This story was originally published by the Louisiana Illuminator.
On Jan. 11, 2016, the same day he was sworn into office, John Bel Edwards received his first briefing as governor about a weather-related disaster headed for Louisiana.
A series of northern storms had caused the Mississippi River to rise and flood areas of Missouri and Illinois. As the excess water rolled south, officials initially worried it could bring a catastrophe with it. Fortunately, the problem largely subsided by the time it reached Louisiana.
But that briefing turned out to be a harbinger of what was to come for Edwards during his two terms in office. Few weeks have gone by when the governor hasn’t pulled Louisiana out of an existing crisis or prepared the state for a new one.
Over eight years, Edwards has faced a once-in-a-century health pandemic; six hurricanes; multiple bouts of catastrophic flooding; drought; a crippling state budget shortfall; two police brutality controversies; a university sexual misconduct scandal; a mass shooting of law enforcement officers; saltwater intrusion that threatened drinking water systems; and even wildfires in a typically water-soaked Louisiana.
Close friend state Sen. Jay Luneau, D-Alexandria, recently joked with the governor about what could still be in store for him during his final few days in office.
“You know you only have five more weeks,” Luneau said he told Edwards earlier this month. “You think the locusts are going to show up?”
As Edwards prepares to step down Jan. 8, he is understandably touting what he believes are his policy victories. In interviews, he says his greatest achievement in office was adopting Medicaid expansion, which now provides 702,000 residents with government-backed health care coverage.
He also permanently raised school teacher pay by $3,300 annually, lowered the state imprisonment rate and drove hundreds of millions of dollars into building projects for higher education, coastal restoration, broadband internet access, water systems and transportation.
But the public will most likely remember Edwards for his unusually steady demeanor during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes and the numerous other crises that took place during this turbulent time in Louisiana’s history.
Conservatives became frustrated with the governor’s cautious approach to lifting restrictions as the COVID-19 pandemic wore on, but many concede Edwards is exceptionally competent at emergency response, especially in the early stages of a disaster. He exudes “epic levels of calm,” as one acquaintance described it, and can make complex decisions under stressful circumstances.
“If something really bad happens, that’s who you want going over the hill with you,” said Mary Patricia Wray, the governor’s 2015 campaign manager.
Edwards is not the first Louisiana governor to face difficult situations.
Kathleen Blanco had the overwhelming task of rescuing the state from hurricanes Katrina and Rita after 2005. Buddy Roemer inherited such a dramatic state budget shortfall that he and state lawmakers ended up taking out a billion dollar loan just to keep the state operating in the late 1980s.
But neither of those governors had to tackle massive financial and weather-related disasters at the same time like Edwards.
Just in his first year in office, Edwards had to close a $2 billion budget shortfall that threatened to shutter public colleges and respond to massive flooding in North Louisiana and Baton Rouge that put almost every parish in the state under a federal disaster declaration.
Baton Rouge was also roiling from a white police officer killing a Black man, Alton Sterling, outside a convenience store, and then a lone gunman’s deadly mass shooting of law enforcement officers that summer.
The governor’s second term brought the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as Hurricane Laura in 2020 and Hurricane Ida in 2021, the two strongest storms to ever make landfall in Louisiana. Two weaker storms also hit the state during this time period.
Leaders in other states were having to learn how to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. But Edwards had to deal with the outbreak while also figuring out how to shelter hundreds of thousands of his residents displaced by multiple hurricanes.
“These have been as challenging times as any other Louisiana governor has had to face,” said Jay Dardenne, a Republican and Edwards’ one-time political rival who ended up taking a job as his top administrator. “He’s an exceptional leader.”
Edwards was well-suited to a job in disaster management before he ever won his first election as governor. A U.S. Army Ranger and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he attended the world’s preeminent training ground for crisis leadership.
Steadfastness under pressure also runs in the family. His great-grandfather, grandfather, father and one of his brothers have all been the Tangipahoa Parish sheriff. Another sibling is the police chief of Independence.
“By the time I became governor, and particularly because of my time in the Army, I had been in a number of high-pressure situations, and I may have benefited from that experience,” he said in an interview this month. “My dad was unflappable. So it may kind of come from that, too.”
