Senator Elaine Edwards of Louisiana came to Congress by
way of her matrimonial connection, traveling a political
path frequented by earlier southern women. Rather than
succeeding her husband, however, Edwards was appointed
to a U.S. Senate seat by her husband, Louisiana Governor
Edwin Washington Edwards. Though not unprecedented,
the move was controversial. Yet it allowed Governor
Edwards to sidestep a thorny political problem in backing
other aspirants to the seat. It also provided Elaine Edwards
a chance to practice the political craft she first learned
as a congressional spouse and the first lady of Louisiana.
Though she served only three months during the frenetic
end of the 92nd Congress (1971–1973), Edwards counted a
number of admirers. Upon her retirement, Senator Michael
Joseph (Mike) Mansfield of Montana described her work as
“quietly effective.”1
Elaine Lucille Schwartzenburg was born on March 8,
1929, in Marksville, Louisiana, to Errol Schwartzenburg,
a grocery store owner, and Myrl Dupuy Schwartzenburg.
When she was nine years old, she contracted a bacterial
bone infection in one leg, underwent several surgeries,
and spent five years recuperating.2
She graduated from
Marksville High School and, in 1949, she married her
childhood sweetheart Edwin Edwards, a Marksville,
Louisiana, native and a lawyer. They raised four children:
Anna, Vicki, Stephen, and David. Edwin Edwards embarked
on a long political career in which he served as a Crowley,
Louisiana, city councilman and a state senator. In a 1965
special election, Edwards was elected as a Democrat to the
first of four U.S. House terms as a Louisiana Representative.
Elaine Edwards was active in her husband’s political
campaigns at the district and state level. She remained at
the family home in Crowley while her husband was in the
House of Representatives, but she answered phone calls at
home on a second line, working with individual constituents
to resolve Social Security and veterans’ requests and relaying
the information to Congressman Edwards’s Washington
office.3
As her husband’s political career developed, Elaine
Edwards participated in a variety of civic and philanthropic
pursuits ranging from the Special Olympics to a project that
raised $1 million for the Crippled Children’s Hospital of
New Orleans.4
Congressman Edwards left the House in May
1972 to serve as governor of Louisiana, where he remained
for a total of four terms.
When longtime Louisiana Senator Allen Joseph Ellender
died on July 27, 1972, Governor Edwards appointed his wife to fill the vacancy. The governor claimed that the
appointment was a “meaningful, symbolic gesture” against
decades of discrimination of women in politics.5
It was
not the first time a woman had received a U.S. Senate seat
in this manner. Almost exactly 35 years earlier, Alabama
Governor Bibb Graves named his wife Dixie to fill Hugo
Black’s Senate seat after he was appointed to the Supreme
Court. Principally, Edwards made the controversial decision
in order to avoid the politically tricky endorsement of a
successor to Ellender, a 35-year Senate veteran, and the
difficulty of finding an interim candidate who would step
down shortly after a full-term successor was elected. Among
the contenders for the seat were three of his gubernatorial
campaign’s top backers and his two brothers.6
Elaine Edwards was initially reluctant to accept the post,
admitting at one point, “I never wanted to be liberated
from sewing, cooking, or even gardening.” Critics charged
that she was merely a “caretaker” or “seat-warmer” who
represented the views of the Louisiana governor’s mansion
in the Senate by consulting Baton Rouge before each
vote.7
The New York Times editors described it as a “hollow
interim appointment” and also decried the fact that
Edwards’s “function … will be to represent other women by
supinely taking orders—and from men at that.” Edwards
conceded, “I’m no U.S. Senator” and said she believed
she would “get along fine” under the guidance of her state
delegation and its dean, Senator Russell Billiu Long.8
After
a brief meeting with President Richard M. Nixon in the
White House, she took the oath of office on August 7,
1972. Asked if she was likely to vote against her husband’s
advice, Edwards replied, “I doubt it.”9
She also pledged not
to run for the full Senate term.
In Congress, Edwards served on the Agriculture and
Forestry Committee and the Public Works Committee. She
joined Minnesota Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr.
in introducing a bill to establish an educational fellowship
in Senator Ellender’s name that appropriated $500,000
in fellowships for low-income high school students and
teachers. She also cosponsored an amendment to the
Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act and another to
increase the allowable amount of outside income for Social
Security recipients. She took particular pride in securing
federal funding for highways in Louisiana, including a
70/30 federally financed toll road. “My proudest moment
was convincing members of the Public Works Committee
to vote funds for a north-south highway to connect the
two east-west interstates in Louisiana,” Edwards said. “Now
the prospects are very real that we can lure much-needed
industry to the central part of the state.”10 In her only floor
speech, Edwards spoke on behalf of a motion to vote on
the proposed Equal Education Opportunities Act, which
would have restricted the use of busing to achieve school
integration. Edwards described the bill as a “reasonable,
just, and adequate remedy at law to help resolve the
critical problems which have arisen from the excessive zeal
and bad judgments of U.S. district court judges in the
exercise of their discretionary powers.”11 In late September
1972, Edwards voted with a slim majority composed of
Republicans and southern Democrats to kill a proposed
Vietnam War fund cutoff which would have halted all
money for U.S. military expenditures.12 On October 3,
Edwards presided over an evening Senate debate in which
a heated confrontation occurred between two of the
chamber’s elder statesmen.13
The senatorial role seemed to suit Elaine Edwards. A
month into her new job she told the Washington Post: “I like
being a Senator very much. I would have liked to have been
able to run and keep the seat this fall, had I not been the first
lady of Louisiana.… But I am going to stay with Ed and do
whatever he’s doing.”14 Acceding to her husband’s wishes,
Edwards resigned her seat on November 13, 1972, in order
to provide Louisiana Senator-elect John Bennett Johnston Jr.
an edge in seniority by finishing the remainder of Ellender’s
term. As she prepared to retire, nine colleagues, including
Henry Martin (Scoop) Jackson of Washington and Senator
Humphrey, delivered tributes to Edwards on the Senate
Floor. “It is unfortunate that Mrs. Edwards will not be in
the Senate for a longer period of time,” Jackson said. “It is
obvious, even during her short tenure, that she has the ability
and capacity to become one of the more influential Members
of this body.”15 Elaine and Edwin Edwards divorced in 1989
after 40 years of marriage. Elaine Edwards retired to Baton
Rouge, where she lived until her death on May 14, 2018.16
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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