John Edwards

This article is about the American attorney and politician. For other people, see John Edwards (disambiguation).

John Edwards
United States Senator from North Carolina
In office January 6, 1999 – January 3, 2005
Preceded by	Lauch Faircloth
Succeeded by	Richard Burr
Personal details
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Elizabeth Edwards
Alma mater	North Carolina State University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Profession	Attorney, Politician
Signature

Johnny Reid "John" Edwards (born June 10 1953), is an American politician who was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004 and a one-term U.S. Senator from North Carolina. Edwards is currently a Democratic candidate in the 2008 Presidential election.

He defeated incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina's 1998 Senate election and during his six-year term sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2004 presidential election.

He eventually became the Democratic candidate for Vice President, the running mate of presidential nominee Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. After Edwards and Kerry lost the election to incumbents George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Edwards began working full time at the One America Committee, a political action committee he established in 2001, and was appointed director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. He was also a consultant for Fortress Investment Group LLC.

Early life, education, and family

Edwards was born on June 10 1953 to Wallace Reid Edwards and Catharine Juanita "Bobbie" Wade in Seneca, South Carolina. The family moved several times during Edwards' childhood, eventually settling in Robbins, North Carolina, where his father worked as a textile mill floor worker, eventually promoted to supervisor; his mother had a roadside antique finishing business and then worked as a postal letter carrier when his father left his job.

A football star in high school, Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He first attended Clemson University and later transferred to North Carolina State University. Edwards graduated with a bachelor's degree in textile technology in 1974 from North Carolina State University, and later earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), both with honors.

While at UNC, he met fellow student and eventual wife Elizabeth Anania, who is four years his senior. They married in the summer of 1977 and had four children. Their son, Wade, was born in 1979 and daughter Cate followed in 1982. In 1996, Wade, age 16, was killed in a car accident when strong winds swept his Jeep off a North Carolina highway. Following Wade's death, Edwards and his wife had children again: Emma Claire, born 1998, and Jack, born in 2000.

After Wade's death, Elizabeth quit practicing as an attorney and Edwards decided to go into politics, running for the Senate the next year. Edwards wore Wade's Outward Bound pin on his lapel throughout the 2004 presidential campaign. He and his wife began the Wade Edwards Foundation in their son's memory; the purpose of the nonprofit organization is "to reward, encourage, and inspire young people in the pursuit of excellence." The Foundation funded the Wade Edwards Learning Lab at Wade's high school, Broughton High School in Raleigh, along with scholarship competitions and essay awards. Just weeks before Wade died, he had been honored at the White House by First Lady Hillary Clinton for an essay he wrote on entering the voting booth with his father.

Edwards's home in Orange County, NC

After leaving Washington, DC, the Edwards family sold their Raleigh house and moved to a 28,200 square foot home with an estimated value of USD$6 million in Orange County, North Carolina.

On November 3, 2004, the day Kerry and Edwards conceded defeat in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, Elizabeth Edwards revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was treated via chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and has continued to remain an activist for women, cancer patients, the Democratic Party, and her husband's One America Committee.

On March 22 2007, Edwards and his wife announced that she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, with newly discovered metastases to the bone and possibly to her lung. They said that the cancer was "no longer curable, but is completely treatable" and that they planned to continue campaigning together with an occasional break when Ms. Edwards requires treatment, saying "The campaign goes on strongly." This ended erroneous media speculation prior to the press conference that Edwards would announce a suspension of his campaign.

Legal career

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Four Trials by John Edwards

Before running for political office, John Edwards was a personal injury trial attorney, specializing in representing people who were alleged victims of corporate negligence and/or medical malpractice.

After law school, he clerked for a Federal judge and in 1978 became an associate at the Nashville law firm of Dearborn & Ewing, doing primarily trial work, defending a Nashville bank and other corporate clients. The Edwards family returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh where he joined the firm of Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove.

