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Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise and Fall of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fate of Governor Edwin Edwards
An outrageous tale of fast cash, dirty politics, and extravagant greed in the Bayou State.
Louisiana is our most exotic state. It is religious and roguish, a place populated by Cajuns, Creoles, rednecks, and Bible-thumpers. It is a state that loves good food, good music, and good times. Laissez les bon temps rouler -- let the good times roll -- is the unofficial motto. Louisiana is also excessively corrupt.In the 1990s, it plunged headlong into legalized gambling, authorizing more games of chance than any other state. Leading the charge was Governor Edwin Edwards, who for years had flaunted his fondness for cold cash and high-stakes gambling, and who had used his razor-sharp mind and catlike reflexes to stay one step ahead of the law. Gambling, Edwin Edwards, and Louisiana's political culture would prove to be a combustible mix.
Bad Bet on the Bayou tells the story of what happened when the most corrupt industry came to our most corrupt state. It is a sweeping morality tale about commerce, politics, and what happens when the law catches up to the most basic human desires and frailties.
Louisiana is our most exotic state. It is religious and roguish, a place populated by Cajuns, Creoles, rednecks, and Bible-thumpers. It is a state that loves good food, good music, and good times. Laissez les bon temps rouler -- let the good times roll -- is the unofficial motto. Louisiana is also excessively corrupt.In the 1990s, it plunged headlong into legalized gambling, authorizing more games of chance than any other state. Leading the charge was Governor Edwin Edwards, who for years had flaunted his fondness for cold cash and high-stakes gambling, and who had used his razor-sharp mind and catlike reflexes to stay one step ahead of the law. Gambling, Edwin Edwards, and Louisiana's political culture would prove to be a combustible mix.
Bad Bet on the Bayou tells the story of what happened when the most corrupt industry came to our most corrupt state. It is a sweeping morality tale about commerce, politics, and what happens when the law catches up to the most basic human desires and frailties.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 22, 2022
Gambling has a rich history in Louisiana tracing as far back as the founding of New Orleans. Antebellum Louisiana was famous for its gambling casinos and parlors, the late 19th century Louisiana Lottery became a national get-rich-quick sensation. From 1945 through the early 1960s, automated poker machines in bars became the financial anchor for a New Orleans-based Mafia crime family. Following a pause in legalized gambling in the state from the 60s through the 80s, by the end of that period it seemed like a natural fit for a state built largely on the tourist industry to bring it back. And to fund essential public services at the same time! Financing Louisiana government can be distilled into U.S. Senator Russell Long’s aphorism, “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the man behind the tree.” Historically, politicians and elected officials in the state have long looked for “innovative” (read: shady) ways of financing state services and projects. The notion of out-of-staters funding Louisiana education, health, and other state services was too hard for politicians to resist. A few states like Iowa and Mississippi were already cashing in. Surely they couldn’t compete with New Orleans and Louisiana it was reasoned. Especially with a newly-elected, swashbuckling governor who managed to outwit multiple investigations and prosecutions during his previous three terms in office since the early 1970s, Edwin Edwards. He was just the operator to get the job done.
Born in impoverished circumstances in the northern tip of Louisiana’s Cajun country, Edwards dominated Louisiana politics from the early 1970s until the late 1990s. He served two terms as governor from 1972-1980, was term limited, which forced him to wait four years to sweep back into office after soundly defeating the colorless man who replaced him to take a third term in 1984. Edwards, then an incumbent governor serving his third elected term, was prosecuted by federal attorneys twice for taking bribes. Both times he got away, a mistrial the first time, not guilty verdicts in the second. But he couldn’t hold back political reformers (although the father of a reformer who would win, Buddy Roemer, was Edwards’ former chief-of-staff who served time for public corruption) to be kicked out in 1988, all the time vowing that they would be begging for him to come back in 1992. He had it all planned out, but the political ground shifting under him gave him one last choice: govern for the good of posterity or cash in like he never could before. But it turned out that legacy thing had no currency, so he never really had to make a choice.
