Volatile Louisiana Contest Wins Nation’s Attention : Election: A poll shows Edwards ahead, 55% to 33%. But much of ex-klansman Duke’s backing is hidden.

Now comes the homestretch, the final week of a campaign in which the voters of Louisiana will decide if a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan will be their next governor.

Republican David Duke, who in addition to his KKK affiliation, founded the National Assn. for the Advancement of White People and promoted the notion that the Holocaust never occurred, is pitted against Democrat Edwin W. Edwards, a three-time former governor with a roving eye who is a symbol of the state’s corrupt past.

The Nov. 16 election, and Duke in particular, have captured the nation’s attention. The most recent statewide poll shows Duke, a one-term member of the state House of Representatives, losing ground to Edwards.

But “this race is so volatile that it could change within a few days,” said Vern Kennedy of the Marketing Research Institute, whose latest poll of 800 voters shows Edwards in front, 55% to 33%. “It’s a situation that’s largely out of anyone’s control.”

Past elections have shown that Duke supporters often do not say so in public, but wait instead for the solitude of the voting booth. Assessing what they think is the hidden Duke vote, some Democrats believe the race remains a dead heat.

One thing is clear: Duke has managed to brush aside his past as the zealousness of youth and has come up with a formula that has taken Louisiana by storm. In the process, he also has become the most visible symbol nationwide of voter discontent with entrenched politicians--the most famous, or infamous, outsider versus the insiders.

Duke’s message is this: In times of dire economic trouble, the people within government are largely to blame. So it is time to throw them out, along with welfare cheats, racial quotas, coddled criminals and others who milk the system dry.

Some of that anti-government rhetoric echoes common Republican themes. But having Duke as the messenger is a major embarrassment for the GOP, and the party has disavowed him altogether. President Bush even went so far Wednesday as to say that if he lived in Louisiana he would vote for Edwards.

That does not seem to faze the electorate. And this smooth-talking candidate has given as good as he has gotten in debates with Edwards, who is considered one of the best orators to come along in this state with a rich history of stump speakers. Edwards, meanwhile, spent the first days of the campaign soft-pedaling criticism of Duke because of his own spotty history, which includes two federal racketeering trials but never a conviction.

That tactic, however, may be over as the campaign heats up. In a debate Wednesday night, Edwards hammered on Duke’s past association with the klan.

“In Texas and in Iowa the klan people have already announced they’re coming down here to help their friend, David Duke,” Edwards said. “I hope they behave themselves.”

Meanwhile, the prospect of Duke becoming governor has caused Louisiana politicians to coalesce in the strangest of alliances. Edwards has been endorsed by two Republican governors--Buddy Roemer, who finished third in the primary last month, and former Gov. David Treen. Both were arch enemies of Edwards in years past.

Predictions are rampant from a number of quarters that a Duke victory next Saturday would spell the economic downfall of the state. And Edwards finds himself in the fight not only for his political life, but for his legacy in the history of state politics.

“That would be the ultimate degradation--to lose to David Duke” said Edward Renwick, a Loyola University political analyst. “Imagine going down in history as the man who lost to Duke.”

So how did all this happen? The first factor is the electorate itself. Beaten down by nine straight years of recession, by the feeling that they were being overtaxed and underpaid, that the concerns of the middle class were being ignored, voters have been attracted by Duke’s call for change.

Typical of Duke’s message was a statement he made in last Saturday’s debate.

“If you like what has been going on for the last 20 years, go ahead and vote for Edwin Edwards,” Duke said. “You’ll get more of the same: more environmental destruction, you’ll get lower salaries for teachers, more crime in our streets, our schools will continue to decline. We need change.”

Duke has hammered on several themes in his campaign, including no new taxes, welfare reform, and the elimination of government waste and corruption.

A second factor is that Edwards is perceived as part of the political Establishment at a time of deep anti-incumbent sentiment. He also is seen as representing the interests of blacks and the poor as well as business and the rich--in effect combining the most damaging negatives of both the Republican and Democratic parties. That leaves for Duke the mantle of champion of average working voters--at least those who are white.

The final factor is Duke himself, who after years of being a pariah has switched gears, embraced Christ, chiseled his face with plastic surgery and presented himself as Mr. Mainstream. He has repeated over and over that his role in the klan and his neo-Nazism are products of a time long ago.

The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, the state’s largest newspaper, has gone to great lengths to show that Duke is misrepresenting himself. The newspaper has printed tape-recorded interviews with him done in 1986, when the former klansman was 36 years old and presumably comfortable with his political and moral philosophies. In those interviews, Duke said that integration was “absolutely unthinkable,” that “we don’t need Negroes around” and that he had “enmity toward Jews as a whole. I resent what they are doing. I resent them.”

But Duke apparently has been forgiven his sins by many voters here. Privately, Democrats say there is evidence that white voters for the most part accept Duke’s argument that he has reformed his racist past by finding Christ. After winning his first race for the state House by a scant 227 votes, Duke has built a large following. In last year’s Senate race, Duke astonished the political experts by winning 44% of the vote. Then he went on to take 32% of the vote in the gubernatorial primary, bested only by Edwards’ 34%.