Edwards' first notable case was a 1984 medical malpractice lawsuit. As a young associate, he got the assignment because it was considered a losing case; the firm had only accepted it as a favor to an attorney and state senator who did not want to keep it. Nevertheless, 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 during alcohol aversion therapy. In other cases, Edwards sued the American Red Cross three times, alleging transmission of AIDS through tainted blood products, resulting in a confidential settlement each time, and defended a North Carolina newspaper against a libel charge.

In 1985, Edwards tried a case involving medical malpractice during childbirth, representing a five-year-old child born with cerebral palsy whose doctor did not choose to perform an immediate Caesarian delivery when a fetal monitor showed she was in distress. Edwards won a $6.5 million verdict for his client, but five weeks later, the presiding judge sustained the verdict but overturned the award on grounds that it was "excessive" and that it appeared "to have been given under the influence of passion and prejudice," adding that in his opinion "the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict." He offered the plaintiffs half of the jury's award, but the child's family appealed the case and settled for $4.25 million. Winning this case established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine if the patient understood risks of a particular procedure.

After this trial, Edwards gained national attention as a plaintiff's lawyer. He filed at least 20 similar lawsuits in the years following and achieved verdicts and settlements of more than $60 million for his clients. His fee, as is customary in "contingency" cases, was one-third of the settlement plus expenses. These successful lawsuits were followed by similar ones across the country. When asked about an increase in Caesarean deliveries nationwide, perhaps to avoid similar medical malpractice lawsuits, Edwards said, "The question is, would you rather have cases where that happens instead of having cases where you don't intervene and a child either becomes disabled for life or dies in utero?"

In 1993, Edwards began his own firm in Raleigh (now known as Kirby & Holt) with a friend, David Kirby. He became known as the top plaintiffs' attorney in North Carolina. 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 three-year-old girl 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 swim club 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. Sta-Rite protested that an additional warning would have made no difference because the pool owners already knew the importance of keeping the cover secured.

In his closing arguments, Edwards spoke to the jury for an hour and a half 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. Mark Dayton, editor of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, would later call it "the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen." The jury awarded the family $25 million, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. The company settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating additional punitive damages, rather than risk losing an 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. The family said that they hired Edwards over other attorneys because he alone had offered to accept a smaller percentage as fee unless the award was unexpectedly high, while all of the other lawyers they spoke with said they required the full one-third fee. The size of the jury award was unprecedented, and Edwards did receive the standard one-third plus expenses fee typical of contingency cases. The family was so impressed with his intelligence and commitment that they volunteered for his Senate campaign the next year.

After Edwards won a large verdict against a trucking company whose worker had been involved in a fatal accident, the North Carolina legislature passed a law prohibiting such awards unless the employee's actions had been specifically sanctioned by the company.

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

Political career

Senate term

Both the success of the Sta-Rite 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 incumbent Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth. Despite originally being the underdog, Edwards beat Faircloth by 51.2% to 47.0% — a margin of some 83,000 votes.

John Edwards was a member of the New Democrat Coalition.

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.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was reported to be on Democratic nominee Al Gore's vice presidential nominee "short list" (along with John 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.

During his Senate term Edwards cosponsored 203 bills. He cosponsored Lieberman's S.J.RES.46, the Iraq War Resolution, and also later voted for it in the full Senate to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, saying on October 10, 2002 that "Almost no one disagrees with these basic facts: that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a menace; that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons; that he has supported terrorists; that he is a grave threat to the region, to vital allies like Israel, and to the United States; and that he is thwarting the will of the international community and undermining the United Nations' credibility." He subsequently apologized for that military authorization vote. Edwards also supported and voted for the Patriot Act. Among other positions, Edwards generally supported abortion rights, affirmative action, and the death penalty. Among his first sponsored bills was the Fragile X Research Breakthrough Act of 1999. He was also the first person to introduce comprehensive anti-spyware legislation with the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act. He also advocated rolling back the Bush administration's tax cuts and ending mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders.

Edwards generally supported expanding legal immigration to the United States while working with Mexico to provide better border security and stop illegal trafficking.

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.