What he didn't—and to be fair, what few did—appreciate at the time was the rise of an American strain of fascism that was taking hold in majority white communities throughout the state. David Duke started out as a fringe neo-Nazi college student at Louisiana State University. After college, he built up a cottage business of selling trinkets and pamphlets that merged ideas of fascism with American resentment and racism. He rode this to a lead role in the Ku Klux Klan, but he was more of a Nazi than your garden variety of southern racist (and yes there is a difference). Duke carved a constituency to win the Louisiana House seat representing the mostly white New Orleans suburban enclave of Metairie. He then posed a serious challenge before falling to the incumbent U.S. senator. But rather than deter him, he set his eyes on the governorship.
A mortally wounded Gov. Roemer, politically speaking, faced the wrath of a state that lost its base of easy money from oil and gas revenue as he tried to unsuccessfully to figure out new funding sources. Some former Roemer voters moved to Duke, whose message linking whites’ racial and economic resentments was nurtured by a weak economy. This created the worst kind of American political constituency, one that was vocal, unconcerned with facts or reality, and pining for an age that only existed in their fantasies. Roemer was eliminated in the primary leaving Edwards vs. Duke in a gubernatorial election that would become a national story. Liberals and civil rights advocates would have to hold their noses and vote for the corrupt Edwards to keep an American fascist out of office. It was best summed up by the best bumper sticker in the history of American politics, “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important!” It was also final chance for Edwards to repent his past sins and actually become the progressive focused on the welfare of the poor in his state—one of the poorest in the nation. Edwards rode to an easy victory, largely based on a head-to-head interview debate on Meet the Press in which he showed how much more about the state he understood than Duke. But the state’s ever-growing budget deficit, the prospect of implementing voter-approved legal gambling in the state, and his lifelong attachment to glamor and greed soon changed that. What happened is the complex, intertwined story of greed that Tyler Bridges tells so well.
While much of the story revolves around Edwards, Bridges does an admirable traffic cop-like job of untangling the names and intricacies that made up this costly farce. First, the gambling turf was divided into various commercial and political fiefdoms—a land-based casino in New Orleans with global aspirations attracted familiar casino brands like Harrah’s, Bally’s and Caesar’s, and often crossing the line in its dealings with Mafia figures and other underworld criminality; businesses that seemingly never stop skating near the edge of legality. And then there was Chris Hemmeter, the brash developer of Hawaii tourist destinations who swooped in with the polish of a successful medicine show huckster. His ability to woo over politicians and community leaders gave him a seemingly inside track to win the deal.
In pure Louisiana political tradition, distinct public governing boards, one with a governor-controlled state board that had the power to grant a casino operating license and the other a New Orleans mayor-controlled power of the lease of the property on which that casino would be built. To weigh the odds in his favor, Edwards appointed a chairman who was a former FBI agent but whose “only experience in running a meeting had come during his son’s Little League career years before.” Another was a low level state bureaucrats whose starving wages salary doubled when she was appointed. Vending contracts for casino tourist trinkets, catering, or booking agents went to people like Edward’s son, who had “a profound sense of entitlement [and] inherited his father’s keen desire to make a buck, but lacked his finesse and cleverness” and ended up causing far more legal problems for the governor in later years.
Then, add to that a statewide network of anchored or barely moving riverboats on seemingly every river and bayou in the state that maintained the legal fiction of being on water. The local battles for contracts became sources of profit and power for local political bosses. Edwards even got involved here, taking $400,000 in cash from the owner of the NFL San Francisco 49ers to secure a license. Edwards took the cash in the parking lot, went into an airport bathroom to stuff the money in his specially-made vest with multiple pockets, and boarded a flight home. Plus there were Mafia-controlled poker machines that infiltrated bars, seedy and otherwise, spread throughout the state. The relatively small amounts they brought in added up to millions of dollars, much of which could be hidden from the tax authorities they were set up to support. Little did the public understand how these officials, who ostensibly represented them, were gambling and winning big with their tax dollars. Many got rich quickly while most lost their shirts.
In the end, the scheme was undone by the fecklessness and greed of the players involved. Hemmeter overpromised, was outmaneuvered to be forced to make continuous concessions and take on new partners, until he lost most of the fortune he had before he came to New Orleans. State and local governments based their entire annual budgets on profits that would come in from gambling. When those estimates turned out to be built on lies, deception, and graft, the state coffers suffered which in turn kept Louisiana near the bottom of virtually every state-by-state quality of life measure. But in the end, the story was much bigger than about fiscal and public corruption in Louisiana.
