[1] As a businessman with an interest in politics and a State Senator for a brother, he attracted the attention of the powerful Hudson County Democratic machine.

The campaign became a proxy for Frank Hague's struggle with Nugent for state power, and Edwards emerged victorious with 53.6 percent of the vote.

Despite Republican victories throughout the northeast in reaction to Wilson's unpopularity, nationwide labor and racial unrest, and anarchist terrorism, Edwards prevailed narrowly.

[2] With the exception of a Camden trolly strike, the New Jersey campaign focused on the single issue of the prohibition of alcohol, following the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in January 1919 and the passage of the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28.

[2] His victory was attributed to an urban political revolt by Catholic and ethnic immigrants, overcoming those groups' dissatisfaction with Wilson's proposal for the League of Nations.

Historian Warren E. Stickle has referred to the election as the "Edwards Revolution," as it significantly reshaped New Jersey politics for the twentieth century and served a prelude to the New Deal coalition.

"[2] He carried the race over Frelinghuysen by a convincing margin, dramatically reversing President Harding's landslide victory by re-establishing and enlarging his 1919 coalition.

[2] His opponent, Hamilton Fish Kean, however, came out publicly for modification of the Volstead Act and, in early October, declared himself as opposed to Prohibition as Edwards.

Though the Anti-Saloon League revoked its endorsement of Kean, he won in a landslide, helped by a general feeling of prosperity associated with Republican President Calvin Coolidge and rural opposition to the more urban Democratic coalition.