2004 presidential campaign

Main articles: United States presidential election, 2004 and John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004

Edwards unofficially began his presidential campaign as early as 2000, 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, thus fulfilling a promise he made as a guest during the show's coverage of the 2002 midterm elections. The next morning, Edwards made the announcement officially from his hometown. He declined to run for reelection to the Senate in 2004 in order to solely focus on his presidential run. 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' 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.

After campaigning for most of 2003, Edwards' campaign struggled to gain substantial support in the Democratic Party. In early 2004, weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Edwards began to gain momentum and poll numbers began to rise steadily. Edwards' late-stage momentum 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, in fourth place behind Kerry, Howard Dean, and Wesley Clark. The following week, during the February 3 primaries, Edwards won the South Carolina primary, lost to Clark in Oklahoma, and lost to Kerry in the other states. Edwards also garnered the second largest number of second place finishes, again falling behind Clark.

Edwards on the campaign trail in 2004.

After Dean's withdrawal from the contest, Edwards became the only major challenger to Kerry for the Democratic nomination. He finished with 34% of the votes and second place to Kerry in the Wisconsin primary on February 17.

Edwards 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' campaign ended after a disappointing finish in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 2, when Kerry finished well ahead in nine of the 10 states voting that day. 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' 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. It is thought that the withdrawal 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.

After withdrawing from the race, he went on to win the April 17 Democratic caucuses in his home state of North Carolina, making him the only Democratic candidate besides Kerry to win nominating contests in two states.

2004 Vice Presidential nomination and campaign

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Kerry/Edwards campaign logo

On July 6, 2004 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 Richard Durbin, Florida Senator Bob Graham, 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 George W. Bush when they had been neutral in previous presidential elections, because of Edwards' opposition to tort reform. Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, who was Kerry's campaign advisor in 2004, wrote an article in Time magazine reporting that Kerry later said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, and the two have since stopped speaking to each other. [1]

One highlight of Edwards' campaign for the vice presidency was the debate with incumbent Dick Cheney, in which the Vice President incorrectly told Edwards that they had never met before, and blamed this on Edwards' frequent absences from the Senate to campaign for the Presidency. The media found at least one videotape of a Cheney/Edwards meeting.

Post-Senate activities

Edwards' 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. 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 months that followed the 2004 campaign, Edwards was courted by a number of organizations; he told interviewer Larry King that he doubted he would return to his previous occupation as a trial lawyer and showed no interest in the possibility of becoming the Democratic National Committee chairman, a post then filled by fellow nomination contender Howard Dean.

In February 2005, Edwards 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. That fall, Edwards toured 10 major universities in order to promote "Opportunity Rocks!", a program aimed at getting youth involved in the fight against poverty.

On March 21 2005, Edwards recorded his first podcast with his wife. Several months later, in August, Edwards traveled to Waterloo, Iowa to deliver an address to the state's chapter of the AFL-CIO, a potential key supporter in the Iowa caucus. In the following month Edwards sent an email 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.

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, an increase in the capital gains tax rate, 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.

Nearly a year after losing the election, in October 2005, Edwards joined the Wall Street investment firm Fortress Investment Group as a senior adviser, later working with them as a consultant. Unknown to Edwards, at the time Fortress owned a major stake in Green Tree Servicing LLC, which rose to prominence in the 1990s selling subprime loans to mobile-home owners and now services subprime loans originated by others. Subprime loans allow buyers with poor credit histories to be funded, but they charge higher rates because of the risk, and sometimes carry hidden fees and increased charges over time. In August of 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that a portion of the Edwards' family's assets were invested in Fortress Investment Group, that had, in turn, invested a portion of its assets in subprime mortgage lenders, some of which had foreclosed on the homes of Hurricane Katrina victims. Upon learning of Fortress' investments, Edwards divested his funds from the investment group and stated that he would try to help the affected families. Edwards later helped set up an ACORN- administered "Louisiana Home Rescue Fund" seeded with $100,000, much of it from his own pocket, to provide loans and grants to the families who were foreclosed on by Fortress-owned lenders.