Three indisputable trends have fed off and nurtured each other in American politics and governing over the past three-plus decades: the rise of an American strain of fascism, a dependence on gambling to pay for essential services in state and local government, and unaccountable, coordinated funds from wealthy and corporate sources, also called dark money. The confluence of all three could be found in the late 80s to the late 90s in Louisiana. Rather than an anomaly that stayed in Louisiana, as it did for much of 19th and 20th centuries, those forces now impact virtually every state and, indeed, the nation itself. Most recently and ominously, those strains were nurtured and unleashed by the previous occupant of the White House and his cult.
The toxic mixture of legalized gambling to fund public services, American fascism, and the dark money to nurture both first took shape in Louisiana in the 1990s. Edwards gambled on gambling and lost. He would end up serving eight years in prison after staying one step ahead of the public corruption watchdogs since the early 1970s. At the end of his life, I bet a part of him looked with bittersweet envy toward the occupant of the White House from 2017-2021. Edwards played with public office and funds for personal gain and wealth but ultimately he put his biggest bet on the wrong number.
On the other hand, that guy who was in the White House did pretty much the same, but a better job of lying and avoiding the consequences. Enough to be elected president by the electoral college. When Edwards defeated Duke, most thought it American fascism was a passing fad. But as recent history has clearly demonstrated, we ain’t see nuthin’ yet. It has only festered to explode its infection into a national, disruptive force forcing its way into all facets of public and private life. and remains a malignant threat to the idea of self-governance, not just a national government.
Somehow even those facts manage to shine a gentler light on Edwards’ legacy. As Bridges sums up, and as I can attest, anyone who saw Edwards up close knows that there was never a more natural, appealing, charismatic politician when you were within his orbit. The shame is that he didn’t apply those inarguable, once-in-a-generation skills in pursuit of the public good in any of his four terms and almost three decades of dominating Louisiana politics. Instead, like seemingly everyone else in the state engaged in “public service,” Edwards used those gifts to empower and enrich himself. He had a way of making people love him—which, I think, deep down, he wanted almost as much as wealth and power—and as greedy as he was with “that man behind the tree[’s]” money, it was hard not to somehow still want to like him even as you knew he was still conning you. Virtually every scoundrel in American political history pales when compared to Edwin Edwards. (Alternate ending sentence for American audiences of a certain age: He was the Eddie Haskell of American politics.)
Postscript: Even in death, Edwards continues to captivate.
Born in impoverished circumstances in the northern tip of Louisiana’s Cajun country, Edwards dominated Louisiana politics from the early 1970s until the late 1990s. He served two terms as governor from 1972-1980, was term limited, which forced him to wait four years to sweep back into office after soundly defeating the colorless man who replaced him to take a third term in 1984. Edwards, then an incumbent governor serving his third elected term, was prosecuted by federal attorneys twice for taking bribes. Both times he got away, a mistrial the first time, not guilty verdicts in the second. But he couldn’t hold back political reformers (although the father of a reformer who would win, Buddy Roemer, was Edwards’ former chief-of-staff who served time for public corruption) to be kicked out in 1988, all the time vowing that they would be begging for him to come back in 1992. He had it all planned out, but the political ground shifting under him gave him one last choice: govern for the good of posterity or cash in like he never could before. But it turned out that legacy thing had no currency, so he never really had to make a choice.
What he didn't—and to be fair, what few did—appreciate at the time was the rise of an American strain of fascism that was taking hold in majority white communities throughout the state. David Duke started out as a fringe neo-Nazi college student at Louisiana State University. After college, he built up a cottage business of selling trinkets and pamphlets that merged ideas of fascism with American resentment and racism. He rode this to a lead role in the Ku Klux Klan, but he was more of a Nazi than your garden variety of southern racist (and yes there is a difference). Duke carved a constituency to win the Louisiana House seat representing the mostly white New Orleans suburban enclave of Metairie. He then posed a serious challenge before falling to the incumbent U.S. senator. But rather than deter him, he set his eyes on the governorship.
