David Duke seems a figure from the past, the former Klansman and white supremacist who two decades ago was almost elected Louisiana governor. …
In his 1991 campaign for governor against Edwin W. Edwards, Mr. Duke largely avoided explicitly racial campaigning, appealed to the frustrations and resentments of white voters and won more than 60 percent of the white vote while losing in a runoff election. Two decades later, much of his campaign has merged with the political mainstream here, and rather than a bad memory from the past, Mr. Duke remains a window into some of the murkier currents in the state’s politics where Republicans have sought and eventually won Mr. Duke’s voters, while turning their back on him. CONT.
Jeremy Alford, New York Times