John Edwards 2008: What’s not to like

WASHINGTON — There’s losing. There’s losing honorably. And then there’s John Edwards.

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Then there is John Edwards. He’s not going to be president either. He stays in the race because, with the Democrats’ proportional representation system, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton might end up in a very close delegate race — perhaps allowing an also-ran with, say, 10 percent of the delegates to act as kingmaker at the convention.

It’s a prize of sorts, it might even be tradeable for a Cabinet position. But at considerable cost. His campaign has been a spectacle.

Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq War vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation.

– As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces.

– As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Twice. He is now fiercely opposed.

– As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it “radically overhauled.”

– As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it “a good bill … and I am pleased to support it.” He now attacks it.

– As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.

Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an astonishing string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against.

Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an “epic struggle” against the great economic malefactors that “have literally,” he assures us, “taken over the government.” He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot’s very latest.

Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the “cause of my life,” the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father’s knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he’s telling. You must understand: This is not politics for him. “This fight is deeply personal to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole life.”

Except for his years as senator, the only public office he’s ever held. The audacity of the all-my-life trope is staggering. By his own endlessly self-confessed record, his current pose is a coat of paint newly acquired. His claim that it is an expression of his inner soul is a farce.

A cynical farce that is particularly galling to left-liberals of real authenticity. “The one (presidential candidate) that is the most problematic is Edwards,” Sen. Russ Feingold told The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., “who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq War. … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.”

It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world. But for 4 percent of the Nevada caucuses?

Washington Post 1/25/08

When Mr. Obama first started trying to organize the state earlier this year, he began in the usual way, seeking endorsements of traditional power brokers. The campaign offered a $5,000-a-month consulting contract to state Sen. Darrell Jackson of Columbia, a longtime legislator and pastor of an 11,000-member church, who also runs an ad agency.

Mr. Jackson’s ability to turn out the vote — or suppress it against rivals — is the stuff of local legend. In 2004, he helped clinch a primary win for North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, even as Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was coming off wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. At the time, Mr. Edwards was paying him consulting fees of roughly $15,000 a month, according to federal records.

Mr. Jackson says he seriously considered the offer from Mr. Obama, but instead became a paid consultant to Mrs. Clinton, essentially running her state operation for substantially more than what the Obama camp offered. “A lot of our hearts were torn — it wasn’t an easy choice,” Mr. Jackson said. He drew more than $135,000 from the Clinton campaign from February 2007 through September 2007, the latest figures available, according to federal election filings, and remains on the payroll.

Wall Street Journal 1/23/08

snip: I kind of winced when John Edwards, after Hillary’s choked-up moment in a coffee shop, said we need a commander-in-chief who shows “strength” and “resolve.” But my reaction was nothing compared to that of the Nation’s Katha Pollitt:

“John Edwards just lost my vote. How dare he take cheap shots at Hillary Clinton for letting her eyes mist over (not ‘crying’ as was widely reported) at a meeting with voters in Portsmouth N.H.? This is a man who has used his most private tragedies–his wife’s cancer, his son’s fatal accident — in his campaign in a way that had a woman done the same she would surely be accused of ‘oprahfying’ the lofty realm of politics.

“This is also the man who promoted himself early on as the real women’s candidate, and who has repeatedly used his likeable wife to humanize his rather slick and one-dimensional persona. Today he deployed against Hillary the oldest, dumbest canard about women: they’re too emotional to hold power . . .

“Ooh, right, we need a big strong manly finger on that nuclear button! Even if that finger has spent most it its life writing personal injury briefs in North Carolina, which, when you come to think of it, is not an obvious preparation for commander-in-chiefhood.”

The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/09/AR2008010900803_5.html?hpid=topnews

WASHINGTON - The Obama campaign is challenging John Edwards’ populist message that he is campaigning free from the influence of the powerful forces that control Washington.

Two Edwards-affiliated groups, Alliance for a New America and One America, between them got a total of $750,000 from Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, a 97-year-old socialite who is the widow of Paul Mellon and daughter-in-law of industrialist Andrew Mellon, The Washington Post reported.

Barack Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said these donations showed Edwards exploited a loophole in the campaign-finance system and accepted public funds while still spending all he needed in Iowa.

New York Post 12/31/07

One ad airing on Iowa television stations warns of “government run by corporate lobbyists,” and promotes “the Edwards plan” as a solution, accompanied by photos of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.snip

But Steve Weissman, associate director of the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute in Washington, D.C., said fines or penalties for any improprieties likely are years away.

