When paired with his balancing of the wrecked budget left by his Republican predecessor, Bobby Jindal, and his moves to protect working families, like his expansion of Medicaid or pay raises for teachers, Mr. Edwards is a heterodox mix that makes him ideologically and culturally palatable enough to attract substantial support from the sort of Louisianans whose support for Bill Clinton won him the state during his presidential runs in 1992 and 1996, but who have since been swayed by Republican positions on wedge issues.

The lingering influence of the state’s more malicious 1990s coalition, however, equally influenced the turnout of liberal whites and people of color. They voted this weekend with vivid memories of the dark pull of former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, David Duke, who won about 60 percent of the white vote in the 1991 gubernatorial race.

He didn’t lose to a rising star in the Democratic Party nor a trusted veteran. He lost to the womanizing, infamously corrupt Gov. Edwin Edwards. “Vote for the crook. It’s important,” pro-Edwards bumper stickers read at the time.

John Bel Edwards is no crook. But he’s never been the avant-garde progressive who many in the national party base have come to not just hope for in candidates, but to expect. With the high stakes set in this race of Mr. Rispone — who was endorsed by Mr. Duke — serving as the alternative to Mr. Edwards, activists, everyday voters and political consultants alike weren’t shy about making the recent historical connections.

A radio ad paid for by BOLD, the Black Organization for Leadership Development, and voiced by a New Orleans councilman, Jay H. Banks, asked, “What’s the difference between David Duke, Eddie Rispone and Donald Trump?” Mr. Banks then answers: “The only difference is that Rispone will be governor if you don’t stop him. These people are telling you every day that they do not care about you or anyone who looks like you.”

(Mr. Edwards, for his part, said his campaign wasn’t involved and he called BOLD asking them to stop running the ads.)

Nonetheless, in the days leading up to the election, Mr. Duke himself appeared on the radio to reiterate his allegiance to Mr. Rispone, to Mr. Trump — who infamously struggled to forthrightly denounce Mr. Duke as a presidential candidate — and to defend his own legacy. “People say, ‘He’s irrelevant and he has no impact and all of these other things’,” he said, reminding listeners of the “landslide of white voters” who cast ballots for him. “There’s no question that I made an impact on politics” and, “I’m proud of that.”