John Edwards 2008: What’s not to like

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

In an interview with Political Machine, National Enquirer Editor-in-Chief David Perel called the tabloid’s story about the John Edwards love child as “one of the Enquirer’s greatest political scoops” and denied that the story was leaked by a rival campaign.

“I wish I had been that easy to tell you the truth, but sadly we had to dig it out ourselves.” Perel said.

The story about the former North Carolina senator’s supposed relationship with Rielle Hunter, who had done video work for the campaign, has gotten a tremendous buzz on the Internet even though the mainstream media has largely ignored or dismissed it. Further complicating the matter is public insistence by Hunter that former Edwards aide Andrew Young, who is married, is the father of her child and not Edwards.

To be sure, the Enquirer wouldn’t make such an allegation without it being throughly vetted by its lawyers. Perel described the sources dug up by the seven-person investigative team over the past few months as “extraordinarily good” and “beyond reproach.” He declined to discuss whether they had been paid.

“Because of our agreements, I am not liberty to talk about any of my dealings with them,” he said. “You can’t run a story like this without tremendous sourcing.”

Before people dismiss the story as being tabloid trash, remember that this is the Enquirer’s core competency. The tabloid was first to report about Jesse Jackson’s “love child,” Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction, Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt and Jennifer Lopez’s pregnancy, Perel said.

“We have been in North Carolina …staking out the general area, watching, collecting information for more than 4 weeks,” he said.The Edwards campaign seems to hope that the story will blow over and are just ignoring it as is most of the mainstream press.

-snip

“I look at this story as a bright dividing line between new media and old media,” he said.

“It set the record for unique visitors to our web site.”

Political Machine 12/20/07

UPDATE: NATIONAL ENQUIRER WORLD EXCLUSIVE: JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL!

Presidential candidate John Edwards is caught up in a love child scandal, a blockbuster ENQUIRER investigation has discovered.The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards in a cheating scandal earlier this year, is more than six months pregnant — and she’s told a close confidante that Edwards is the father of her baby!

The ENQUIRER’s political bombshell comes just weeks after Edwards emphatically denied having an affair with Rielle, who formerly worked on his campaign and told another close pal that she was romantically involved with the married ex-senator.

The ENQUIRER has now confirmed not only that Rielle is expecting, but that she’s gone into hiding with the help of a former aide to Edwards. The visibly pregnant blonde has relocated from the New York area to Chapel Hill, N.C., where she is living in an upscale gated community near political operative Andrew Young, who’s been extremely close to Edwards for years and was a key official in his presidential campaign.

And in a bizarre twist, Young — a 41-year-old married man with young children — now claims HE is the father of Rielle’s baby! But others are skeptical, wondering if Young’s paternity claim is a cover-up to protect Edwards.

Meanwhile, Edwards’ cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth has joined him on the campaign trail.

In a statement issued to The ENQUIRER through her attorney, Rielle said: “The fact that I am expecting a child is my personal and private business. This has no relationship to nor does it involve John Edwards in any way. Andrew Young is the father of my unborn child.”

But a source extremely close to the 43-year-old divorcée says Rielle has told a far different story privately: “Rielle told me she had a secret affair with Edwards. When she found out that she was pregnant, she said he was the father.”

Rielle loves Edwards and will do anything to protect him, the source says.

In The ENQUIRER’s Oct. 22 issue, we revealed that Edwards, 54, was involved in a mistress scandal and the shocking allegations — if proven true — could devastate the Democratic hopeful’s campaign.

At the time, we withheld Rielle’s name, but reported that an insider told The ENQUIRER that she claimed that she began the affair some 18 months earlier. She talked about her relationship in phone calls and e-mails.

After our story was published, several political bloggers correctly identified “the other woman” as Rielle, a self-described filmmaker whose company was hired by a pro-Edwards group called One America Committee and paid $114,000 to produce videos for Edwards’ campaign. She worked with Edwards on those videos.

