The united business front was anything but a natural alliance. Gov. Buddy Roemer had been the business candidate, and for a week after he was knocked out of the race in the Oct. 19 primary, Louisiana tycoons were in a state of funk. The choice was between Duke and former governor Edwin Edwards, whose three terms had been distinguished by repeated scandals and, perhaps worse, a devotion to organized labor. “Edwards has to get people who hate him most to go for him,” said Renwick. “It’s against all the laws of politics.” But when they thought about a Duke administration, with a legislative deadlock looming and unknown appointees running state agencies, businessmen found Edwards the lesser evil. “I’m going to hold my nose, steady my hand–and it will be shaking–and pull that lever for Edwin Edwards,” vowed L. L. (Bud) Feickert, an energy and timber executive from Lake Charles.
The Business Council of New Orleans fired the first anti-Duke volley, backed up with a threat from New York investment banker Jack Shaffer. Shaffer’s firm has financed about $1 billion in Louisiana real estate, but with all of Texas right next door, Shaffer told The Times-Picayune, “Why monkey around with Louisiana and a guy like David Duke?” Officials of three conventions that had booked into New Orleans warned that they might cancel. And Dave Dixon, the antique dealer who is credited with luring pro football to New Orleans and getting the Superdome built, said Duke’s election would risk losing the 1992 Olympic track-and-field trials, along with future Final Four basketball tournaments and Super Bowls.
There was an element of hype in all this: from national headquarters, basketball and track officials said only that they would think about the problem if and when Duke was elected. But there was precedent enough in Arizona, which lost the 1993 Super Bowl last year when voters refused to honor Martin Luther King Jr. with a state holiday.
Worries spread. A car pool of suburban New Orleans women raised $7,000 and wrote their own radio ad, vividly tracing the “ripple effect” of one lost convention through a chain of Louisiana businesses. At United Cab, the biggest taxi fleet in New Orleans, few if any drivers are black, and most of them could be expected to vote for Duke. But political operatives said a straw poll found the drivers 57-43 percent for Edwards.
The race was far from over. For one thing, Duke has a record of surging strongly at the end of a campaign; for another, tourism and conventions aren’t a big factor outside of New Orleans, and a rural backlash to the scare campaign could easily take shape. Toward the end of the week, however, Duke was on the defensive, telling the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry that “I can’t believe some of the endorsements” for Edwards. “David,” Edwards retorted, “I, too, have been shocked by some of the endorsements I have gotten.” A pause, and the jab: “I guarantee you, if it hadn’t been for you, I would never have gotten ’em.” It was a rare moment of truth in polities, and it got the day’s biggest laugh.
