Fourth Place in 1971
In 1971, Davis entered another crowded Democratic gubernatorial primary field with new political prospects, but he finished in fourth place with 138,756 ballots (11.8 percent).
In a runoff election held in December 1971, U.S. Representative Edwin Washington Edwards of Crowley in Acadia Parish defeated then state Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., of Shreveport for the party nomination. That vote was close: Edwards, 584,262 (50.2 percent) to Johnston's 579,774 (49.8 percent). Edwards then beat Republican David C. Treen in the state general election held on February 1, 1972. By that time, Davis' days as a politician were clearly behind him.
Toward the end of his life, longtime Democrat Davis endorsed at least two Republican candidates: state Representative Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge for the U.S. Senate against Democrat Mary Landrieu of New Orleans in 1996 and the reelection of Governor Murphy J. "Mike" Foster, Jr., who faced little opposition in 1999 from African-American Democratic Congressman William "Bill" Jefferson of New Orleans.
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