Louisiana Republican Party Chairman Louis Gurvich told Breitbart News on Saturday that Democrat incumbent Gov. John Bel Edwards “is really a leftist” who has put the state “on a downward trajectory.”

“We’ve had a downward trajectory since the day John Bel Edwards got the governorship back,” Gurvich told Matt Boyle, Washington political editor of Breitbart News on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday.

“He’s pro Second Amendment, so he says, and he’s pro-life. You wave those things out in front of the public, you promise everybody ‘I’m not going to raise your taxes, I’m going to reform the government,’ and as soon as you get in, you break your promise. We’ve had the biggest tax increases in the history of the state. We’ve had absolutely no governmental reform,” Gurvich added.

Edwards faces self-made Republican businessman Eddie Rispone in a runoff general election on Saturday. The most recent polls show the pair in a statistical tie.

President Trump held a rally in support of Rispone in Monroe, Louisiana last week, and is scheduled to hold another rally with Rispone in Bossier City, Louisiana on Thursday.

“The claims that a Democrat –again he’s a radical leftist–that he’s pro-Second Amendment and pro-life are just not true, if you look at his record as governor, when San Francisco labeled the NRA a terrorist organization, John Bel Edwards was nowhere to be found,” host Boyle noted.

“I trust the Duck Dynasty guys when it comes to the Second Amendment… I saw them at the rally in Monroe. They’ve made it very clear. John Bel Edwards is a radical leftist when it comes to Second Amendment,” Boyle said.

“You have plenty of opportunity to defend the Second Amendment, but when it’s attacked you don’t do anything,” Gurvich said of Edwards.

Gurvich criticized Edwards on pro-life issues as well.

“If you’re right-to-life, why is so much of your money coming from the Democrat Governors’s Association that is just radically pro-choice, and trending towards infanticide?” Gurvich asked of Edwards.

“If you look at immigration He’s given over the course of the year $16 million to illegal aliens in welfare. I know it’s an ad that Eddie Rispone is running,”Boyle noted.

“When you do things like that, you exacerbate the problem. Illegals find out about it,” Gurvich noted, adding they come to the state in higher numbers due to the economic incentives.

Gurvich criticized Edwards as a tax and spend Democrat who is hurting the Louisiana economy.

“He’s not a moderate Democrat. I don’t know if such an animal exists.The cost of our government has grown 25 percent in four years. Bernie Sanders could only marvel at that level of left wing accomplishment,” Gurvich noted, adding that “we have the second highest income tax . . . we also have a high sales tax.”

Gurvich noted Edwards, a trial attorney himself, has turned the state into a haven for lawsuits.

“The law suits, the litigation, it’s killing our major industry. Louisiana has fallen off the cliff in terms of oil production,” Gurvich added.

“This governor, he really is a leftist. There is no vision for doing precisely the things a poor state in need of industrial development needs, he’s precisely the wrong guy for all these things,” Gurvich said.

“The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal says Louisiana is “The Trial Lawyers State.” John Bel Edwards has encouraged law suits that have lost jobs” Boyle noted.

“It’s destroyed the southwestern part of the state. Our industrial foundation is based on oil and gas. If you’re going to sacrifice that to a couple hundred of your trial lawyer buddies, you’re doing a general disservice to the people of Louisiana,” Gurvich said.

Edwards has been “blocking all of these economic successes the rest of the country has seen” under the Trump administration, according to Gurvich.

“You can figure the cost of having John Bel Edwards in your governorship quite easily,” he continued.

“The problem is our personal income has grown at half the level of the rest of the country. You figure John Bel Edwards had a lot to do with that,” Gurvich noted.

“Louisiana has not met the standards of growth of the rest of the country. That’s the cost. It’s a measurable cost. It’s in the billions of dollars in Louisiana. That’s the cost of having this man as governor,” Gurvich concluded.

You can listen to the full interview here: