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Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise and Fall of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fate of Governor Edwin Edwards, by Tyler Bridges
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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.
- Sales Rank: #741969 in Books
- Brand: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Published on: 2001-06-04
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.33" h x 6.28" w x 9.30" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
From Publishers Weekly
As a New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter, Bridges covered the early '90s senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns of presidential hopeful David Duke, etching a sober portrait in The Rise of David Duke (1994). Four years later, Bridges joined the Miami Herald, where he won a 1999 Pulitzer as part of an investigative team and began work on this book. He traces the historical background of gambling in Louisiana from pre-Civil War riverboats and the Louisiana Lottery (shut down by the federal government in 1907) to 1940s casinos. Edwin Edwards (aka "Silver Zipper," aka "Cajun King"), the only man to be elected governor of Louisiana four times, in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, "could charm a society matron one minute and an oil-rig worker the next." When the bayou state's oil boom bottomed out in the 1980s, Edwards decided gambling could revive the economy, but the cash flow through casinos, riverboats and video poker led to corruption, greedy promoters and "snake-oil salesmen in expensive suits," as the Times-Picayune put it. Following FBI wiretaps and raids, the 72-year-old Edwards was indicted and convicted on charges of extortion from riverboat casino companies. Numerous quotes re-create remembered dialogue in this fascinating and fluid narrative reconstruction. Describing Louisiana as the country's most "exotic" state, Bridges does a formidable job of capturing its allure (as well as that of the former governor), but his easy flair is supported by high journalistic standards, including his meticulous attention to details and his exhaustive research which, all in all, make for an irresistible read. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Flip Brophy. (May)Forecast: As the literature on Louisiana politics continues to grow and Louisiana in particular, the Big Easy remains a place of fascination for many Americans, this book, with its catchy, alliterative title, is destined for a prominent spot on the shelf.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
As an old Kentucky refrain goes, "In Kentucky politics are the damnedest." In analyzing political machinations and serious misuse of the public trust, especially by flamboyant Gov. Edwin Edward of Louisiana, Bridges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald reporter who covered Louisiana politics for the New Orleans Times-Picayune in the early 1990s, makes Kentucky politics seem tame. After discussing Louisiana's often sordid but always entertaining political history, the author devotes the remainder of the monograph to telling what happened when the state legalized gambling in the 1990s under Governor Edwards. Using primarily oral interviews with many of the participants, including Edwards himself, and files from the Times-Picayune, Bridges focuses on the key role fourth-term Governor Edwards played in bringing gambling to Louisiana. As an Edwards critic observed, "[H]e had a tragic character flaw; he thinks of politics as a way to make money for himself and his friends rather than public service. The flaw finally brought him to his knees." While critical of Louisiana's failed gambling experiment, Bridges's narrative is an excellent example of detailed investigative reporting that reads like a mystery novel. Recommended for public libraries. Charles C. Hay III, Eastern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Richmond
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
There may never be a Louisiana politician to equal Huey Long, but if there were, his name might be Edwin Edwards. (Remember the "Vote for the Crook" bumper stickers from the final days of Edwards' 1991 runoff battle against David Duke.) Between 1971 and 1996, Edwards spent 16 years in the governor's mansion, "flaunt(ing) his fondness for easy cash, pretty women, and high-stakes gambling as he dominated Louisiana politics." Prize-winning Miami Herald reporter Bridges covered Edwards' final term for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and then he followed the federal investigation and 28-count indictment that, in May 2000, produced a conviction of the former governor on 17 counts of conspiracy to extort money from riverboat gambling interests. (The verdict is being appealed.) Gambling--an industry with an ugly history in Louisiana since the nineteenth century--is at the heart of this story, and Bridges thoroughly documents the process by which "legalized gambling has needed less than a decade to supplant the petrochemical industry as the state's most powerful interest group." Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Whew! What a ride!
By Terry Mathews
I got this book for my husband, as he's the non-fiction reader in our family. I was out of something to read, so I picked it up and could NOT put it down.
Bridges does a great job of putting a lot of convoluted information into readable form. Edwin Edwards and his Crazy Cajun Cronies didn't really do anything new...they just continued a long tradition of crooked Louisiana Politics!
I enjoyed almost all of this book...the only parts that made my eyes glaze over were the details regarding the financing. My mind just can't wrap around deals where the broker stands to make 27 MILLION dollars....and then one million a year after that!
If you ever wanted a peek into the world of slick politicians, oily gangsters and brash billionaires, this is your book. BAD BET ON THE BAYOU should be required reading for anyone who votes!
Enjoy!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
a cautionary tale
By Orrin C. Judd
Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink. -Earl Long, brother of Huey Long and himself a Governor of Louisiana
From a distance, it has seemed like Edwin Edwards was either the Governor of Louisiana or on trial for corruption, or possibly both at the same time, for nearly all of the past twenty five years. Tyler Bridges, a former reporter for the Times-Picayune, who covered the successful efforts to legalize gambling there in the 1990s, has written a thorough account of that struggle and of the political career of the extraordinarily colorful and resilient Edwards. In particular, he focusses on the fault line where the two stories came together, and how the slippery and seemingly invincible Governor was finally brought down by his eager and quite lucrative involvement in the rampant corruption surrounding the gambling industry.
In so doing, Bridges handles a welter of really labyrinthine information quite adeptly, wringing out of it a narrative that is relatively easy to follow (though sometimes, quite annoyingly, repetitious). The tale is replete with shady Southern con men, mobsters, pols on the take, and features cameo appearances by well known scoundrels such as David Duke, Eddie DeBartolo, and Bill Clinton. In the final section, as the FBI and Federal prosecutors close in on Edwards and bring him to trial, there is genuine drama : will he slip off the hook yet again, or has the barb finally been set deep enough ? And as many states face the question of whether to rely increasingly on gambling revenues, instead of taxes, there's a real object lesson in the dangers they face.
For all of that, there's something strangely missing from the story : there's no tragic arc to it. In that greatest of all political novels, All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren used the story of Huey Long and the miasmic Louisiana setting to explore the tragedy of how essentially decent men could be corrupted by the exercise of political power, the allure of easy money, and, most importantly, the self-assurance that even while doing well themselves they were doing good for others. There is no moment, let alone a period, in the career of Edwin Edwards where he seems to have been genuinely concerned with trying to help the core of poor constituents, many of them black, who made up his base of power. Nor do his voters appear to have harbored any illusions that he was truly on their side. Bridges conveys a real sense that Edwards appeal lay almost entirely in his personal charm and the natural attraction folks feel toward a charming rogue. As a result, there are no intimations of tragedy here, neither that Edwards is a good man whose faults brought him down, nor that this was a case where deserving supporters had their justifiable hopes betrayed. Edwards was a crook. Everyone knew he was a crook. He did little or nothing to improve the lives of average Louisianans. They voted for him anyway. It's awfully hard to avoid the feeling that he and they got exactly what they deserved.
The journalism is, for the most part, excellent--clear, concise, and well paced--and the book is filled with amusing scenes. The portrait Bridges paints of the effects of gambling on at least this one state is truly devastating. On the other hand, one wishes that an editor had excised some of the needlessly repetitious material and it's too bad that Edwards was not as tragic a figure as he was comic. But these things do weaken what is otherwise quite a good book.
GRADE : B-
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Let the Slime Times Roll
By Rob Hardy
You go to Louisiana for the food, Mardi Gras, or jazz; you do not look to Louisiana for political ethics. Edwin Edwards, a man of intelligence and wit, was elected four times as governor. He could have been the state's best governor (although that might be damning with faint praise), but he turned out to be at least among its worst. His tragedy was inextricably linked with personal and corporate gambling, and it is told with all the fascination of a mystery novel in _Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards_ (Farrar Straus and Giroux) by Tyler Bridges. It is a memorable account of the worst in politics.
Louisiana had had sometimes scandalous connections to gambling long before it became a state, but overt gambling had been suppressed, especially in the seventies with the oil boom. When the boom went bust in the nineties, there was a scramble to boost state coffers, and especially those of New Orleans, and Edwards was determined that gambling would boost construction, increase employment, and bring money in from out of state. It looked unseemly for someone with an obvious love of gambling to get on the casino bandwagon, but Edwards was never regarded as a beacon of moral purity. When he ran against Klansman David Duke in 1991, bumper stickers read, "Vote for the Crook. It's Important," and Louisianans did so overwhelmingly. The first two-thirds of _Bad Bet_ tells in amazing detail the ins and outs of the corrupt means by which gambling was brought to the rivers of Louisiana and specifically to the French Quarter. But it is in the spellbinding final third that the book takes off, showing how the FBI brought Edwards down. The Harrah's casino went bust in 1995, when Edwards went into official retirement, but he kept busy with his usual money ploys and influence. The FBI started investigating the bribes that had been paid to get a juvenile prison built, and found that Edwards had gotten the money. Rather exciting descriptions ensue of FBI informants wearing wires to talk with Edwards, and of the difficulties of installing microphones and cameras in the former governor's office. Edwards was approaching seventy, he had a wife almost four decades younger, and he was for the first time in his life starting to take it easy. Unfortunately for him, he also let his guard down, allowing an informant to get him talking. The years of payoffs when he was promoting gambling were to come back on him, resulting in convictions on extortion and money-laundering, among other crimes, and probably federal prison for what remains of his life.
The tragedy of Edwards is shown by his enormous political skill run amok. The book gives examples of deal making that he arranged that would have been excellent politics, if the deals had not been crooked. He had an ability to read people and meet their needs that could have well served his constituents. He knew how to make fun of himself, and the many funny jokes reported here were just the thing to delight reporters and voters. His talents instead went to enriching himself and his cronies, gambling, and stringing along a line of mistresses. What a waste.
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