Reporters asked Edwards about The ENQUIRER report during a campaign stop in Columbia, S.C., on Oct. 11. Edwards responded: “The story is false. It’s completely untrue, ridiculous,” adding: “Anyone who knows me knows that I have been in love with the same woman for 30 plus years.”

Rielle issued her own statement through MyDD.com, a pro-Democratic Web site, saying: “The innuendos and lies that have appeared on the Internet and in the National Enquirer concerning John Edwards are not true, completely unfounded and ridiculous.

“My video production company was hired by the Edwards camp on a six-month contract, which we completed Dec. 31, 2006. When working for the Edwards camp, my conduct as well as the conduct of my entire team was completely professional.”

But what the rest of the press didn’t know is that when Rielle made that claim, she was pregnant, hiding it and had told her confidante it was Edwards’ baby.

That’s also when it was decided Rielle would relocate to North Carolina, said the source.
(more…)

After his 2004 run for Vice President, he joined Fortress Investment Group, a $40 billion manager of hedge funds and private equity, as a part-time consultant - for an annual salary of $480,000 (plus profit sharing).

Edwards has since resigned, but Fortress has continued its generosity. Its employees have donated $190,000 in this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The hedge fund industry is itself looking for continued generosity from the government: the ability of managers to pay taxes on carried interest - that is, profits on investments - as though they were capital gains (taxed at 15 percent) and not ordinary income (taxed at 35 percent).

CNN Money

You wouldn’t know it from his campaign speeches, but John Edwards has a credential that no other presidential candidate can claim: He is the only one, from either party, who has ever been on a national ticket.snip

In a recent interview, Edwards waved off questions about whether he’d learned anything from the experience of helping run a national campaign that nearly defeated George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

The former North Carolina senator said the experience helped him understand how to function in the glare of an around-the-clock spotlight, but he said he couldn’t think of any other lessons.

snip

His Iowa campaign co-chairman, Rob Tully, said Edwards appeared frustrated after setting aside his presidential hopes and agreeing to be the vice presidential candidate in 2004.

“I saw a candidacy that was stifled by the Kerry campaign,” Tully said. “If you noticed, his talk about ‘two Americas’ just died. They did not let John Edwards be John Edwards.”

snip

Many Edwards backers believe he could have won Iowa if he’d had a few more weeks to campaign. That could have led to an Edwards/Kerry ticket.

Tully, a former state party chairman, said that Edwards is a better, more natural campaigner than Kerry, and that he believes the team could have beaten Bush if Edwards had been at the top of the ticket.
(more…)

Since his stint as the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 2004, the tension between Edwards’ private life and his politics has been growing. In recent years, Edwards, 54, has adopted a more populist tone at the same time he’s taken on more of the accoutrements of wealth.

That tension may be one reason that Edwards has struggled against Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

“I think it does hurt him, because it calls into question his sincerity,” said former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Hartpootlian, who backs Obama. “If you base your campaign on where you come from, the haircut, the corporate portfolio, all that is inconsistent with that.”

snip

As a lawyer, Edwards went for the big payoffs, making millions suing doctors, hospitals and corporations and building a net worth he’s reported at about $30 million. Edwards wasn’t an anti-poverty lawyer, and he did little pro bono work. He didn’t emphasize fighting poverty when he ran as a moderate in 1998, defeating Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth, or during his six years in the Senate.

snip

But since his Senate election, he’s traded up to progressively tonier residences: a $3.8 million house near Embassy Row in Washington, a $5.2 million house in Georgetown and finally a $6 million house, which includes a full-size indoor basketball court, built in 2005 outside Chapel Hill.

Edwards also took a part-time consulting job with Fortress Investment Group of New York in October 2005. Fortress raises money from wealthy individuals and institutions, pools the cash in private equity or hedge funds and invests it in alternative ways - buying public companies and taking them private, for instance - to beat usual market returns.

