a liberal, an outsider versus a career politician,” Reed said, suggesting he didn’t see a better strategy for the runoff.
Edwards campaign manager Richard Carbo credited the Democratic incumbent with remaining disciplined and staying on message, rather than tangling with Trump. The president traveled to Louisiana three times trying to unseat Edwards.
“There’s no competing with the leader of the free world when he comes and campaigns against you,” Carbo said. “Our strategy became, ‘Continue telling the story that we’ve been telling all along.’”
He said Trump’s attacks framing Edwards as a “radical liberal who’s going to take away your guns” couldn’t work against the Democratic governor, a pro-gun, anti-abortion West Point graduate and former Army Ranger. Read the full analysis from the Associated Press.