“They don’t care if they’re fined,” Weissman said. “By the time that happens, they’ve disappeared. It’s just a cost of doing business.”

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The groups “are spending large sums of unlimited contributions on what they claim are issue ads but what instead are unquestionably campaign ads being run to influence the 2008 presidential election,” Wertheimer said.

The ads getting the most attention in Iowa in recent days are run by a union-financed group called the Alliance for a New America, based in Alexandria, Va., and feature the complimentary images of Edwards. The group is headed by Nick Baldick, a former Edwards adviser, and contributions have come from locals of the Service Employees International Union.

A $495,000 contribution also came from Oak Springs Farm LLC, which the Associated Press reported is the entity that holds the fortune of 97-year-old philanthropist Rachel Mellon. Mellon has also contributed directly to Edwards’ presidential campaign, as has the lawyer who holds power over Oak Springs Farm.

The New York Times reported about an e-mail that seemed to suggest conversations between Edwards campaign officials and the group’s leaders, with Alliance leaders apparently asking the campaign “what specific kinds of support they would like to see from us.”

Edwards aides said nothing improper occurred.

Critics, predominantly Barack Obama’s campaign, have accused Edwards of using supposedly independent groups to support him even while he bashes the power of special interests, and to get around spending limits he accepted in exchange for public campaign money.

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Weissman said that the lack of ability to rein in outside groups is the fault of both the Federal Election Commission and Congress, which has failed to approve legislation restricting 527s. It’s up to Iowa voters to remain wary of ads pitched by groups whose finances or agendas are unclear, Weissman said. “It’s like a drive-through operation,” he said.

Des Moines Register 12/31/07

Edwards had raised $30 million by the end of September, significantly trailing rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. At that point, the campaign decided to seek public funds.

Under the presidential financing system, candidates get matching funds for every donor’s contribution of up $250. If they accept the money, they must abide by spending limits in each primary and caucus state as well as an overall cap on primary spending. Those restrictions have prompted most of the leading candidates to decide to forgo the public money.

Edwards has so far spent more than $5 million on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s also getting help from independent, mostly labor-financed groups that have drawn criticism from watchdog groups and from Obama. The groups, called “527″ organizations for the section of the IRS code that authorizes them, have been running ads supporting Edwards’ policies in Iowa during the closing days of the campaign there.

Edwards, who made his fortune as a trial lawyer with his wealth somewhere between $12.8 million and $60 million, has refused donations from political action committees and lobbyists and has cast himself as the candidate less connected to Washington special interests. But Obama and other critics say the 527 groups are simply special interests helping him in another guise. Though labor groups have supplied much of the financing, one of the donors is a 97-year-old heiress to the Mellon family fortune.

Edwards has offered a finely honed response, saying he opposes the 527 organizations, but is proud of having the support of unions.

“They’re not running any negative, no attack ads. This is just positive advertising,” he said of the groups Sunday on CBS. “But that aside, I think these 527s need to be banned. I didn’t want them running advertising, and I’ve continued to say that every time I’ve been asked. But I can’t stop these people. I don’t have control over them.”

Associated Press 12/30/07

John Edwards’s populist message has, without a doubt, helped distinguish him from the other Democratic candidates in Iowa.

But a central tenet of that message — that he is campaigning free from the influence of the powerful forces that control Washington — is being challenged in light of the most recent federal election filings by one of the outside groups advocating on his behalf, and has sparked a round of dueling memos by the managers of the Barack Obama and the Edwards campaigns.

As The Washington Post reported Friday, the independent expenditure group Alliance for a New America recently received nearly $500,000 from Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, a 97-year-old socialite who is the widow of Paul Mellon and daughter-in-law of industrialist Andrew Mellon. It is at least the second check that Mellon has written to an Edwards-affiliated entity. The first, for $250,000, came in 2006, to the One America independent group, which helped support Edwards’s political efforts between his presidential bids.

“These latest revelations make it clear why Edwards was able to announce that he could accept public funds while still spending all he needed to spend in Iowa,” wrote Obama campaign manager David Plouffe in memo released Saturday morning. “His campaign simply exploited the biggest loophole in the campaign finance system in order to get public matching funds while arranging through allies to benefit from a 527. That’s how they avoided the spending limits that are a condition of the public matching funds.”

