David Duke’s endorsement of Donald Trump received little notice, coming as it did on the same day of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s endorsement. It didn’t take long for that to change when Trump failed during a CNN interview to unconditionally distance himself from the former KKK leader and neo-Nazi.
Duke’s political career is part of the rich and storied tradition of strange politics in Louisiana. Duke first entered state politics in Louisiana running for the state senate as a Democrat in 1975. He ran unsuccessfully for various offices during the next 10 or 15 years, switching from Democrat to Populist and finally to Republican in 1988 where he finally found success in a special election to fill the unexpired term of an official who resigned.
In 1991, Duke ran for governor as a Republican and positioning himself, he said at the time, as the spokesman for the “white majority.” He ended up in a runoff with former governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat and the other survivor of Louisiana’s open primary where all candidates run on the same ticket. Edwards was under his own cloud from his 1984-’88 administration as governor when he had been charged with bribery in connection with payoffs for preferential treatment for businesses seeking contracts with state hospitals.
Ironically, according to Wikipedia, a Shreveport journalist had written in 1987 that the only way Edwards could again be elected to public office, was to run against Adolph Hitler, words that proved prescient when Edwards ended up in that 1991 runoff with Duke.
The race set the national Republican Party into crisis control, led by then-President George H. W. Bush disavowing Duke’s candidacy. During the campaign Duke shared his worldview that the Holocaust was a myth, that Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele was a medical genius and that Jews and blacks were to blame for society’s ills.
The palpable revulsion of many Louisianans over the prospect of a David Duke administration was best captured by a six-word election slogan that appeared on bumper stickers everywhere: “Vote for the crook. It’s important!”
Edwards was elected to his third term as governor, 61 to 39 percent.