Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:04, 29 June 2006

Johnny Reid "John" Edwards (born June 10, 1953), was the Democratic 2004 nominee for Vice President, and a one-term former Democratic Senator from North Carolina who is widely considered a potential Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential election.

Edwards was a successful plaintiffs' attorney before entering politics. He defeated the incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina's 1998 Senate election and during his six-year term sought the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election based on a populist message.

He eventually became the Democratic candidate for Vice President, becoming the running mate of the presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. After Kerry lost the election to the incumbent George W. Bush, Edwards formed the One America Committee and was appointed director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is also now a consultant to an investment bank in New York.

Early life and education

Edwards was born on June 10, 1953, to Wallace R. Edwards and Kathryn Juanita Wade in Seneca, South Carolina. The family moved soon after Edwards's birth to Robbins, North Carolina, where his father worked in a textile mill and his mother was a postal employee. Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He first attended Clemson University and later transferred to North Carolina State University when his family moved to North Carolina.

Edwards graduated with a bachelor's degree in textile technology in 1974, and later earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both with honors. While at UNC, he met fellow law student Elizabeth Anania. They married in 1977.

Legal career

Both Edwards and his wife began private practice with law firms in Nashville, Tennessee. Edwards became an associate at the prominent law firm of Dearborn & Ewing in 1978, doing primarily trial work, defending a major Nashville bank and other corporate clients. He was widely recognized by the senior partners at Dearborn & Ewing as a future legal star, based on the exceptional quality of his work, both in and out of the courtroom. The Edwards family (John, Elizabeth, and son Wade) returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh.

Edwards and his wife Elizabeth have had four children. Their first two, Wade and Cate, were born soon after John and Elizabeth's marriage. In 1996, their 16-year-old son, Wade, was killed in a freak car accident; in remembrance of his son, Edwards donated a large computer lab to his son's school, Broughton High School in Raleigh, NC, which provides technology access to Broughton students, particularly those who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. He also wears Wade's Outward Bound pin on his suit jacket. Following Wade's death, Edwards and his wife chose to have children again: Emma Claire, born in 1998, and Jack, born in 2000. The Edwards family now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Before entering politics, Edwards was a successful personal injury trial attorney. He represented families and children that had allegedly been wrongly injured by negligent corporations and government entities, or by medical malpractice. Edwards made his personal fortune through his trial successes and his 2003 financial disclosure forms showed a total net worth between $12.8 and $60 million. Edwards was criticized for paying himself mostly through subchapter S corporate dividends, rather than a salary, to take advantage of a tax-law loophole that allowed him to avoid paying $591,000 in Medicare taxes; Edwards claimed that he chose the subchapter S structure to protect his assets from liability.

Edwards's first important case was a 1984 medical malpractice lawsuit. In that case, Edwards won a $3.7 million verdict on behalf of his client who suffered permanent brain and nerve damage after a doctor prescribed a drug overdose of anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse. In 1985, Edwards obtained a $5.75 million settlement in a cerebral palsy case for medical malpractice during childbirth. This established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine if patient understood risks of particular procedure.

The biggest case of his legal career was a 1997 product liability lawsuit against Sta-Rite, the manufacturer of a defective pool drain cover. The case involved a Cary, North Carolina girl, Valerie Lakey, who was disemboweled by the suction power of the pool drain pump when she sat on an open pool drain whose protective cover other children at the pool had removed, after the municipality had failed to install the cover properly. Despite 12 prior suits with similar claims, Sta-Rite continued to make and sell drain covers lacking warnings. The jury awarded $25 million, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. Fellow lawyers and law students crowded the courtroom to hear Edwards' closing arguments. He spoke to the jury for two straight hours without referring to notes. It was an emotional appeal that made reference to his son, Wade, who had been killed shortly before testimony began in the trial. The company settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating punitive damages, rather than risk appeal. For their part in this case, Edwards and (law partner David Kirby) earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's national award for public service.

In December 2003, during his presidential campaign, Edwards (with John Auchard) published Four Trials, a biographical book focusing on some cases from his legal career.

Senate term

Both the success of the Lakey case and his son's death (Edwards had hoped his son would eventually join him in private law practice) prompted Edwards to leave the legal profession and seek public office. A Democrat, Edwards won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998 against the favored incumbent Republican, Lauch Faircloth.

During President Bill Clinton's 1999 impeachment trial in the Senate. Edwards was responsible for the deposition of witnesses Monica Lewinsky and fellow Democrat Vernon Jordan; Clinton was acquitted on a party-line vote.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was reported to be on Democratic nominee Al Gore's vice presidential nominee "short list" (along with Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gore's eventual pick). In November 2000, People magazine named Edwards as its choice for the "sexiest politician alive." Edwards served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary.

