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ULTRAMAN VH
09-15-2006, 09:59 AM
(AP)
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards gives the thumbs-up to his supporters from his bus as he leaves a campaign stop at a middle school in Rochester, N.H., in January 2004. Edwards would eventually be defeated in the primary, and become John Kerry’s running mate as the vice president on the 2004 Democratic ticket. Printer Friendly | PDF | Email | digg
Bill Sammon, The Examiner
Sep 12, 2006 5:00 AM (3 days ago)
Current rank: # 156 of 6,506 articles

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Don’t tell John Edwards that the crowded contest for the Democratic presidential nomination of 2008 is being dominated by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I don’t think it’s true,” says Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential candidate of 2004, in an interview with The Examiner.

“If Hillary Clinton runs for president, she will be a significant factor in the nomination, there’s no question about that,” Edwards concedes over soft drinks in a bustling restaurant.

But then he adds: “I would say exactly the same thing about several other people.”

Such is the brave talk of the only person to have beaten Clinton in a presidential preference poll of Iowa Democrats, which was conducted in June by the Des Moines Register. Garnering 30 percent of respondents, Edwards bested not only Clinton (26) and his old boss, Sen. John Kerry (12), but also Iowa’s own governor, Tom Vilsack (10).

“There’s a lot of residual goodwill and loyalty from the time I spent there campaigning for president,” explains Edwards, who eventually abandoned that campaign to become Kerry’s running mate.

The boyishly handsome 53-year-old has returned to Iowa so frequently since his 2004 defeat that his oft-used sound bite about being the “son of a mill worker” has become a punch line.

“I go there now and tell jokes about being the son of a mill worker, and everybody laughs. That’s because the last time around, I spent half my time talking about my bio. But now I don’t have to.

“You know why? These people know me,” he says. “So instead I talk about what should be happening in the world, what should be happening at home.”

Edwards caught another break last month, when the Democratic Party moved up the primary election date for his home state of South Carolina to Jan. 29, 2008, or just 15 days after Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. This compression of the political calendar was pushed through over the strenuous objections of Clinton confidante Harold Ickes.

“Anybody running for president of the United States has some built-in advantages and disadvantages,” Edwards shrugs. “I was born in South Carolina, and I did win the South Carolina primary in 2004.”

He says: “I know from my experience in 2004 that the early states — in 2004 certainly — were not just dominant, they were controlling.”

With that in mind, Edwards is also spending lots of time in Nevada, the other state that has been moved into the first wave of contests. He is making inroads with organized labor in the marginally Republican state, where caucuses will be Jan. 19, 2008, displacing New Hampshire as the nation’s second test of presidential mettle.

This careful strategy of building a plan for success is vintage Edwards, who made millions as a wildly successful trial lawyer before serving as a single-term senator from North Carolina, which ended 20 months ago. Since then, he has been courting Big Labor, raising money for fellow Democrats, traveling abroad to burnish his foreign-policy credentials and running an anti-poverty center here at the University of North Carolina.

“People have underestimated John Edwards for more than two decades — and frequently they’ve been millions of dollars poorer,” says John Hook, president of the John Locke Foundation, a think tank in Raleigh, N.C. “I think he and his advisers have done an excellent job of reading the jury pool. They kind of know where the Democratic Party is right now.”

Hook says many Democrats are having second thoughts about the idea of nominating Clinton, who is widely regarded as a polarizing figure.

“They’re all nervous about her at the top of the ticket,” he says. “And so they’re looking at who the other options are.”

As one of those options, Edwards is wasting no time positioning himself as more liberal and more upbeat than Clinton.

For example, while liberals grumble over Clinton’s refusal to endorse a specific timetable for pulling troops out of Iraq, Edwards is calling for 40,000 troops to be withdrawn immediately and the rest within 18 months. And while both Clinton and Edwards voted to authorize the Iraq war, only Edwards is repudiating that vote.

“I was wrong,” he says emphatically, as if in atonement.

Edwards said he is hoping such candor helps him improve on his second-place showing in the Democratic primaries of 2004.

“It will be a battle of leadership and being of presidential caliber — and of having a set of convictions that Democratic primary voters agree with,” he says. “That will control who the nominee’s going to be.”

Though Edwards disagrees with President Bush on just about everything, he criticizes his own party for savaging the commander in chief.

“Our side spends a lot of time bashing George Bush,” he laments. “You follow Democrats around an event and you’ll hear the loudest, most passionate cheers go up when something nasty is said about Bush.

“We need to get past that. The question is not George Bush. The question is what kind of America do we want to live in? What kind of world do we want to live in?”

But in 2004, Edwards himself was accused of being nasty with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney, by pointing out during a debate that “they have a gay daughter.”

