Southern governor: ‘I have never been less inclined to be a Republican than today’

Outgoing Gov. John Bel Edwards is a conservative, Southern Democrat who some have speculated might have been better served if he had been willing to switch parties.

Edwards angered many Democrats when he signed one of the strictest state abortion bans in the country. He’s also typically been wary of gun restrictions and opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana.

But the Louisiana governor doesn’t have plans to join the more conservative GOP anytime soon.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that there have been times that the Democratic Party at the national level hasn’t been very happy with me, and sometimes, me not happy with the party,” Edwards said in an interview Thursday.

“But it is also true that I have never been less inclined to be a Republican than today.”

The governor may have right-leaning views on abortion, but he embraces many Democratic Party solutions, particularly when it comes to economic policy. One of his earliest acts as governor was to adopt Medicaid expansion in Louisiana. As of last month, 718,000 people were enrolled in that government-backed health insurance program.

The governor also said the GOP has lost its way and lacks “core principles” in the present day.

“This is a personality cult,” he said, alluding to the party’s allegiance to former President Donald Trump.

In 2018, when Trump was still in office, he encouraged Edwards personally to join the Republican Party. Edwards was one of a handful of governors attending an event with Trump at a Trump-owned golf course in New Jersey at the time.

“He just let me know that he would like me to become a Republican and, if I did, I would have his support, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t,” Edwards said.

The governor declined, and in 2019, when Edwards was running for reelection, Trump campaigned for his GOP opponent, businessman Eddie Rispone. Then, Edwards ended up beating Rispone 51% to 49% in November of that year.

Edwards continues to think political centrists – which is how he describes himself – are the best hope for moving the country and Louisiana forward.

“I still believe the vast majority of the American people are clustered somewhere around the center philosophically, but we have a system of politics, especially through the [partisan] primary process, that affords an undue advantage to people at the extremes,” he said.

“That’s not serving us well,” Edwards said.

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