'I'm running,' says Edwin Edwards of congressional contest

Former Gov. Edwin Edwards put an end to speculation, declaring Monday that he will run for Congress in Louisiana’s 6th District.
Edwards, 86, served in Congress six years from the 7th District, headquartered in Crowley, before being elected governor, a post he held three times.
Since then he has served 10 years in federal prison, the result of a bribery and extortion conviction, re-married, written a book, fathered a son and been in a short-lived TV reality show.
The seat is vacant because incumbent Bill Cassidy, a Republican, is running for Mary Landrieu’s Senate seat.
Edwards and another Democrat, real estate broker Richard Lieberman of LaPlace, are in the declared field with Republicans Garret Graves, Craig McCulloch, Charles Thomas, Cassie Felder, state Sen. Dan Claitor and Paul Dietzel, III.
Edwards lives in Ascension Parish. The district, based in south Baton Rouge, also includes all or part of East Feliciana, Iberville, Livingston, Pointe Coupee, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. Helena, St. John the Baptist, Terrebonne and West Baton Rouge parishes.
The district, with 358,555 registered voters, is 74 percent white and 33 percent Republican, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, after the Legislature reshaped it in 2010, including sending about 40,000 black residents to a New Orleans-based district.