Quite possibly. This looks a whole lot like a nuke the Times dropped on John Bel Edwards.

Oh, my.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, is stressing his family tradition in his repeated pitches to voters as he seeks reelection, particularly in the field of law and order and the direct line of four generations who held the sheriff’s badge in Tangipahoa Parish.

“One of the greatest influences in my life that made me who I am today was growing up in a law enforcement family,” said an advertisement this summer for Mr. Edwards‘ reelection campaign. “My father was a sheriff, my grandfather and great-grandfathers were sheriffs, one of my brothers is a sheriff and another is a police chief.”

The governor’s personal record does not reflect racist votes or comments, but there are roots to the Edwards’ family tree and elements of its law-and-order approach that his campaign has not highlighted.

We’ve heard something about this, and it isn’t a big surprise – because that’s an OLD political family from out in the country, and it only really means one thing in Louisiana, you know.

But here we go.

Wait – stop – before we go any further, there should be some theme music. It’s that kind of day, so…

You may continue…

Mr. Edwards often refers to “four generations” of Edwardses, a timeframe that includes Frank Millard Edwards, the governor’s grandfather who was a state lawmaker in addition to Tangipahoa Parish sheriff and whose black-and-white photo is used in the Edwards campaign’s “family tradition” advertisements.

Right. Remember this ad?

That’s Grandpa Frank in the black and white picture. In a John Bel Edwards ad.

At the time we thought it was notable that this guy, who’s a Democrat with nothing whatever to say about far-left crap like impeachment and who had the unmitigated gall to call Donald Trump a lunch-counter segregationist for the “racist” sin of trashing the crooked anti-American fraud Ilhan Omar when she richly deserved it, would be running TV ads with black and white pictures of country sheriffs in Louisiana.

Grandpa Frank was the sheriff in Tangipahoa Parish from 1928-48. Those were not particularly progressive times there. Then from 1956-60 he was in the state Senate, and the results at that time were, well…

While in Baton Rouge, in 1956, Frank Millard Edwards voted for legislation that would have kept state schools segregated in violation of the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which mandated segregation at all athletic and “public” events such as dances, and required white teachers for white students.

Another bill that earned Frank Millard Edwards’ approval would have classified donated blood. In July 1958, records show, the governor’s grandfather voted for legislation that would have required donated blood to be labeled “Caucasian,” “Negroid” or “Mongoloid” to indicate the race of the donor and require blood recipients to be informed of its origin except in emergencies.

Oh.

Well.

It gets worse, because there’s a family history going back a lot further than Grandpa Frank. The whole piece is well worth reading, if not memorizing.

Including the fact that the Edwardses owned FIFTY-SEVEN slaves according to the 1860 census.

That’s a lot of slaves. They would have been well within the top one percent of slaveowners in Louisiana with numbers like that.

This stuff matters because the party Edwards is a member of, membership that he has managed to duck time and time again even though it’s clear he buys into a whole lot of their platform based on the big-government, free-stuff agenda he’s governed according to, won’t shut up about reparations for slavery.

Well, fine. If we’re going to have that discussion it’s time for the national Democrats to cut this guy loose. Either he’s the personification of “white privilege” and the avatar for how America’s wealth is tainted because it’s the product of slave labor, or it’s time to shut up about reparations.

Can’t have both.

As for Edwards, what’s his position on reparations?

Not. Particularly. Well. Defined.

This was Monday…

Ahhhh, eerrrrr.

Hasn’t studied the issue. Wonder why.

Maybe now this guy will actually catch some tough questions about who he is and what he represents. Because from our perspective nothing much has changed. He comes from a family and a background where plundering the work product of others is just what you do, and in return there’s a pittance of subsistence for the subjects under his charge.

Ruin the economy and give the folks on the plantation Medicaid and food stamps for their trouble.

We’ll bet there’s even more about all this. These records tend to be quite well-kept if you know where to look, so we’ll do a little digging and find out what else is out there on ol’ John Bel’s “Family Tradition.”