Before the 2004 Senate election, Edwards announced his retirement from the Senate and supported Erskine Bowles, former White House Chief of Staff, as the successor to his seat; Bowles, however, was defeated by Republican Richard Burr in the election. Political pundit, Larry Sabato opined at the time that Edwards chose not to run for reelection because of the substantial risk of losing his seat in a state where he was polling somewhat poorly. A Fox News poll on the day of the election, however, showed that Edwards would have defeated Burr by a 53 percent — 47 percent margin.

2004 presidential campaign

Edwards unofficially began his presidential campaign as early as 2001, when he began to seek speaking engagements in Iowa, the site of the nation's first party caucuses. On January 2, 2003, he announced formation of an exploratory committee, allowing him to begin fundraising while not officially campaigning. On September 15, 2003, Edwards unofficially announced his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (a news and political satire show), thus fulfilling a promise he made as a guest during TDS's coverage of the 2002 midterm Elections. The next morning, Edwards made the announcement official from his hometown, Robbins, North Carolina. He declined to run for reelection to the Senate in 2004. Edwards' campaign was chaired by North Carolina Democratic activist Ed Turlington.

As Edwards had been building support for a presidential bid essentially since his election to the Senate, he led the initial campaign fundraising, amassing over $7 million during the first quarter of 2003, more than half of which came from individuals associated with the legal profession, particularly Edwards' fellow trial lawyers, their families, and employees.

Edwards's campaign was often characterized by the American news media as populist. His stump speech spoke of "two Americas", one composed of the wealthy and privileged, and the other of the hard-working common man . His refusal to level direct negative attacks at his fellow Democratic contenders also attracted attention. After campaigning for most of 2003, Edwards' campaign struggled to gain large support in the Democratic Party. But in early 2004, weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Edwards began to catch fire and his support and poll numbers began to rise steadily. Edwards' late stage momentum, as well as his departure from the negative campaigning which characterized other leading candidates, carried him into a surprising second place finish in Iowa with the support of 32% of caucus delegates, behind only John Kerry's 39% and ahead of former front-runner Howard Dean at 18%. Edwards finished with 12% support in the New Hampshire primary one week later, essentially tied for third place position with retired general Wesley Clark. The following week, Edwards won the South Carolina primary and placed just behind Clark, the winner in Oklahoma.

After Howard Dean's withdrawal from the contest, Edwards became the only major challenger to Kerry for the Democratic nomination. Remarking on an unexpectedly strong finish in the Wisconsin primary on February 17, Edwards humorously cautioned Kerry: "Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear."

Edwards maintained a positive campaign and largely avoided attacking Kerry until a February 29, 2004 debate in New York, where he attempted to put Kerry on the defensive by characterizing the front-runner as a "Washington insider" and by mocking Kerry's plan to form a committee to examine trade agreements.

Edwards's campaign ended after a disappointing finish in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 2, when Kerry finished well ahead of Edwards in nine of the 10 states voting that day. (Dean, despite having withdrawn from the race two weeks earlier, won his home state of Vermont.) Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry in Georgia, but, failing to win a single state, chose to withdraw from the presidential race. He announced his official withdrawal at a Raleigh, North Carolina press conference on March 3, 2004.

News of Edwards's withdrawal from the race made major media outlets relatively early on the evening of Super Tuesday, at about 6:30 p.m. CST, before polls had closed in California and before caucuses in Minnesota had even begun. This influenced many people in Minnesota to vote for other candidates, which may partially account for the strong showing of Dennis Kucinich in that state. Edwards did win the presidential straw poll conducted by the Independence Party of Minnesota. He also later won the Democratic caucuses in his home state of North Carolina, making him the only Democratic candidate besides John Kerry to win nominating contests in two states.

On July 6, 2004 John Kerry announced, first in an email to his supporters and later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that Edwards would be his vice presidential running mate. Kerry's decision was widely hailed by Democratic voters in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders in interviews. According to sources close to Kerry, other individuals said to have been under consideration for the vice presidential nomination by the Kerry campaign were Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, Florida Senator Bob Graham, retired General Wesley Clark, and Congressman Richard Gephardt (the New York Post had incorrectly reported a day earlier that Kerry had decided on Gephardt for the running mate slot). Though Ralph Nader and many Democrats supported the nomination, others criticized Kerry because of Edwards' perceived lack of experience. In particular, the nomination caused the business community, including the Chamber of Commerce network, to throw its support to Bush when they had been neutral in previous presidential elections, because of Edwards' opposition to tort reform.

