John Edwards 2008: What’s not to like

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.”

snip

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.

snip

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

John Edwards goes up today with two new ads, one each in South Carolina and Iowa. (Whither your NH love, JRE?) But the bigger question — Why the regression to the mill worker bio-esque ad? Don’t SC voters know by now that Edwards was born there? Not a good sign that the Edwards camp feels they have to drive home both points to South Carolina voters …

Then again maybe, as one Hotliner said, bashing the ‘Son of a Mill Worker’ theme is as tired as the line itself …

“BORN” … to air in SC

My dad worked in the mills.

When I was born, he had to borrow fifty dollars to bring me home here.

When the mills closed, I saw first hand how devastating bad government and corporate greed can be.

I’m running for president to do what I’ve always done - fight for people like the ones I grew up with against the powerful forces that have corrupted Washington.

Don’t tell me it can’t be done.

I’m John Edwards. And I approve this message because growing up here, you never stop fighting. And you never forget where you came from.

Hotline On Call 11/26/07
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/11/the_son_of_a_mi_1.html#comments

John Edwards is everywhere in LA this weekend. Today, at the Presidential Forum on Global Warming and yesterday, images are pouring in all over these internets of Edwards in Burbank at the WGA Strikes.

Laist.com

http://laist.com/2007/11/17/john_edwards_at.php

The Hill

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who has been most vocal among the top Democratic presidential hopefuls in attacking frontrunner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), softened his rhetoric Sunday before a national audience.

Edwards appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation three days after he was booed at the Nevada Democratic debate for criticizing Clinton. Earlier in the week, Edwards had made some waves when he did not answer the question of whether he would support the former first lady if she won the nomination.

Edwards softened his tone noticeably Sunday

http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/edwards-softens-rhetoric-2007-11-18.html

Among other things, she talked about the campaign’s fifty state strategy and differentiated Edwards from the strategy used in 2004 and the one she’s hearing from DC consultant types this cycle too. In 2004 the strategy was the Gore states plus Florida. This year many of the Democratic political class is looking to a Kerry states plus Ohio.

Elizabeth said thats not how John Edwards will campaign if he gets the nomination, she noted the Democrats didn’t air one ad in North Carolina in 2004. They were up in Louisiana for about two seconds.

She went on, “They didn’t run one ad in Tennessee, because Al Gore didn’t carry it in 2000. Kansas? Thomas Frank wrote a whole book about What’s the Matter with Kansas. And Oklahoma, what state could be more Republican than Oklahoma? OK Montana.”

Boston for Edwards 10/27/07
http://eyeopener.typepad.com/bostonforedwards/2007/10/elizabeth-edwar.html

Babb, 23, interviewed an Edwards volunteer and a campus columnist about the campaign’s headquarters in the upscale Southern Village shopping center in Chapel Hill.

She posted it on YouTube on Tuesday night. The next morning, Colleen Murray, a spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, called her.

“She said this sounds like it came straight from the Republican Party,” Babb said. “She was like, ‘This has to come down.’ “

Babb referred Murray to her faculty adviser, C.A. Tuggle. Murray and Edwards’ communications director, Chris Kofinis, then called Tuggle. He said they asked him not to air the story and to pull it from YouTube.

Tuggle said they threatened to cut off access to Edwards for UNC reporters and other student groups if he did not pull the piece. He declined to do so.

snip

Online, the segment drew a split reaction. Some who commented said the Edwards campaign overreacted to an innocuous story, while others attacked Babb for being a registered Republican.

Babb said she was surprised, pointing out that she was an intern for U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Democrat from her hometown of Lillington, while an undergraduate at N.C. State University.

“My political affiliation isn’t in any of my stories,” she said.

News & Observer 10/27/07
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/751369.html

Edwards in school spat

So much for supporting the local school.

A University of North Carolina professor is accusing John Edwards’ campaign of using strong-arm tactics to kill an unflattering story, set to appear on campus TV news, about the candidate’s tony headquarters.

The professor said the campaign called him three times demanding the story be killed, and then threatened to cut student reporters’ access to Edwards, who funds a professor’s slot at the law school in honor of his late son, Wade.

