Dave Treen - Facing Edwin Edwards Again, 1983

Facing Edwin Edwards Again, 1983

Treen and Edwards were known as fierce rivals. Treen began his campaign for a second term in December 1982, with John Cade leading the group, People for Dave Treen. At first, Cade emerged as the governor's campaign spokesman so that he could concentrate on his job duties. Cade questioned Edwards' decision to forego his gubernatorial retirement income of $40,000 per year on the grounds that Edwards was no longer "retired" because he was running to reclaim the governorship. Cade said that Edwards would have collected only $14,000 in pension and not before the age of sixty had he not engineered legislative approval of the more lucrative package.

During the 1983 campaign, Edwards remarked that Treen moved about so slowly that "it takes him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes". Similarly, when asked for a scenario in which he could lose to Treen, Edwards replied, nonchalantly, "If I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."

Treen lost to Edwards, who secured the third of his four terms as governor. In that race, Treen won only a handful of parishes, including rural La Salle Parish in north Louisiana, which supported him in all three of his gubernatorial bids. Treen received 586,643 (36.3 percent) to Edwards' 1,008,282 (62.4 percent). Another 1.3 percent was cast for minor candidates, one of whom was Robert M. Ross, who had also been Treen's primary rival in 1971. Treen polled roughly 104,000 fewer votes in losing in 1983 than he had in winning in 1979. Edwards polled more than 400,000 votes beyond what Louis Lambert had received against Treen four years earlier.

Billy J. Guin, a Shreveport Republican leader who managed Treen's northwest Louisiana campaign in 1972, said that Treen refused to show favoritism to anyone and went out of his way to demonstrate fairness to his political opponents. "It got to the point that he would not take phone calls from his longtime supporters because he did not want to tell them 'No'. This of course alienated his own supporters and contributed to his defeat in 1983", Guin said. Guin blamed the legislature, still largely under the domination of Edwards even during the Treen years, for contributing to Treen's defeat.In addition to Treen's own defeat, several Democratic allies of the Republican governor were unseated in the state Senate, including Dan Richey of Ferriday in Concordia Parish and Edward G. "Ned" Randolph, Jr., of Alexandria in Rapides Parish.