The contentious 1991 gubernatorial race in Louisiana between ex-KKK leader and Republican David Duke and Democrat Edwin Edwards shows the path forward for progressives in the South.

• The 1991 gubernatorial election in Louisiana may have been the last decisive win for progressives in the South, and Southern progressives should emulate Edwin Edwards' campaign. 
• Edwards threw together a ragtag coalition of Black Democrats, white business leaders, and prominent religious figures; he went negative without getting angry, crafted an endless array of quotable one-liners for the media to disseminate, presented a bold left-wing vision, and fought hard for the neglected rural, low-income voter.
• Liberal Democrats have a tough fight ahead and need a bold, charismatic populist to lead the way. 
• Brian Fairbanks is a writer and former staffer for Senate and Congressional campaigns.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Election Night, the white male Democrat looked at the returns and felt supremely confident in his victory. His opponent, a white male Republican, told the world that the fight wasn't over, that the exit polls were fake news, and that the vote counting would continue. 

The Republican, tied to neo-Nazis and even the Ku Klux Klan, was trailing badly in the campaign's final weeks. He had tried everything to close the gap, from relentlessly attacking his opponent and calling his family corrupt, to playing a doctored video of the Democrat "admitting" to taking illicit funds in exchange for jobs. But despite polls showing that the race would be tight and have a record-shattering turnout, the racist Republican lost decisively.  

This wasn't the 2020 presidential election, but rather the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial contest between now-former Governor Edwin Edwards and ex-KKK leader David Duke. Edwards, who had been referred to by another opponent as "the dragon" that needed slaying was seen as the Left's only hope for taking down Duke — who had recently been elected to the Louisiana State Senate and had made a strong showing in the previous year's Senate race against a popular Democrat.

Edwards, the last of the New Deal Southern Democrats, nabbed 61% of the vote, and the term would make him Louisiana's longest-serving governor. 

Three decades on, there is still much for the Democrats to learn from the most talked-about state campaign in US history. Edwards threw together a ragtag coalition of Black Democrats, white business leaders, and prominent religious figures; he went negative without getting angry, crafted an endless array of quotable one-liners for the media to disseminate, presented a bold left-wing vision, and fought hard for the neglected rural, low-income voter.

In light of the Democratic Party's poor showing in 2020's down ballot races, the "Edwards strategy" against the radical right can provide a path forward for progressives in the South. 

The charm offensive, complete with zingers

Edwards was once affectionately called "Kingfish," "the Silver Fox" (due to his looks), and "Fast Eddie" (a reference to his gambling). He was also the most popular person in Louisiana for two decades, simply by being a charming, comical, debonair campaigner. 

Today, Trump's supporters see Trump the same way Edwards' supporters saw him — a charismatic populist taking down stuffed shirts and Ivy League elites. Both had a litany of one-liners. Of Duke, the former National Director of the Klan, Edwards said, "The only thing we have in common is that we're both wizards under the sheets." 

While Biden struggled to find a catchy zinger for his opponent that his base could rally behind, Team Trump had one for every opponent. After all, who doesn't have Trump's "Sleepy Joe" or "fake news" talking points grafted into their brain?

The Democratic establishment does not have anyone of Edwards' charm and popularity in the South — in this case the states that made up the former Confederate States of America. While Virginia has flipped almost totally Democratic and Georgia's two Senate seats are up for the election, there are no true progressives occupying the vast majority of Senate, House, and state-level seats in the region. 

Oddly enough, the politico who has shown the ability to address and directly combat the conservatism that many of these candidates will face in the South is Pete Buttigieg. While not actually from the South nor nominally a progressive, Buttigieg has been a viral sensation in recent weeks, with his viral television appearances on conservative outlets like Fox News and perfect takedowns of Trump and his ilk. Mayor Pete's more centrist policies may not line up with their priorities, but progressive candidates in the South should emulate his style. 

Republicans win with a bold national vision; Democrats split  

As the Eunice News wrote in a retrospective on Edwards' career, as governor, Edwards achieved "a new constitution, tax reform, a new ethics code" and took decisions out of the hands of establishment politicians. His 1991 campaign strategy was to focus on the economic damage a Duke governorship would cause and remind voters how strong the state's businesses fared under his own leadership.

In 2020, Republican candidates for the House, Senate, and local offices generally ran  on anti-establishment platforms and succeeded against centrist Democrats. According to Politico: "Several Democrats said the party operation was not focused on a cohesive, proactive message that went beyond simply opposing Trump, who proved … popular in  many districts."

Meanwhile, progressives who ran on the Green New Deal or Medicare For All almost uniformly won reelection. If it's true that, as Nancy Pelosi said, "our leverage and power is greatly enhanced" by having Joe Biden in the White House, Democrats must seize on that leverage to move the country past the pandemic, Trumpism, and rampant unemployment and toward a proactive, progressive vision. They should specifically push representatives to back planks like Medicare For All, which the Party kept out of its official platform, but which enjoys support from nearly seven in every 10 adults.

50 state (or parish) strategy

Marco Ceglie, a strategic messaging consultant living in Phoenix, noted: "The activist Left is trying to raise awareness of systematic failures that create economic and societal anxieties, which in turn lead people to fall for charlatans like Duke and Trump, but they're hampered by establishment Democrats who fail to connect with 'clock punching folk' or dismiss them as racists." 

These voters, he said, often end up feeling alienated by power structures and elitism that they believe leave them financially immobile.

If the Democratic Party had pushed minimum wage increases and economic mobility to connect with these voters, and campaigned aggressively a la Howard Dean's effective 50-State Strategy in local races instead of ceding local ground to QAnon and fictional conspiracies, the Democrats' House majority might have increased. 

It worked for Edwards, who went after voters outside of his base of Black voters and progressives in urban areas with a message that resonated with the lower and middle classes. As the John Maginnis tome "Cross To Bear" notes, Edwards boasted in parish forums and other small campaign stops that he used heavy taxes on oil company activity to enact a liberal social agenda and create jobs.

Knock-knock-knocking on every door  

"The Trump campaign claimed that it was knocking on a million doors a week," the  New Yorker noted in October. "The Biden campaign is knocking on zero." 

Beto O'Rourke, in an email to supporters, noticed, as well. "The failure to invest in year-round canvassing," he wrote, "so that voters don't just hear from us during an election also made it harder for us to move voters at the end." 

Progressives need to pick up D.C.'s slack, even as the pandemic continues. Knocking on doors in a clear mask or face shield and stepping back more than six feet to hear your neighbors out and push for change in the midterms is going to be key to launching the Left's Southern comeback. 

Friends (in power) with benefits  

Louisiana State Rep. Ron Gomez said in his memoirs that Edwards' "brashness and arrogance ... traits that would have destroyed the average politician, have only seemed to endear him to his core constituency: minorities, organized labor, Cajuns and lower-income voters." 30 years later, Trump's arrogance endeared him to similar groups — yet no Southern Democrats are even trying to reach these voters today.

The progressives need bold, charismatic populists in the South like Edwards to reinforce its relationships with working people. After Edwards, the New Deal Democrats died off in the South, replaced by weak centrist candidates like the current Louisiana Governor, who only narrowly won reelection last year against a wealthy right-wing Republican. 

Today, Trump is a historically unpopular, incompetent and dangerous president; but once he's gone, Democrats will need something to run for, not against. Their platform must be more than just a "return to normal."