A mortally wounded Gov. Roemer, politically speaking, faced the wrath of a state that lost its base of easy money from oil and gas revenue as he tried to unsuccessfully to figure out new funding sources. Some former Roemer voters moved to Duke, whose message linking whites’ racial and economic resentments was nurtured by a weak economy. This created the worst kind of American political constituency, one that was vocal, unconcerned with facts or reality, and pining for an age that only existed in their fantasies. Roemer was eliminated in the primary leaving Edwards vs. Duke in a gubernatorial election that would become a national story. Liberals and civil rights advocates would have to hold their noses and vote for the corrupt Edwards to keep an American fascist out of office. It was best summed up by the best bumper sticker in the history of American politics, “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important!” It was also final chance for Edwards to repent his past sins and actually become the progressive focused on the welfare of the poor in his state—one of the poorest in the nation. Edwards rode to an easy victory, largely based on a head-to-head interview debate on Meet the Press in which he showed how much more about the state he understood than Duke. But the state’s ever-growing budget deficit, the prospect of implementing voter-approved legal gambling in the state, and his lifelong attachment to glamor and greed soon changed that. What happened is the complex, intertwined story of greed that Tyler Bridges tells so well.
While much of the story revolves around Edwards, Bridges does an admirable traffic cop-like job of untangling the names and intricacies that made up this costly farce. First, the gambling turf was divided into various commercial and political fiefdoms—a land-based casino in New Orleans with global aspirations attracted familiar casino brands like Harrah’s, Bally’s and Caesar’s, and often crossing the line in its dealings with Mafia figures and other underworld criminality; businesses that seemingly never stop skating near the edge of legality. And then there was Chris Hemmeter, the brash developer of Hawaii tourist destinations who swooped in with the polish of a successful medicine show huckster. His ability to woo over politicians and community leaders gave him a seemingly inside track to win the deal.
In pure Louisiana political tradition, distinct public governing boards, one with a governor-controlled state board that had the power to grant a casino operating license and the other a New Orleans mayor-controlled power of the lease of the property on which that casino would be built. To weigh the odds in his favor, Edwards appointed a chairman who was a former FBI agent but whose “only experience in running a meeting had come during his son’s Little League career years before.” Another was a low level state bureaucrats whose starving wages salary doubled when she was appointed. Vending contracts for casino tourist trinkets, catering, or booking agents went to people like Edward’s son, who had “a profound sense of entitlement [and] inherited his father’s keen desire to make a buck, but lacked his finesse and cleverness” and ended up causing far more legal problems for the governor in later years.
Then, add to that a statewide network of anchored or barely moving riverboats on seemingly every river and bayou in the state that maintained the legal fiction of being on water. The local battles for contracts became sources of profit and power for local political bosses. Edwards even got involved here, taking $400,000 in cash from the owner of the NFL San Francisco 49ers to secure a license. Edwards took the cash in the parking lot, went into an airport bathroom to stuff the money in his specially-made vest with multiple pockets, and boarded a flight home. Plus there were Mafia-controlled poker machines that infiltrated bars, seedy and otherwise, spread throughout the state. The relatively small amounts they brought in added up to millions of dollars, much of which could be hidden from the tax authorities they were set up to support. Little did the public understand how these officials, who ostensibly represented them, were gambling and winning big with their tax dollars. Many got rich quickly while most lost their shirts.
In the end, the scheme was undone by the fecklessness and greed of the players involved. Hemmeter overpromised, was outmaneuvered to be forced to make continuous concessions and take on new partners, until he lost most of the fortune he had before he came to New Orleans. State and local governments based their entire annual budgets on profits that would come in from gambling. When those estimates turned out to be built on lies, deception, and graft, the state coffers suffered which in turn kept Louisiana near the bottom of virtually every state-by-state quality of life measure. But in the end, the story was much bigger than about fiscal and public corruption in Louisiana.
Three indisputable trends have fed off and nurtured each other in American politics and governing over the past three-plus decades: the rise of an American strain of fascism, a dependence on gambling to pay for essential services in state and local government, and unaccountable, coordinated funds from wealthy and corporate sources, also called dark money. The confluence of all three could be found in the late 80s to the late 90s in Louisiana. Rather than an anomaly that stayed in Louisiana, as it did for much of 19th and 20th centuries, those forces now impact virtually every state and, indeed, the nation itself. Most recently and ominously, those strains were nurtured and unleashed by the previous occupant of the White House and his cult.
The toxic mixture of legalized gambling to fund public services, American fascism, and the dark money to nurture both first took shape in Louisiana in the 1990s. Edwards gambled on gambling and lost. He would end up serving eight years in prison after staying one step ahead of the public corruption watchdogs since the early 1970s. At the end of his life, I bet a part of him looked with bittersweet envy toward the occupant of the White House from 2017-2021. Edwards played with public office and funds for personal gain and wealth but ultimately he put his biggest bet on the wrong number.