New York Daily News 10/27/07
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/10/27/2007-10-27_untitled__takeout27m-2.html

A journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is accusing aides of John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, of demanding that he remove from YouTube a student report critical of Mr. Edwards’s Democratic presidential campaign — and of threatening to block the university’s access to Mr. Edwards and the campaign headquarters near campus.

Mr. Edwards’s campaign officials said they did not level any such threat during what were clearly heated discussions with the professor and the student over her approach and over the central question in her report: Why has a campaign focused on poverty based its headquarters in an affluent part of Chapel Hill?

The student, Carla Babb, posted the report on YouTube as an entry to a video contest sponsored by MTV, giving the report the potential for national viewing. Ms. Babb had initially approached the Edwards campaign to interview a student working as an intern at its headquarters, but the piece changed focus after the initial request, taking a closer look at the location of Mr. Edwards’s campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill, in light of its poverty message, which had been a subject of a column in the university newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel.

The video includes an interview with the columnist, James Edward Dillard, saying, “To pick that place as your campaign center, when you’re going to be the man who advocates on behalf of the poor, I just think, why not turn the media’s attention to somewhere where there are huge, huge problems.”

Ms. Babb’s professor, C. A. Tuggle, said in an interview that after the report first appeared on YouTube on Tuesday night he received calls of complaint from a deputy in Mr. Edwards’s national press office, and, then, his communications director.

snip

“We told them we were not interested in taking it down or holding it from broadcast on our show on Monday,” Mr. Tuggle said, adding that the campaign responded by telling him that, “campus media would have real trouble getting any sort of access to the Edwards campaign, and so might other parts of the university.”

New York Times 10/27/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/us/politics/27edwards.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

Tuggle said they threatened to cut off access to Edwards for UNC student reporters and other student groups if the piece aired.

“My gosh, what are they thinking?” Tuggle said. “They’re spending this much time and effort on a student newscast that has about 2,000 viewers? They’re turning a molehill into a mountain.”

snip

The campaign would not answer questions about the incident.

The segment, by graduate student Carla Babb, began as a look at Nation Hahn, a UNC senior interning with the campaign. During the interview, Babb asked about a recent column in The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper, criticizing Edwards’ choice of the posh Southern Village shopping center as the location for his headquarters.

Babb rewrote the piece to focus on that angle and interviewed the columnist, prompting the complaint from Edwards’ campaign.

In the video, James Edward Dillard, a columnist for The Daily Tar Heel, says that the location conflicts with Edwards’ campaign goal of reducing poverty in America.

“To pick that place as your campaign center, when you’re going to be the man who advocates on behalf of the poor, I just think, why not turn the media’s attention to somewhere where there are huge, huge problems,” Dillard said.

News & Observer 10/26/07
http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/politicians/edwards/story/750356.html

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A University of North Carolina professor said Friday that John Edwards’ campaign demanded that he pull a student reporter’s television story that focused on the upscale location of the campaign’s headquarters.

snip

In the report, Babb interviews students, one on the campaign, one not. She asks whether it is appropriate for Edwards to base his operations in his affluent hometown of Chapel Hill, home of the university, as opposed to a location that would better reflect his campaign platform of fighting poverty.

After quoting the students, Babb concludes her report by saying, “It’s ultimately up to the voters to decide if running a presidential campaign here was a smart move politically. But it’s safe to say, in Chapel Hill, opinions are split. “

In an interview Friday, Babb said: “I was completely shocked to get a phone call from the Edwards campaign saying that the story was straight from the Republican Party and that we needed to take it down.”

She said she wanted to do a story about student opinions about Edwards’ headquarters near campus in Chapel Hill’s Southern Village.

Tuggle is the news director of “Carolina Week” and the broadcast professor who advises students for the newscast.

“Was it what the campaign was expecting it to be? No,” Tuggle said. “But I don’t know that we’re obligated as journalists to tell that the focus of a story has changed.”

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, graduated with a law degree from the university and helped develop and operate a poverty center there after the 2004 election.

Associated Press 10/26/07
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jT_22_42_Xn06RaH8yBgv0YZWtEwD8SH4V080