The daughter, Mary, fired back on Fox News Sunday in May of this year.

“It was such a cheap and blatant political ploy on behalf of Senator Edwards,” she said.

The Cheney family was further insulted when Kerry used one of his own debates to talk about “Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian.”

Mary Cheney suspects the remarks by Kerry and Edwards were no accident.

“They wanted to make sure that everybody who might have a problem with it knew that Dick Cheney had a gay daughter,” she said. “It was a pretty sleazy thing to do.”

Edwards, responding publicly to those comments for the first time, insists he was just “trying to be nice” about a topic that the vice president himself had addressed in the past. He denies any coordinated effort with Kerry to highlight Mary’s sexuality.

“All I did was acknowledge that the way they had dealt with it in their family was a very positive thing,” Edwards says. “To this day — to this day — I have never talked to John Kerry about this.”

Edwards is unfazed by the prospect of running against Kerry for the second consecutive presidential election cycle. If anything, he seems eager to resume the old rivalry the two men put on hold when they joined forces in 2004.

“I have deep respect for John Kerry,” Edwards says. “And that’s exactly what I’ll say — if I’m running and he’s running.”

This time around, however, the roles may be reversed.

“Edwards came out of 2004 in significantly better shape than Kerry did,” says Charlie Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report.

“Kerry came out as damaged merchandise — badly damaged merchandise,” he says. “But Edwards was pretty untarnished.”



Johnny Reid Edwards


1953 » Born in Seneca, S.C., son of a mill worker


1971 » Graduates from North Moore High School, Robbins, N.C.


1974 » Graduates from North Carolina State University, Raleigh


1977 » Law degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


1977 » Marries Elizabeth Anania. The couple will eventually have four children.


1978 » Associate at Dearborn & Ewing in Nashville, Tenn.


1981 » Associate at Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove in Raleigh


1984 » Makes partner


1993 » Co-founds Edwards & Kirby LLP in Raleigh

1996 » Eldest child, Wade, 16, killed in car accident


1997 » Wins the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history, $25 million


1998 » Elected to U.S. Senate, defeating Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth


2003 » Launches presidential campaign


2004 » Named vice presidential running mate by Sen. John Kerry


2004 » Wife Elizabeth diagnosed with breast cancer


Edwards’ positions on the issues


Abortion

Believes women have a right to abortion. Opposes partial-birth abortion except to save the life of the mother.


Gay marriage

Opposes gay marriage, but also opposes a constitutional ban.


Housing

Wants to give out a million housing vouchers so poor people can move into nicer neighborhoods.


Immigration

Opposes any guest-worker program until the borders have been secured.


Iraq

Voted to authorize Iraq war in 2003, but now says, “I was wrong.” Wants 40,000 troops out of Iraq now and the rest within 18 months.


Poverty

Wants to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.50 an hour and create a million temporary, government-subsidized jobs.


Taxes

Opposed Bush tax cuts for Americans making more than $200,000.


America Conservative Union rating (2005)

10 percent conservative


Americans for Democratic Action rating (lifetime)

88 percent liberal


What observers are saying

David Yepsen

Political columnist

Des Moines Register

PRO » “He’s doing everything right here. He hasn’t quit running, he comes back, he pops up at all the right events.”


CON » “It’s still pretty early and that may be a problem. How well does he wear with a long road yet to go?”


Charlie Cook

Editor

Cook Political Report

PRO » “He has strong skills as a candidate, a good fundraising base. And it’s important to have been around the track before.”


CON » “One of his biggest weaknesses in 2004 was his relative inexperience in government — and he’s not much more experienced today than he was then.”


Larry Sabato

Political scientist,

University of Virginia

PRO » “He will have enough money for the race, and he has picked an issue — poverty — that resonates well with Democrats.”


CON » “He lost his home state — and indeed his own home county — in North Carolina in November 2004.”


After studying the polls, consulting the handicappers and interviewing the candidates themselves, The Examiner has winnowed a list of some 30 potential presidential contenders down to 10. The result is Meet the Next President, a two-week series of in-depth profiles of the 10 people most likely to become the next leader of the free world. It's a behind-the-scenes look at Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, front-runners and dark horses in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes - even before the 2006 midterms have been decided. With presidential campaigns starting earlier each election cycle, why wait?

bsammon@dcexaminer.com

FORD
09-15-2006, 10:44 AM
The two guys who are out there giving the best speeches these days are Gore & Edwards. Not to mention both are actually working on the causes they advocate.

A Gore Edwards ticket would combine the best of the two previous Democratic tickets, both of which actually WON their elections.

Edwards might be able to win on his own, but I believe his chances are better as Gore's VP.

Nickdfresh
09-15-2006, 02:45 PM
I could live with that ticket.