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By Jeremy Diamond, CNN

updated 5:37 PM EST, Wed December 31, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- As national Democrats are jumping at the chance to sink Rep. Steve Scalise, Louisiana Democrats are throwing the House majority whip a buoy.

Democrats from the Bayou State, including a current congressman and two former statewide elected officials, are giving Scalise some much needed cover after his position in the Republican leadership was suddenly thrown up in the air Monday when his office confirmed an eyebrow-raising speech he gave to a David Duke-founded white supremacist group in 2002.

Former U.S. Senator Bennett Johnston, a Democrat who beat back a challenge from Duke in 1990, said even he didn't know that EURO as "a racist organization."

"I may disagree with Representative Scalise but a racist he is not. Nor would he have been stupid enough to knowingly address a racist group," Johnston said in a statement published in the Times-Picayune. "While it is sometimes fun to see Republicans in trouble, you'd be wrong to blame Representative Steve Scalise for being racist on account of addressing a (EURO) meeting."

Johnston is now a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and a strong supporter of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

RELATED: Louisiana pols offer bipartisan backing for Steve Scalise

And former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat who beat out Duke for the governorship in 1991, also ran to Scalise's defense.

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Louisiana Dems defend Scalise