Democrats’ efforts to impeach President Donald Trump have moved front and center in Louisiana’s upcoming gubernatorial election, making it the first place in the nation where the issue’s resonance with voters will be tested.

The incumbent Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards has not come out in opposition to what his party is doing nationally, but rather is brushing aside questions about impeachment, calling it a “distraction.”

But his chief GOP rival Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-LA), who’s aiming to get into a November runoff with Edwards in October’s jungle primary, is hammering the Democrats and Edwards over their efforts to impeach Trump.

“It’s insanity,” Abraham said in an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel this weekend. “I’m a medical doctor and I can tell you they’ve gone off the chart with lack of logic, lack of objective data, I mean they truly are going insane.”

Edwards, who has tried to portray himself as a “moderate” Democrat who can work with Republicans and President Trump, downplayed his party’s efforts to wipe out Trump with impeachment in an interview with the Associated Press last week.

Edwards said:

What we know is the House has started an impeachment inquiry, the Senate will never vote with a two-thirds vote to remove the president, and so what it seems to me this is at least a distraction that will keep the federal government from actually governing. And you know, it’s hard enough for them to do that anyway.

But Edwards did not criticize his party for doing what they are doing, and did not say he disagreed with the Democrats moving forward with impeachment. Abraham, when asked to react to this weak statement from Edwards, ripped his Democrat opponent.

“No he’s not going to do it [criticize Democrats’ impeachment inquiry of Trump]—he’s definitely in the same boat they are,” Abraham said. “He does have fundraisers with Gov. Northam in Virginia who wants to kill babies after they’ve been born. He does have those people Stacey Abrams and all come down to New Orleans and have rallies. Maxine [Waters]—it’s just crazy. He’s not going to distance himself from the crazy left, because he is one of those that believes or thinks he believes in that stuff. He wants their money, too, so he’s going to keep doing whatever it takes to make sure those funds come from the Democratic Party.”

Louisiana’s upcoming governor and down-ticket races are the first elections anywhere in America for statewide offices since Democrats launched impeachment proceedings against President Trump. The election takes place on Saturday, Oct. 12, less than two weeks from now.

If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the top two vote-getters will head to a runoff a month later on Nov. 16. In other words, before the House Democrats even return from their two-week-long congressional recess, voters in Louisiana will head to the polls to decide who they want their next governor to be–and could reject Edwards as a result of his party’s push for impeachment of Trump. Early voting is ongoing in the state and will continue until Oct. 12.

For that to happen, however, the GOP needs to force a runoff with Edwards by keeping the incumbent governor under 50 percent. And in the runoff, most Republicans in Louisiana believe the GOP candidate needs to be Abraham rather his GOP opponent and self-funder Eddie Rispone.

Abraham’s latest interview with Breitbart News comes as the Washington Post uncovered an Edwards speech this past summer in which the Democrat governor bashed people who want to “Make America Great Again.”

“Yeah, I know there’s some people who say it’s time to make America great again,” Edwards said in a June speech to the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church in New Orleans. “Understand this: There is no greatness that is not rooted in goodness. And we need to be good people.”

After playing the clip of Edwards bashing Trump supporters, Abraham responded by saying that Edwards is as far left as any other national Democrat—no matter how he claims to present himself back home.

“What he’s doing is what you just said: He’s calling everybody, including the president and his supporters, this in my opinion is one of the greatest presidents in history—he’s calling them bad people,” Abraham said. “That’s what the left does, that’s what the far-left does, they demonize anybody that does not agree with their crazy rhetoric. Again, our current governor can say what he wants as far was wanting to be bipartisan, wanting to work toward the middle, you see it in his policy, you hear it in his rhetoric, and you just heard it on that broadcast.”

LISTEN TO RALPH ABRAHAM ON BREITBART NEWS SUNDAY: