High-Stakes Game

By Steve Lopez/Baton Rouge

In most states, a man who pays cash for houses and automobiles, who keeps up to $500,000 lying around the house and conducts business meetings in restaurant bathrooms is liable to end up having his meals slid under a door. But Louisiana, a gift from God if not from the devil, is not most states. And so the federal corruption trial of former Governor Edwin Edwards is a delicious feast not just for the fly-on-the-wall look at the latest great rogue in American politics, but also because even if he's guilty, many Louisianans are pulling for him to beat the rap.

"He's no more corrupt than anyone else, including the Federal Government," whispered one of the regular courtroom spectators--an attorney, no less--last week in Baton Rouge during the long-awaited marquee act in the 12-week trial. Edwards, 72, a four-term Governor who once said the only way he'd lose an election was if he got caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, was called to the stand in his own defense. He had listened to a parade of witnesses, including three men who pleaded guilty to their role in the alleged scam, say he had extorted millions from applicants for riverboat-casino licenses during and after his last term, which ended in 1996. One of the three, former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr., testified that he had handed Edwards $400,000 in a briefcase, Edwards' alleged price for ensuring that DeBartolo wouldn't have a "serious problem" getting his license.

If there is life after death even for politicians, one has to assume that former Louisiana Governors Huey and Earl Long, the first politician-kings of the banana republic of Louisiana, were watching last week. With testimony about cash left in Dumpsters and hidden under frozen ducks, and good old-fashioned bagmen bundling and transporting the loot, it all seemed refreshingly honest compared with the deceit of PACs, soft money and other modern-day shams. Edwards' wife Candy, who at 35 looks young enough to be his granddaughter, took it all in from the front row. His son Stephen had an even better seat: he's one of six co-defendants. One last scene setter: Edwards was masterly in his catch-me-if-you-can defense the last time the feds dropped the net. His 1985 racketeering trial, involving hospital licenses, ended in a mistrial, followed by an acquittal.

From the moment he took the stand last week, Edwards answered yes-or-no questions with unsolicited sermons. It's like "Spartacus to the Romans," complained prosecutor Jim Letten. U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola admonished, "This is not a theater." Of course it was. Edwards told of high-stakes poker games in the Governor's mansion and of "stacking up cash and throwing it away" on lavish impulses. Prosecutors say he used $733,567 in cash toward the purchase of a $1.3 million house. "The government prints $200 million in $100 bills every day. Must be a lot of other people using cash besides me," said Edwards, who testified that he likes to keep between $250,000 and $500,000 in the piggy bank. "I try to stay within the law. Sometimes I don't," he confessed. But he insisted that any riverboat money he got was for legitimate consultation and legal work.

"Are you perjuring yourself?" Letten often demanded, once prompting this reply: "No. And if I were, you've got to assume I wouldn't be telling you." Asked if he recalled a soiree at which he approached someone who was angling for a riverboat license and asked his name, Edwards sniffed that no such thing would ever happen. "I'm a politician," he said. "I would have asked someone else who he was and then gone up and acted like I knew him."

"What a show," said Alvin Ballard, 56, a construction contractor who skipped work to watch. But jurors seemed less amused, which didn't surprise author John Maginnis, who has written two books about Edwards and says his act began to go stale in the '80s. The biggest blow to Edwards might actually have come before the trial even began, when it was moved from New Orleans, where it rains almost every afternoon to wash away the stain of sin, to Baton Rouge, which is less inclined to let the bon temps rouler. Even if Edwards walks, he'll have little time to throw away much cash. He and the state insurance commissioner are defendants in another corruption case that waits on deck. Can the Cajun fox dodge two bullets in one hunting season? If not, they're going to have some of the best poker games in jailhouse history.