Fed-Up Voters in Louisiana Wanted a Change. They Drafted an ‘Old Ball Coach.’

As Sid Edwards tells it, he was driving through a gusty storm, with lightning streaking the sky, when he reached a fateful crossroads.

He could turn right — proceed as usual, opening up the weight room at Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge, La., where he was the head football coach. But on this July day, he said, divine intervention steered him in the other direction.

Shoving his doubts aside, he headed toward City Hall, where he handed in paperwork to enter the race to lead Baton Rouge, the state’s capital and second-largest city. He had no money, no staff, no real shot at success — or so it seemed to nearly everyone, including him.

Despite his dim prospects, Mr. Edwards blazed to the front of a crowded field and into a runoff election in December against the two-term incumbent mayor-president, as the position is called.

And then he won. He took office this month.

“I don’t use the word ‘miracle’ loosely,” Mr. Edwards, 61, said in an interview. “I think God wanted me in this position. I think I’m ordained.”

Another, more temporal, explanation: These are tough times for incumbents or politicians perceived as defenders of the status quo, not only in Baton Rouge but worldwide. And in this city, a simmering dissatisfaction with violent crime, fraying infrastructure and a general sense of unchecked decline led voters to oust Sharon Weston Broome, who had 36 years of political experience, and replace her with “just an old ball coach,” as Mr. Edwards described himself.

He had never run for office before, nor did he have experience working in government. Before this election, he went more than eight years without casting a ballot.

Still, he ended up with 54 percent of the vote. He attracted white moderates, who play a decisive role in local elections, and benefited from low turnout in the majority Black areas that had made up Ms. Broome’s base of support. Now, he leads the consolidated government of Baton Rouge and surrounding East Baton Rouge Parish (analogous to a county) with some 4,000 employees serving nearly half a million residents.

Mr. Edwards is the first Republican elected to the position in almost 25 years. Baton Rouge now follows Shreveport and Alexandria, two other Louisiana cities, in electing white Republicans to succeed Black Democrats as mayors in their most recent elections.

“We’re at our wit’s end,” said Coleman Brown, a Republican in Baton Rouge who voted twice for Ms. Broome but backed Mr. Edwards. “He’s a fresh face ready to take a different approach.”

His supporters had bet that government experience only counts for so much. That’s now being put to the test.

A City Defined by Unrealized Potential

Critics have needled Mr. Edwards over his lack of experience and civic engagement. They say his vision amounts to a vague, unsurprising wish list (bolstering local law enforcement, cleaning up the city, tackling homelessness) with little in the way of concrete proposals.

Mr. Edwards conceded that he does not have all the answers. “I’m not a messiah or anything like that,” he said.

Baton Rouge, like the rest of the country, has been cleaved by deep division: racial, economic, partisan, geographic. All of that manifested in a lengthy fight waged by an affluent unincorporated section of the parish to form its own city. The Louisiana Supreme Court cleared the way this spring for the formation of St. George, which will become the state’s fifth most populous city, with nearly 100,000 of the parish’s roughly 450,000 residents.

Many residents believed that Baton Rouge was becoming defined by its unrealized potential. Sure, it has the flagship campuses of Louisiana State University and Southern University, a historically Black institution. It is on the Mississippi River, with a port and an Exxon Mobil refinery that are among the largest in the country.

Still, the population is declining, falling by nearly 2 percent between 2020 and 2023. Parts of Baton Rouge are mired in chronic poverty. Wealthier white families have fled for surrounding parishes or put their children in private school.

Mr. Edwards gave voice to the disappointment and exasperation residents felt, particularly in the white, more affluent and Republican-leaning areas that made up his base of support.

“There’s no reason to come here,” he said, “and a lot of reason to leave.”

An Unexpected Challenge

Until last month, Ms. Broome had never lost an election.

She had served on the Metro Council and in the State Legislature before she had years as mayor-president. She wanted just one more term. “The final four,” she called it. A chance to “finish the job.”

In 2017, when she took office, the parish was in crisis: A devastating flood had displaced many residents, including her, from their homes. Then, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by the Baton Rouge police. The killing set off protests and an ambush attack on law enforcement officers left four mortally wounded.

She led the parish through that and the pandemic, with its surge in violence. She was proud of what was achieved, she said. The murder rate ticked down. And the city invested in programs that sought to address the roots of persistent violence. She was proud of that, too.

She also championed a tax increase that will provide more than $1 billion to improve roadways and ease traffic congestion.

“We were on a trajectory of making things happen,” Ms. Broome said.

Perhaps, she said, some residents did not distinguish between a traffic jam caused by a bad road and one caused by the construction of a better one. There was also lingering animosity over her high-profile opposition to the formation of St. George.

Her biggest re-election threat was widely expected to come from another Democrat.

As for Mr. Edwards? “I was not aware of him,” she said.

200 Wins, and More

Mr. Edwards’s campaign started off small. He wore a borrowed suit. With his first contribution, a check for $300, he ordered $300 worth of yard signs from a print shop, not knowing that the stakes to plant them were not included. He waited for the next donation to buy them.

At a time when voters were frustrated by politics, he appeared to be something different. He was gruff and preferred wearing Istrouma High polo shirts. But he came across as authentic, as someone who did not fit into a tidy partisan box, said Albert L. Samuels, a political science professor at Southern University.

“He’s a Republican, but he’s not a Country Club of Louisiana Republican,” Dr. Samuels said.

Still, his message echoed that of other Republicans — up to a point. He wanted to add 100 police officers and 100 sheriff’s deputies, and make sure those officers received more respect and recognition.

“You can’t police your way out of crime,” Mr. Edwards said, “but it does help” — but so does investing in early childhood education, he would add, and creating jobs and opportunity.

He often brought up the neighborhoods of North Baton Rouge, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden in the parish. He repeatedly told the story of a 15-year-old student gunned down last New Year’s Day, and how that prodded him to run. Many of his supporters ventured there only for quick trips to Tony’s Seafood or Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

A few weeks before the election, Mr. Edwards claimed his 200th career win in football, a milestone covered in The Advocate, the Baton Rouge newspaper. And as others criticized his lack of government experience, Mr. Edwards argued that his years as a coach counted for something, too. “Leadership’s leadership,” he said.

Many agreed, believing that coaching required forging cohesion, devising strategy, corralling rebellious teenagers and responding to unanticipated hurdles.

“This is not his first rodeo,” said Jonathan Pixley, a student of Mr. Edwards’s about 30 years ago and now himself a basketball coach.

Mr. Pixley has no doubts that Mr. Edwards faces a steep learning curve, but he is equally certain his old coach will figure it out. “He will do what he has done with any program he has ever coached,” he said. “He’s going to win.”

The Job Begins

There are also frequent reminders that getting elected might have been the easy part.

The police chief called Mr. Edwards’s cellphone on a recent afternoon. There had been another shooting, killing one man and wounding a 10-year-old boy. They were in an S.U.V., which crashed into a house on Pawnee Avenue.

“That’s my neighborhood,” he said.

The problems that he raised during the campaign are now his to confront. Among the more pressing issues, he has to pick up the negotiations over distribution of tax revenue and transitioning services to the new government of St. George.

Supporters in the new city expected him to be more favorable to their cause than Ms. Broome would have been.

And some of the state’s most influential people are vying for his ear, eager to offer suggestions on who to hire for his administration.

“He’s going to have to hit the ground running,” Ms. Broome said.

Mr. Edwards said he was ready for the painful choices and for the people he would surely make angry. He promised to be evenhanded, and not stray from his mission: Make Baton Rouge safer — a “vibrant, shining, sparkly city,” and not just in its wealthiest corners.

How would he get there? That was far less clear.

“Stay tuned,” he said.