Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone sat down with Jim Engster on Talk Louisiana this morning in a rare public interview where he opined about his quest to unseat Governor Edwards.
Rispone was the first Republican to challenge Edwards, announcing his bid back in late 2018. When asked if he still has a taste for the campaign trail, he said: “I think my wife took care of that, no, this was it.”
He says he plans to remain active in Louisiana politics through support for candidates who share his views on education.
Rispone received some flack for running a blitz of attack ads against Republican Ralph Abraham late in the primary. Rispone was asked if that soured his relationship with some Abraham supporters, and he said: “That had to happen at the very end, because their campaign was doing some things, had a super PAC that was spreading untruths about me and it just got to the point where we had to do something different.”
Abraham struggled to raise funds during the campaign, while Rispone sunk a reported 14 million of his own money into the race.
Rispone’s connection to GOP mega-donor Lane Grigsby was the basis of many Edwards’ attacks, with the Governor even calling Rispone Grigsby’s “puppet”. Rispone called Grigbys’ influence a media exaggeration.
“That’s definitely overplayed, that’s Lane. Lane was so busy doing his own thing, he would just check in every once in a while to see how I was doing personally,” said Rispone.