Edwards was involved in some notable controversies during the campaign. One of these centered on a comment he made in Iowa in October 2004, that "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." While offered in the context of Kerry's support for stem cell research, some observers, such as conservative Washington Post columnist and Fox News Channel contributor Charles Krauthammer, saw the statement as a an implication "that Christopher Reeve was kept in the wheelchair because of the policies of the Bush administration on stem cells." Krauthammer-- who earned a medical degree from Harvard in 1975 and practiced psychiatry for three years before entering politics, is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair--wrote of Edwards's statement that it was the most "loathsome display of demagoguery" he'd witnessed in his twenty-five years covering Washington politics. While Kerry supporters point out that Krauthammer and the other conservative commentators were responding to a doctored quote originally posted on the right-wing gossip website, Drudge Report, that left out "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do..." A modification that removed the context that it was stem cell research that would produce the result and that this research would be better supported by a Kerry administration.

Another controversial moment took place on October 5, 2004, when during his televised debate with Vice President Dick Cheney, Edwards made two references to the fact that Cheney's daughter, Mary Cheney, is a lesbian. In response, Vice President Cheney replied "let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much." When promoting her new book more than 2 years later, however, Mary Cheney said she thought it was a "cheap and blatant political ploy on behalf of Senator Edwards."

The Kerry/Edwards ticket lost the 2004 election. Edwards' presence on the ticket failed to deliver his home state of North Carolina for the ticket. This was widely expected since no Democratic presidential candidate had carried North Carolina since 1976. Many pundits speculated that Edwards' presence on the ticket was designed to appeal to rural and middle-class voters in midwestern states, but Kerry ran behind Gore's 2000 results with these voters.

In the Electoral College, Edwards received 252 votes to Vice President Dick Cheney's 286 votes. Edwards also received 1 Electoral Vote for President (due to a faithless elector pledged to Kerry voting for Edwards).

Post Senate activities

Edwards is widely regarded as a potential candidate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election; his concession speech at the close of the 2004 race hinted at his continued presidential ambitions: "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away. This fight has just begun." The following day, he announced that his wife Elizabeth had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Coincidentally, a few months earlier, in February 2004, doctors suggested that the distinctive mole on Edwards' upper lip might be developing cancerous properties; he had it removed, although it turned out to be benign.

During the following months, Edwards was courted by a number of organizations; he told interviewer Larry King that he doubted he would return to his occupation as a trial lawyer and showed no interest in the possibility of becoming the Democratic National Committee chairman, a post sought by fellow nomination contender Howard Dean. He finally chose to accept an offer from his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, of a part-time faculty position as director of a new "Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity" at the university. Shortly before the November 2004 election, he had purchased a parcel of land in Orange County, to which his family plans to move.

Throughout 2005, Edwards has carried out several activities that may constitute the beginning of a presidential campaign. In February, he headlined the "100 Club" Dinner, a major fundraiser for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. That same month, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that he had been appointed as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity in the university for studying ways to move people out of poverty.

On March 21 2005, John Edwards recorded his first podcast with his wife. Several months later, in August, Edwards traveled to Waterloo, Iowa to deliver an address to the Iowa AFL-CIO, a potential key supporter in the Iowa caucus. The following month, Edwards sent an e-mail to his supporters and announced that he opposed the nomination of Judge John Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States. He was also opposed to the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito.

In 2005, Edwards joined the Wall Street investment firm Fortress Investment Group as a senior adviser..

During the summer and fall of 2005, he toured the country, promoting various progressive causes. He visited homeless shelters and job training centers and spoke at events organized by such groups as ACORN, the NAACP, and the SEIU. He spoke out in favor of an expansion of the earned income tax credit, a crackdown on predatory lending, a raise in the capital gains tax, housing vouchers for minorities to integrate upper-income neighborhoods, and a program modeled on the Works Progress Administration to rehabilitate the Gulf Coast following the effects of Hurricane Katrina. In low-income Greene County, North Carolina, he unveiled the pilot program for College for Everyone, an educational measure he promised during his presidential campaign, in which prospective college students will receive a scholarship for their first year, in exchange for ten hours of work a week.

On November 14 2005, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, saying he regretted his vote supporting the Iraq War in 2002 and addressed three solutions for success in Iraq.

Edwards is a co-chair of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on United States-Russia relations, alongside Republican Jack Kemp, a former congressman, Cabinet official, and vice presidential nominee.

2008 Presidential Race

Many experts believe that it is a certainty that John Edwards will run for President again in 2008. Those experts cite Edwards keeping his political action committee, the One America Committee, open and also the fact that Edwards has given many speeches in such key states as Iowa, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin as reason to believe he will be running for President in 2008. Many people view Edwards as one of if not the main contender to go up against early favorite Hillary Clinton, thanks especially to his change of position on the Iraq War. It is believed that Edwards may face Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, former running mate John Kerry, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, and possibly others for the Democratic Party nomination.

In a Democratic nominee poll conducted by Cook Political Report/RT Strategies between Feb 23-26, 2006 , Edwards finishes second with 16%, leading John Kerry (14%), but trailing Hillary Clinton (44%).