On November 14, 2005, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he expressed regret for his vote supporting the Iraq War in 2002, and discussed three solutions for success in the conflict. Previously, Edwards had defended his vote. In an October 10, 2004 appearance on Meet the Press, Edwards told Tim Russert "I would have voted for the resolution knowing what I know today, because it was the right thing to do to give the president the authority to confront Saddam Hussein...I think Saddam Hussein was a very serious threat. I stand by that, and that's why [John Kerry and I] stand behind our vote on the resolution." In a February 4, 2007 appearance on Meet the Press, Edwards told Russert "over time, when I reflected on what I thought was going to be necessary going forward, to have some moral foundation to work on issues like poverty and genocide, things that I care deeply about, I could no longer defend this vote. It was pretty simple. And I got to the place I felt like I had to say it and had to say it publicly. And so—what? — a year — a year or so ago I did that."

Edwards was 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. The task force issued its report in March 2006. On July 12, the International Herald Tribune published a related op-ed by Edwards and Kemp.

On April 6, 2006, Edwards joined Ted Kennedy at a rally for raising the minimum wage.

2008 presidential campaign

Main article: John Edwards presidential campaign, 2008

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John Edwards 2008

John Edwards campaigning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Labor day in 2007.

On December 28 2006, a day after prematurely launching his campaign website, John Edwards officially announced his candidacy for President in the 2008 election from the yard of a home in New Orleans, Louisiana that was being rebuilt after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Edwards has stated that his main goals are eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.

National polls have shown Edwards placing third among the current Democratic field, behind Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. As of July 2007, the Edwards campaign raised a total of $23 million from nearly 100,000 donors, placing it behind the Obama and Clinton campaigns in fundraising. The Wall Street Journal reported three months later that "Presidential hopeful John Edwards's campaign appears to be flagging" noting that he collected not much more than "lesser-known rivals".

Political views

Main article: Political positions of John Edwards

Edwards' campaign focus is on eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, and providing universal health care, a more progressive agenda than his 2004 campaign. Another major change from 2004 is that Edwards has become a strong critic of the war in Iraq and a proponent of withdrawal. He denounced the plan for a troop surge in Iraq, coining it the McCain Doctrine Later in January, 2007, Edwards spoke at New York City's Riverside Church. In the speech Edwards criticized silence on the "escalation of the war in Iraq." Edwards has also offered criticism of Democrats in Congress for not continuing to present the President with an Iraq funding bill that included a withdrawal timetable which the President had already vetoed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded to this criticism by pointing out that Edwards was no longer in the Senate, saying "we’re legislating, and he’s campaigning". Despite being personally conflicted on the subject of same-sex marriage, Edwards is opposed to a constitutional amendment banning it, and has stated on the campaign trail that he would like to get rid of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Electoral history

• 2004 Race for U.S. President & Vice President
  • George W. Bush/Dick Cheney (R) (inc.), 51% (286 electoral votes)
  • John Kerry/John Edwards (D), 48% (251 electoral votes)
  • John Edwards (D), 0% (1 electoral vote)
  • Others, 1% (0 electoral votes)

• 1998 General election for United States Senate
  • John Edwards (D), 51%
  • Lauch Faircloth (R), 47%
  • Others, 2%

• 1998 Democratic primary for United States Senate
  • John Edwards (D), 51%
  • D. G. Martin (D), 28%
  • Ella Scarborough (D), 10%
  • Others, 11%

Bibliography

• Four Trials (with John Auchard) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) ISBN 0743244974
• Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (New York: Collins, 2006) ISBN 0060884541
• Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream, co-editor (New Press, 2007)

See also

• United States presidential election, 2008
• Official and Potential 2008 United States presidential election Democratic candidates
• Opinion polling for the Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008

External links

• John Edwards for President official campaign website
• John Edwards '08 Blog official campaign blog
• Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity
• Myspace profile
• Notable cases via FindLaw

• Template:CongBio2
• Congresspedia profile
• Notable Names Database profile
• On the Issues issue positions
• OpenSecrets.org campaign contributions
• John Edwards at Curlie
• John Edwards eNews Reference

Speeches and statements

• July 27, 2004, Democratic National Convention speech: Transcript text
• October 5, 2004, Vice Presidential Debate: Transcript text, Audio and Video