With $43 billion under management, including $16 million of Edwards’ personal fortune, Fortress is among the major firms in its class. While Fortress was incorporated in Delaware, its hedge funds were incorporated in the Cayman Islands, allowing partners and investors to avoid or defer paying taxes. That’s a practice that Edwards frequently has criticized.
(more…)

So the running mates set off across the country together with different messages, sometimes delivered at the same rally: Mr. Kerry leading the crowd in chants for “help,” Mr. Edwards for “hope.” The campaign printed two sets of signs. By November, the disagreement had been so institutionalized that campaign workers handed out fans with both messages, on flip sides.To the end of their disappointing run, the two men were unable to agree on the script, whether for slogans or more substantive matters. And like so many political marriages, the one between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards — Senate colleagues who became rivals then running mates but never really friends — ended in recrimination and regrets.

Kerry aides complain that Mr. Edwards never stopped running for president — a Democratic Party official recalled some aides wearing “Edwards for President” pins at a fund-raiser long after they were working for the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Kerry supporters say Mr. Edwards refused to play the traditional vice-presidential role of attack dog even going up against a purebred, Dick Cheney. And Mr. Kerry had barely conceded the race, they say, before Mr. Edwards was aiming for 2008 and embarking on what one campaign aide called the “it wasn’t my fault tour” around his home state to distance himself from the loss.

snip

“We were getting our heads taken off and he was still talking about two Americas,” said David Morehouse, Mr. Kerry’s traveling chief of staff.

“We were constantly negotiating backwards,” said Marcus Jadotte, a Kerry deputy campaign manager who was assigned to travel with Mr. Edwards. “He refused to get to a place where they were truly in concert.”
(more…)

Figure Eight Island was developed in the 1960s, when a group of wealthy men from Wilmington vowed to create North Carolina’s answer to coastal resort towns in Georgia and South Carolina.It is relatively small. About 460 houses are spread down the island’s 4 1/2 miles of landscaped roads and cul-de-sacs. Most have more than 3,000 square feet. About 50 have more than 5,000 square feet, according to property records.

Property sold in the past six months had an average value of $2.2 million.

The island has no commercial development — only a yacht club that is far more modest than most houses around it.

Its most famous homeowners are Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth. Also owning a house there: Charlotte lawyer and N.C. Board of Transportation member Marion Cowell, N.C. School of the Arts founder Thomas S. Kenan III and several descendants of the Stanback headache-medicine fortune.

Unlike most other barrier islands along the N.C. coast, it remains privately controlled. There’s no sign for the island at the turn off U.S. 17. A guardhouse waits ahead, and a uniformed guard demands a pass before letting visitors cross a bridge.

The beach itself is public — for those who can get there by boat.

snip

A coalition of 14 environmental groups has sent a letter to legislators, arguing that no pilot project is needed to protect “a dozen summer mansions” because the effects of a terminal groin are well known.

“Although Figure Eight is a (private) island,” the letter reads, “its ocean beach and inlets belong to the public and should not be barricaded with hardened structures.”

Charlotte Observer 11/18/07
http://www.charlotte.com/171/story/368026.html

Clinton’s campaign responded by targeting Edwards’ previous consulting work for a hedge fund that owned a sub-prime lender.

“If John Edwards really cared about working people, he wouldn’t have taken a $500,000 salary from a hedge fund that is foreclosing on working people around the country,” said Clinton campaign spokeswoman Hilarie Grey. “Sen. Edwards should spend his time talking about how he’s going to help those people instead of launching ridiculous attacks against Sen. Clinton.”

Edwards worked part-time for Fortress Investment Group, getting paid $479,512. The former North Carolina senator redirected roughly $16 million invested in the fund after learning that two sub-prime mortgage companies it owned had sued to foreclose on 34 New Orleans homeowners. Edwards also used his own money to start a fund to help those homeowners.

He has said he won’t create a similar fund for homeowners elsewhere who were sued by the lenders.

Las Vegas Sun 11/16/07
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2007/nov/16/111610804.html