Edwards' campaign may face problems because of the substantial contributions he received from the Milberg Weiss firm, a plaintiffs' attorneys' firm indicted in May 2006 for wrongful kickbacks. Edwards was also criticized in 2004 for his relationship to and choice of plaintiffs' attorney Fred Baron as his campaign chair; Baron has stated he will be involved in Edwards' 2008 campaign if Edwards runs.,

One of the key issues in the 2008 race will be health care. In particular, the rising cost of health insurance will be extensively debated. Edwards, like many other Democrats, has said that the main reason health care is unaffordable for many Americans is because there are hundreds of different health insurance companies and HMOs, each with different (and often contradictory) rules, operating with little or no governmental oversight. Republicans, on the other hand, tend to blame the problem on trial lawyers who allegedly drive up the cost of doctors' malpractice insurance by pursuing frivolous lawsuits. Before he entered politics, Edwards was a trial lawyer who won some very large malpractice claims. His professional background was a matter of some controversy during his 2004 Presidential and Vice Presidential campaigns.

On May 21 2006, during an exclusive interview in This Week with George Stephanopoulos he said that he is thinking seriously about running in 2008.

On June 11 2006, a poll conducted by Des Moines Register among Iowans showed that he is leading the Iowa caucus by 30% and he is followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton by 26% and Sen. John Kerry by 12%.

Issue stances

While campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, Edwards completed the National Political Awareness Test. Some of Edwards' positions, ideas, and experiences with national issues which made up his campaign platform were:

• National Service: Edwards believes in increasing military compensation. He supports increasing the servicemen's refundable child tax credit and improving the pay, housing, and health care for American troops. Edwards believes that more needs to be done to support soldiers' families and has introduced legislation to expand child care for families of active duty personnel and reservists.

• Economy: Edwards proposed a plan to stimulate the economy in the short term while restoring the long-term fiscal discipline and leveling the playing field for American businesses. Edwards has fought for more resources to let individuals and communities recover from trade-related plant closings, and is a proponent of "fairer" trade agreements.

• Education: Strengthening public schools is one of Edwards's top priorities. Edwards is against private-school voucher plans. Throughout his career John Edwards has been an advocate for Public Schools and has supported as much funding whenever possible for Public Schools. Edwards's fondness for the public school system stems from the fact that he himself was a product of public schools.

• Security & Foreign Policy: Edwards believes that the country must be protected, but not by sacrificing rights and freedoms. Edwards believes in America's right to self-defense and working within the framework of international law. Edwards believes that we must increase port security and our preparedness for a bioterrorism attack and sponsored legislation that would do such during his time in the US Senate.

Edwards supported legislation to improve airport security, increase seaports safety, reduced vulnerability to bioterrorism, and enabled law enforcement agencies to keep known terrorists from entering the country. He cosponsored legislation to strengthen nuclear shipments safety (container strength, shipment escorts, and emergency coordination). Edwards is a proponent of legislation to fight cyberterrorism.

Edwards has proposed a new domestic intelligence agency to fight terrorist cells, strengthening security along borders, making terrorist targets less vulnerable to attack, and developing a better emergency warning system.

• Immigration: Edward's Senate voting record was more in favor of expanding immigration than the average senator. Edwards favors increasing border security, amnesty for illegal aliens, reducing border deaths. Edwards is a proponent of removing the backlog at the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in order to encourage family reunification. Edwards believes in expediting citizenship applications and waiving the processing fees of immigrants serving in the U.S. armed forces. Edwards opposes the most recent Bush proposal to create a guest worker program without a path to citizenship- however Edwards supported all major expansions of H-1B visas-and was in fact a co-sponsor of such legislation.

• Law & Justice: Edwards opposes racial profiling. He favors fostering the due process rights of all those within American borders.

• Gay Rights: Although Edwards does not support legalization of same-sex marriage, he opposes a constitutional amendment to define marriage. He supports adoption rights for homosexual couples and overturning the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals in the U.S. military.

• Minimum Wage: Along with Senator Edward Kennedy, Edwards has supported legislation that would raise the American minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. Edwards has made fighting poverty through a raise in the minimum wage a staple of his anti-poverty platform.

External links

• One America Committee
• Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity
• Politics1 - P2008: John Edwards
• July 27, 2004, Democratic National Convention speech: Transcript text
• October 5th, 2004, Vice Presidential Debate: Transcript text, Audio and Video
• Subscribe to the John Edwards Podcast One America Committee Podcast

Edwards for President unofficial sites

• John Edwards for President 2008!
• John Edwards 2008

Template:Persondata

• 1953 births
• American legal academics
• American lawyers
• Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
• Debaters
• English Americans
• Living people
• Methodists
• People from the Triangle, North Carolina
• People from South Carolina
• Podcasters
• Pro-choice politicians
• U.S. Democratic Party vice presidential nominees
• United States presidential candidates
• United States Senators from North Carolina
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill