Democrat John Bel Edwards elected Governor of Louisiana in a stunning runoff upset

Bay­ou State vot­ers shocked the Louisiana Repub­li­can Par­ty and pun­dits across the coun­try Sat­ur­day night, over­whelm­ing­ly choos­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Bel Edwards as the next gov­er­nor of Louisiana over the once-heavy favorite, U.S. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor David Vit­ter, a vic­tor of many past statewide elections.

Edwards, forty-nine, cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents Louisiana’s 72nd Dis­trict in its House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. His guber­na­to­r­i­al cam­paign enjoyed the sup­port of a unit­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty from the get-go, where­as sev­er­al Repub­li­cans clashed with each oth­er in the hopes of suc­ceed­ing incum­bent Bob­by Jin­dal, who is term-limited.

Louisiana, for read­ers who don’t know, has a messy jun­gle-style gen­er­al elec­tion sim­i­lar to our awful Top Two sys­tem. In fact, it was the inspi­ra­tion for I‑872, the ini­tia­tive that cre­at­ed the Two Two sys­tem. In Louisiana, can­di­dates from all par­ties com­pete against each oth­er, and there is no par­ti­san pri­ma­ry as there is in most oth­er states. If no can­di­date gets a major­i­ty in the gen­er­al elec­tion, the top two can­di­dates advance to a runoff in late Novem­ber or ear­ly December.

Vit­ter beat out two oth­er Repub­li­cans for the right to face Edwards in a runoff, but is los­ing bad­ly tonight. With all 3,945 of Louisiana’s precincts now report­ing, the final results for tonight’s his­toric and remark­able runoff are as follows:

On Jan­u­ary 18th, 2016, Edwards will become the only Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor in the Deep South, and one of only two Demo­c­ra­t­ic statewide office­hold­ers in the region.

Edwards ran a bril­liant cam­paign that neat­ly cap­i­tal­ized on Vit­ter’s weak­ness­es, espe­cial­ly his involve­ment in the D.C. Madam scan­dal that rocked Capi­tol Hill sev­er­al years ago. Edwards’ cam­paign aired ads that ham­mered Vit­ter for choos­ing “pros­ti­tutes over patri­ots” (like this spot, titled, The Choice).

Repub­li­cans, who resort to neg­a­tive cam­paign­ing all the time, were hard­ly in a posi­tion to com­plain, but they did so any­way… loud­ly. It did­n’t matter.

After the ter­ror­ist attacks in Paris last week, Vit­ter tried to ride the abhor­rent nation­al wave of anti-refugee sen­ti­ment to vic­to­ry. But that last ditch scheme did­n’t work either, and through­out Elec­tion Night, he found him­self well behind Edwards.

“This elec­tion shows us that the peo­ple of Louisiana in a time of deep cyn­i­cism about our pol­i­tics, and also about our future, that the peo­ple have cho­sen hope over scorn… over neg­a­tiv­i­ty,” a jubi­lant Edwards said to his cheer­ing sup­port­ers dur­ing his vic­to­ry speech at the Mon­teleone Hotel.

He added: “I did not cre­ate this breeze of hope that’s rolling across our beau­ti­ful and blessed state. But I did catch it, and I thank God I did.”

Edwards’ vic­to­ry speech fol­lowed Vit­ter’s con­ces­sion, in which Vit­ter announced that he had phoned Edwards to offer his con­grat­u­la­tions. Vit­ter’s con­ces­sion speech was sur­pris­ing­ly gra­cious, and Edwards was cor­re­spond­ing­ly mag­nan­i­mous in vic­to­ry. Edwards was intro­duced by his broth­er, fol­low­ing a prayer offered by his pastor.

Vit­ter told deject­ed sup­port­ers he would leave pol­i­tics next year, choos­ing not to run for anoth­er term in the U.S. Sen­ate. His retire­ment will leave an open seat. Democ­rats will now need to recruit a strong can­di­date to take advantage.

After Edwards is sworn in, he is expect­ed to com­mit Louisiana to an expan­sion of Med­ic­aid, which will mean that thou­sands of fam­i­lies in the Bay­ou State who cur­rent­ly don’t have decent health cov­er­age will final­ly be able to get it. The man Edwards is suc­ceed­ing, the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly unpop­u­lar Repub­li­can Bob­by Jin­dal, has been an utter dis­as­ter as gov­er­nor and is leav­ing quite the mess behind.

As Jason Berry explains in The Dai­ly Beast:

The new governor’s first order of busi­ness in 2016 will be a spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion to con­front the bud­get crash. Jin­dal imposed dra­con­ian cuts on high­er edu­ca­tion to off­set the sky­rock­et­ing health care costs cre­at­ed by his expen­sive alter­na­tive to [the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act]: UNO, once a ris­ing region­al research hub, lost 183 professors—39 per­cent of its full-time fac­ul­ty. Some 290,000 peo­ple in the state have no health cov­er­age, because Jin­dal refused Med­ic­aid funds under [the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act] on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds. Edwards has said he will accept the funds, which would at least be a first step in stanch­ing the hem­or­rhag­ing state budget.

In so many respects, John Bel Edwards was the per­fect can­di­date at the per­fect time for Louisiana Democ­rats. He is a devout Catholic, U.S. Army vet­er­an, and fam­i­ly man whose roots in the state go incred­i­bly deep. One of his ances­tors fought with Gen­er­al and lat­er Pres­i­dent Andrew Jack­son at the Bat­tle of New Orleans, and his fam­i­ly has been active in Bay­ou State pol­i­tics for decades. His broth­er is a parish sher­iff. So was his father, like his father’s father, who was also a state senator.

Edwards is social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive, but that’s to be expect­ed of Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates in red regions like the Deep South. Like me, he was a Demo­c­ra­t­ic del­e­gate to the 2012 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Char­lotte for Barack Obama.

The Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion tried to use this fact to asso­ciate Edwards with Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma (who Edwards has nev­er met), but as we can see from tonight’s elec­tion results, that dog sim­ply would­n’t hunt this time.

We at NPI extend our con­grat­u­la­tions to John Bel Edwards on his amaz­ing vic­to­ry in this guber­na­to­r­i­al runoff, and wish him the best as he pre­pares to take office as Louisiana’s new chief exec­u­tive. We hope he gov­erns pro­gres­sive­ly and brings broad pros­per­i­ty to the Bay­ou State’s many diverse communities.