Washington Post 12/30/07

The Gilded Age was a dark period in American politics, John Edwards recalls. Back before Teddy Roosevelt fought for reforms, he told a Nov. 26 town meeting in Bow, a few families wielded disproportionate power.

“The Rockefellers and the Mellons and the Carnegies, all these people, owned most of America or a big chunk of America and they used their money and power to dominate what was happening in the government and to dominate what was happening in the economy,” he said.

Edwards has often invoked Roosevelt on the stump as a hero and railed against the influence of money in politics. But at the same time, it appears that the pro-Edwards movement has had a huge infusion of cash from the old Mellon fortune.

Turns out, the labor-linked, pro-Edwards 527 that’s been running ads in Iowa and spreading pamphlets in New Hampshire has deep-pocketed friends outside of unions.

The single largest donor to the Alliance for a New America, according to new FEC reports, is a mysterious LLC registered to New York City’s high-end Essex House hotel. (We called the room listed as the source of the $495,000 check and got an automated voicemail: “The person in this room is not available to take your call. . .”)

According to reporting elsewhere, the group, Oak Spring Farms LLC, is linked to New York lawyer and Edwards backer Alexander Forger, who holds power of attorney over 97-year-old Rachel Lambert Mellon, the daughter-in-law of industrialist and banker Andrew Mellon.

Mellon and her deceased husband, Paul, had a farm called Oak Spring; property records in Virginia refer to it as Oak Spring Farms LLC.

In 2006, when the New York Sun reported on a $250,000 contribution from Oak Spring Farms LLC to Edwards’s One America Committee, Forger declined to say where the money came from.

“I’m simply acting on behalf of somebody else,” he said then.

Edwards has made a campaign issue out of kicking special interests out of politics and often cites his pledge not to take any money from lobbyists. He’s said he would outlaw 527s if he’s elected.

The Alliance for a New America 527 is advised by Nick Baldick, who managed Edwards’s 2004 campaign.

Concord Monitor 12/30/07

Democrat John Edwards insisted Saturday he has not taken any money from special interests as the Obama campaign complained about big spending by outside groups friendly to Edwards.”His campaign simply exploited the biggest loophole in the campaign finance system in order to get public matching funds while arranging through allies to benefit from a 527. That’s how they avoided the spending limits that are a condition of the public matching funds,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement.

Plouffe said the outside spending allows Edwards to stay within the limits required by public financing “while still spending all he needed to spend in Iowa.”

His memo was prompted by disclosure of a $495,000 donation from philanthropist Rachel Mellon to a 527 group called the Alliance for a New America that is running ads in Iowa in support of Edwards’ campaign. The nonprofit 527 groups can legally carry out some political activity but have come under scrutiny by the Federal Election Commission for their advertising during past presidential campaigns.

An FEC report showed the donation came from Oak Spring Farms LLC, the corporate entity that holds Mellon’s fortune. Mellon is the 97-year-old widow of Paul Mellon, the son of industrialist Andrew Mellon.

She also contributed the maximum $4,600 allowed to Edwards’ campaign earlier this year. The lawyer who serves as director of the investment fund, Oak Springs Farm LLC, also has contributed the maximum $4,600 allowed to Edwards’ campaign.
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Obama objected last week to the Alliance for a New America, which is run by Edwards’ former campaign manager and partially funded by local unions affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. The locals have endorsed Edwards.After Obama objected to the group last week, which now is running television ads in the state, Edwards said he had only just learned about it and called for a halt to its activities.

The argument gained new fuel Thursday, however, when a memo from October surfaced that summarized a conference call among the union locals that outlined several steps they planned to take.

Among them was general agreement that a 527 political group would likely be set up. A 527 is a political committee that can raise larger sums of money than typical political committees. The memo also said there were plans “to discuss with the Edwards campaign what specific sort of support they’d like to see from us.”

Coordination between 527 political groups and campaigns is heavily restricted, although some discussions are legal.

On Friday, The New York Times, which first broke the story about the memo, reported that campaign finance watchdogs were raising questions about the legality of the activity.

An official representing the union locals said Friday it has followed the law and it is inaccurate and “reckless” to link the memo to the Alliance’s activities.

“This was just a thought piece sent out by a leader inside of SEIU. It was an internal memo. It specifically said it had to be vetted with our legal team,” said Dave Regan, the president of SEIU District 1199, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, and includes members from Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. “Everything that we’ve done absolutely complies with all legal requirements.”

An Edwards spokesman also said there was no wrongdoing.
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