Ray Strother, a media consultant who worked in the Roemer campaign, said he knew his candidate was in trouble after running several focus groups during the primary campaign. Strother said one group was given a list of negative personal attributes for a hypothetical person. That person was given low marks, as might be expected. But when Duke’s name was attached, all was forgiven.

“He was bulletproof,” said Strother, who is based in Washington. “They were able to rationalize all his shortcomings. He is tapping the frustration out there.”

Jay Perkins, a political analyst at Louisiana State University, said the reason was simple enough: So much has been written about Duke’s past over the years that voters are inured to it.

“People just don’t care about his past anymore,” he said.

At the same time, race is playing a large role in the campaign, although the subject is rarely mentioned by the candidates themselves. But when Duke denounces criminals, welfare and the decline in family values, there is little doubt in the minds of many white Louisianians whom he is talking about.

In Louisiana’s federal and state prisons, 72% of the inmates are black, compared to 47% nationwide. Almost 83% of Louisiana welfare recipients are black, compared to just more than 40% nationwide. The national figure for the number of children born out of wedlock is 42% black, but 77% in Louisiana.

Democrats have claimed that Bush legitimized racial politics in the 1988 campaign and there is a school of thought that Duke is a natural extension of that tactic.

“Bush used race rather subtly in ’88 and Duke is using it more subtly in ‘91,” said Strother. “But there is not a lot of difference.”

Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democratic presidential candidate, is more biting in his blaming Republicans for racial politics. “The Republican Party has watered the tree of racism,” he said in a recent speech. “And now that tree has grown . . . and it has dropped a nut in Louisiana called David Duke.”

Perkins contends Duke’s message could work almost everywhere.

“Rampant racism is everywhere,” he said. “We are two years ahead of the rest of the nation. What we’re seeing in Louisiana, we’re going to be seeing elsewhere.”

On one recent early afternoon, Duke arrived at WTIX radio in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb and his home district. He was there for the Spanish-language segment of the program, to be followed by the cutting of radio spots and an interview with Voice of America. The emcee launched some softball questions at Duke, allowing him to hit his stride almost immediately.

Yes, he liked the Spanish-speaking people of Louisiana. They were good people. They paid their taxes. They were not people who went on welfare, but worked for a living. And, yes, the thing that had changed him most was finding Jesus Christ.

In between programs, Duke posed for photos with two women in the lobby of the station.

“This could be historic,” said one of the women.

Then Duke was off to prepare for an hour on “Larry King Live.” The talk show host made no discernible dent in the former klansman’s armor. The same would be true of the Donahue show the next day. Duke was clearly on a roll.

“It’s like his support started out like the pebble in a pond,” said Strother. “First it was the blue-collar voter, then the middle class and the upper middle class. The reason it was expanding was because it was becoming respectable to vote for David Duke. When momentum starts, it’s like a tidal wave.”

The man trying to hold back that wave, Edwin Edwards, arrived at a press conference last Monday just in time to take his seat next to retired U.S. Sen. Russell B. Long, the last of the dynasty that had ruled Louisiana for so many years. Long, like so many others, was there to endorse Edwards and warn of the dire consequences of a Duke election.

“I am concerned for my children, my grandchildren and the type of future they will have in Louisiana,” Long said. “I have heard from a number of chief executive officers who head Fortune 500 companies, as well as smaller companies, concerning the possibility of a David Duke victory. Without exception, they expressed the opinion that the election of David Duke would be an economic disaster for our state.”

Then it was Edwards’ turn: “We need to send a message to the rest of the country that we have not retrogressed to the ‘50s and ‘60s.”

He charged that Duke was running for governor only as a steppingstone to running for the presidency. Edwards also said the endorsements from such disparate quarters presented an “opportunity I have longed for all my life.”

Those who know Edwards say he is running this time around to restore his good name and bring back a time when he was one of the most popular governors in the state’s history.

“Redemption is the proper word for what Edwards is doing,” said John Maginnis, the editor of Louisiana Political Review and author of a highly critical book on the former governor.

Whether Edwards succeeds depends on how many Roemer supporters he can pull to his column, a major struggle because Roemer, a reformer, clashed so bitterly with Edwards in the past.

The only attack to which Duke seems clearly vulnerable is the one mounted by Long--the possibility that the state might be even worse off economically if Duke is elected.

Already there have been threats of convention cancellations. A handful of entertainment industry trade associations have said they would pull out or cancel meeting plans in the state. The National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers said it would move its March convention, now planned for New Orleans. The U.S. Olympics Committee has said it would consider moving the 1992 Olympic trials from New Orleans to another location if Duke is elected.

University of New Orleans economist Timothy P. Ryan has estimated that a Duke election would cost the state $1.8 billion in spending and 45,000 jobs.

But Maginnis said the threat of being a pariah to the rest of the nation may not make much difference to a state that has already suffered through such tough economic times with old-line politicians at the helm.

“The thing is, we already are the pariah,” Maginnis said. “We’re the most unrespected state in the union. We’re the whore at the family reunion.

“I guess it’s the past versus the past,” he said. “I think voters are trying to decide which candidate has changed the most while fearing that neither has changed enough.”

Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein and John Lippman contributed to this story from Los Angeles.