But in 1985, he was indicted on federal racketeering charges involving hospital and nursing home regulations. He had seemed impervious to earlier scandals, even when he acknowledged that he and his wife Elaine received $20,000 from South Korean government agent Tongsun Park. Meanwhile, his reputation for impropriety caught up with him. Edwards pushed through $700 million in highly unpopular taxes. "I've wanted all my life to be a king, and now I can be," he quipped during their stop in Versailles. A grieving Edwards resumed the race and went on to win, then paid off his debts from the $14 million campaign by chartering a $10,000-a-head trip to France for his friends and supporters. The campaign was briefly suspended by tragedy: Edwards' youngest brother, attorney Nolan Edwards, was murdered by a disgruntled client. "It takes him an hour and a half to watch '60 Minutes"' was typical. Treen, the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction and a frequent target of Edwards' barbs. Constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term, he left office in 1980 only to return four years later, after easily defeating incumbent David C. Changing the severance tax from 25 cents a barrel to 12.5% of value made Louisiana the most cash-rich state in the nation at the time while New York City was going bankrupt, said Honeycutt, his official biographer. Edwards seized on an oil boom in 1974 to defeat energy interests and fill Louisiana's coffers, tying oil taxes to price, rather than volume. "My dad never saw color and never turned his back on anyone in need," said his son Stephen Edwards, who worked alongside his father in the Edwards Law Firm, according to the family statement. He appointed more African Americans to policy-making positions than any previous governor and spearheaded the adoption of a new constitution. He won the governor's office in 1972 with help from organized labor and Black voters realizing their civil rights-era strength. According to the statement, she said his dying words were to his 7-year-old son: "Eli told him every night, `I love you.' And he told Eli, `I love you, too.' Those were his last words." A lawyer, Edwards began his political career on the city council in the town of Crowley in 1954 before moving on to the state Legislature, then Congress. Nothing bothered him except bothering other people," Trina Edwards said. Five years later, at 66, he married 29-year-old Candy Picou in a ceremony at the governor's mansion. He had four children during a 40-year marriage to his high school sweetheart, the former Elaine Schwartzenburg, before they divorced in 1989. Despite his unabashed fondness for high-stakes gambling, dirty jokes and his reputation as a womanizer, he earned a following among Catholics and fundamentalists. Raised a Roman Catholic, Edwards preached in the Church of the Nazarene as a teen and he never drank or smoked. According to his authorized biography, his father's ancestors were Welsh his mother's continental French but Edwards always considered himself a Cajun. Edwards was born August 7, 1927, to a sharecropper and a midwife in Avoyelles Parish, part of the region settled by 18th century French exiles from Nova Scotia who came to be known as Cajuns. But Edwards, a consummate dealmaker, had a cooler demeanor. They shared a populist appeal to the state's downtrodden, and political fortunes that flowed in part from taxes on oil. Silver-haired, handsome and gifted with a dry sense of humor and easy charm, Edwards dominated Louisiana politics in the late 20th century much as Huey P Long had dominated its earlier years. Edwards maintained the case was built on misinterpreted, secretly taped conversations and the lies of former cronies who made deals to avoid jail. The federal case that led to his May 2000 conviction involved state riverboat casino licenses awarded during and after his fourth and final term in the 1990s. They had a son, Eli, in 2013 - Edwards' fifth child - and starred in a short-lived reality TV show, "The Governor's Wife." He also attempted one more political comeback, losing a runoff to a Republican in a south Louisiana congressional race in 2014. "I would have walked into prison a happy man had I known how it was going to end," he said at his lavish 90th birthday bash in August 2017. They met when she began visiting him in prison after they struck up a pen-pal relationship. His flamboyant character intact, he found a third wife in Trina Grimes, then 32. A native of Louisiana's Acadiana region who swore his 1972 oath of office in French and English, Edwards enjoyed renewed popularity after emerging from prison in 2011 at age 83.
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