His outward stability was also sometimes a bit of a veneer.
“There’s a lot of inner turmoil that you really don’t want people to see. … At least that’s the way it was for me,” Edwards said. “You’re trying to make the best decision you can as soon as you can.”
The early days of COVID-19, when Louisiana was hit especially hard and the medical community had not developed effective treatment options yet, were an especially dark time.
A devout Catholic, the governor took up religious fasting privately some days to deal with the daily stress at the onset of the pandemic, according to his staff.
“You’re talking to the public. You want them to believe what you’re telling them, and you don’t want them to panic either,” Edwards said.
The governor also believed it was important to remain calm behind closed doors. Staff often had to deliver difficult news, and it wouldn’t have been productive if they were worried about upsetting their boss.
“People have to be able to approach you and give you information, even if the information is not favorable, is not good, is not what you were looking for, is not what you were told to expect,” he said. “If you’re biting the heads off of everybody who’s talking to you, they’re not going to want to come forward.”
An attorney, Edwards also has an uncanny ability to absorb and retain information. In press conferences, he produced details about vaccine protocol, hurricane rescue efforts and the state’s latest revenue projections off the top of his head. He can respond to questions without notes, in part because he places a premium on studying up on issues and always being prepared, his former staff members said.
It helps that he isn’t prone to motion sickness and will read a briefing book in any environment, including while flying on a Blackhawk helicopter.
“His worst fear then and now is that he would say something that was not factual,” said former state Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, who served as Edwards’ first chief of staff.
Political divides have made some crises more difficult for Edwards to manage than previous governors. In Louisiana, the governor and state lawmakers have historically been aligned, but Edwards, a Democrat, had to work with a Republican majority in the legislature.
Louisiana’s budget woes dragged on from 2016 to 2018, in large part because Edwards and Republican legislators couldn’t reach an agreement on how best to stabilize the state’s finances. The governor’s allies believe the GOP legislative leadership intentionally stalled the process in order to weaken the governor ahead of his 2019 re-election campaign.
Republicans initially resisted raising taxes but eventually acquiesced to a sales tax hike of 0.45%. Edwards didn’t want to rely so heavily on that sales tax, which is harder on low-income people, but caved when he couldn’t get GOP legislators to agree to any other kind of major levy.
Now Edwards is leaving the state in a better financial posture than he found it. After coming into office with a $2 billion deficit, he will leave the state with over $3 billion in reserve funding.
But not all Louisiana agencies have fared well during Edwards’ tenure. The state’s services for vulnerable children continue to be plagued with problems.
Chronic understaffing at the Department of Children and Family Services prevented the state from pulling children out of dangerous situations. The Office of Juvenile Justice continues to have problems with breakouts, assaults and staff shortages at its facilities.
It’s also disputable whether the governor adequately addressed financial mismanagement and racism allegations within Louisiana State Police. Edwards replaced, albeit slowly, two state police superintendents once problems surfaced publicly. But he’s also been criticized for not properly intervening in the aftermath of the May 2019 death of Black motorist Ronald Greene in the custody white state troopers.
The governor’s industry-friendly approach to climate change has drawn skepticism. Edwards embraces carbon capture and sequestration, whereby harmful emissions are stored underground instead of released into the atmosphere. Environmental advocates aren’t convinced the technology is safe.
As a candidate in 2015, Edwards didn’t focus much on climate policy. He’s pivoted more to those issues in recent years, after dealing with unrelenting weather disasters.
“I mean the two strongest hurricanes to ever hit the state are in 2020 and 2021,” Edwards said. “We’ve had extreme floods. We’ve had extreme droughts. We’ve had wildfires and we’ve a low Mississippi River that allowed saltwater to come in from the gulf.”
“I think any reasonable person who is open-minded and just considered the evidence and the opinions of 95% of the climate scientists is going to agree that climate change is real,” he said.
Given his disaster experience, Edwards said he hopes Republican Gov.-elect Jeff Landry, who takes office Jan. 8, will continue to try to reduce carbon emissions, even if Landry “talks differently” about climate change.
“We in Louisiana have a special obligation to our part because we as a state are the most affected,” Edwards said.