On the other hand, that guy who was in the White House did pretty much the same, but a better job of lying and avoiding the consequences. Enough to be elected president by the electoral college. When Edwards defeated Duke, most thought it American fascism was a passing fad. But as recent history has clearly demonstrated, we ain’t see nuthin’ yet. It has only festered to explode its infection into a national, disruptive force forcing its way into all facets of public and private life. and remains a malignant threat to the idea of self-governance, not just a national government.
Somehow even those facts manage to shine a gentler light on Edwards’ legacy. As Bridges sums up, and as I can attest, anyone who saw Edwards up close knows that there was never a more natural, appealing, charismatic politician when you were within his orbit. The shame is that he didn’t apply those inarguable, once-in-a-generation skills in pursuit of the public good in any of his four terms and almost three decades of dominating Louisiana politics. Instead, like seemingly everyone else in the state engaged in “public service,” Edwards used those gifts to empower and enrich himself. He had a way of making people love him—which, I think, deep down, he wanted almost as much as wealth and power—and as greedy as he was with “that man behind the tree[’s]” money, it was hard not to somehow still want to like him even as you knew he was still conning you. Virtually every scoundrel in American political history pales when compared to Edwin Edwards. (Alternate ending sentence for American audiences of a certain age: He was the Eddie Haskell of American politics.)
Postscript: Even in death, Edwards continues to captivate.
April 26, 2024
Louisiana’s 4-term Governor Edwin Edwards loved to gamble. And so do Louisiana residents, from poker to slots to bourre. This book is about how gambling was legalized and how prosecutors finally got their man: Edwards himself, members of his family and inner circle. The author is a veteran of the capital press corps.
January 1, 2020
If you find political corruption intriguing, this one is a must.
August 23, 2007
I love Louisiana for a lot of reasons. My first trip there (without family) was my sophomore year in college when my beloved Gators won their first national championship against the team of my youth, the Florida State Seminoles. More than that though, Louisiana in general, and especially New Orleans, is a place where the word “place” means something. Like a lot of places in the South, to go there is different from going to other places. It is not just about the sweet tea or the Cajun accents, or the zydeco music, it is about a place. In short, it is a place that has color. Forget the endless strip malls of Tampa or Orlando or the fakeness of L.A. or Miami, New Orleans (for better or worse) has a rhythm that is tough to duplicate. Louisiana politics also (and also for better or worse) has a similar rhythm. This book recounts the historical background of gaming in Louisiana and the decisions to introduce formal casinos to New Orleans and elsewhere, but more than that, it captures the flavor of the place. Harrah’s would eventually come to New Orleans and former four-time governor Edwin Edwards would go to jail, but this book is really about Louisiana and what it represents. After meeting most of the characters, you will feel like you need to take a shower to get the sleaze off of you, but you will also have a lot of fun - a feeling that is not unlike what it feels like to visit New Orleans.
December 23, 2022
Incredible writing, absolutely compelling and well-written. Bridges provides impeccable details concerning a most sordid episode in Louisiana government history. The first part of the book details some early history of corruption within the gambling industry. The next part focuses on the paybacks, kickbacks, and ponzi schemes involved in bringing riverboat and truck stop video poker machines to Louisiana. The last section culminates in the events that led to the FBI's sting operation that ensnared governor Edwin Edwards and finally convicted him and his cronies of racketeering.
The interludes and side comments and anecdotes were much appreciated. The narrative was as compelling as the characters themselves.
Future readers will need to read this in spurts ... all these criminal minds and their clever maneuvers will make your head spin!
The interludes and side comments and anecdotes were much appreciated. The narrative was as compelling as the characters themselves.
Future readers will need to read this in spurts ... all these criminal minds and their clever maneuvers will make your head spin!
March 14, 2011
It's been over 15 years since I lived in NOLA and I had forgotten how corrupt the place was. This book brought it all back. I gave it 5 stars because this book can be appreciated and enjoyed by those who have never enjoyed the greatness that is New Orleans and Louisiana.
April 3, 2008
An unreal look at the corruption that is a way of life of politics in Louisiana.
May 8, 2008
Read this book and you will forever understand the depth of New Orleans corruption. To me, it was fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews