Ed Renwick

Edward Francis "Ed" Renwick (Professor, pollster, and political analyst)
Born	June 26, 1938 Joliet, Illinois
Died	March 6, 2020 (aged 81) New Orleans, Louisiana
Political Party	Democrat
Occupation	Professor, political analyst
Spouse	Polly Matthews Renwick (married c. 1974-2020, his death) Parents: Frank and Frances Renwick Alma mater: Georgetown University University of Arizona
Religion	Roman Catholic

Edward Francis Renwick, known as Ed Renwick (June 26, 1938 – March 6, 2020), was a political scientist whose principal position was a professor and the former director of the Institute of Politics at Loyola University in his adopted city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Career

Renwick was born in Joliet, Illinois near Chicago to Frank and Framces Renwick. He received a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and then took post-graduate studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson. . In 1967, he moved to Louisiana to complete research for his Ph.D. dissertation about the colorful Earl Kemp Long, Louisiana's first three-term governor who served nonconsecutive terms from 1939-1940, 1948-1952, and 1956-1960). After completing his graduate studies, Renwich remained in New Orleans as a professor at the Roman Catholic Loyola University in New Orleans and its Institute of Politics. He also became a popular political analyst for WWL-TV, the CBS affiliate in New Orleans. A Democrat, Renwich said that he could not leave Louisiana because the state is "heaven for a political junkie".

According to Renwick:

"We're so divided in Louisiana -- by ethnicity, by race, by religion, by language, by geography. You have the French and the non-French, the Catholics and the Protestants, North and South, black and white, liberal and conservative. Having all these different forces makes the politics lively. It's never boring here. ... Because Louisiana is so divided, it's difficult to put together 51 percent of a legislative body, and if you're going to get anything accomplished, you have to do that.

In the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Renwick attributed the defeat of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush to the Reform Party candidate, also from Texas, Ross Perot. Renwick said that the winning candidate Bill Clinton ran little better among white voters than had the 1988 Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. "Perot gutted the Republican vote," Renwick told the organization, the Council for a Better Louisiana. Renwick took the view that Bush would have been the alternate choice of the Independent dissenters that year and that the Perot candidacy enabled Clinton to win the election with 43 percent of the popular vote.

Honors

In 1999, Renwick was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, the ancestral home of the Long dynasty. The Renwick Lecture Series at Loyola University is named in his honor.

Peter Burns, a political science professor at Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California, said of his mentor, Renwick: "For most of the last fifty years, there are few political events in the state or the city that didn’t have Ed Renwick’s fingerprints on them." Burns continued, "very time Ed walked into a New Orleans restaurant, half the people in the place would point and whisper and say, ‘There’s Ed Renwick,' The other half would get up from their table and ask him who was going to win the election and which bottle of wine they should order.”

David Marcello, a fellow and board member of the Institute of Politics, said of Renwick: "He was a very no-nonsense guy. People who listened to him for his analysis, people who hired him as a pollster knew that they were getting the straight stuff".