John Edwards 2008: What’s not to like

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…)

Finally, this morning, I get word that I wouldn’t be talking to John Edwards but that I would get 10 minutes with Elizabeth Edwards. I talked this over with my editor — we don’t want to be obligated to talk to every candidate’s spouse who comes through town, but agreed that Elizabeth had an exceptional story because of her ongoing battle with cancer. We agreed that Bill Clinton would probably also be an exception.So the interview was a go. In the afternoon, I got a call from the Edwards campaign inquiring about the questions I would be posing. I don’t feel obligated to give advance notice of my questions, but I wanted to be upfront in this case. I said that among my questions, I would ask, “Would you address the rumor of your husband’s affair?”

Out of respect for Elizabeth Edwards and because the rumors were unsubstantiated, I said I would not press the issue beyond asking the single question — but that I felt obliged to ask it.

The campaign worker did her best to convince me that it wasn’t a legitimate question. I asked if she was saying that I couldn’t do the interview if I was going to ask that question. I didn’t get a straight answer, so I asked if I would get the interview if I agreed not to ask the question — if she wanted that ground rule.

The campaign worker was sharp. She immediately asked that if it was a ground rule, would I then write that I got the interview because I agreed to the ground rule?

I said I would indeed mention, at least on the blog, that such a provision was required for me to get the interview. She said she’d get back to me, and later called to say the interview had been cancelled.

snip

I think I made the right decisions in how I handled this. I subsequently talked it over with my editor and a couple of other reporters whose judgement I trust. I was honest with the Edwards campaign, and I proposed what I thought might be a fair compromise (I don’t ask the question, but note the condition of not asking it was required to get the interview).

But I still have my reservations. At what point does something have enough credibility that you ask the participants about it? The standard is higher when the issue is personal, like adultery, but how much higher? Is it possible to fully do one’s job in the mainstream of an industry — in this case, daily newspaper journalism — and not abide the evolving standards of that industry?

Orange County Register 10/19/07
LINK

Elizabeth Edwards says she’s not surprised that she and husband John Edwards won a poll on happy marriages among presidential candidates.

She says jokingly that the competition wasn’t very tough.

The Ladies Home Journal survey released last week shows 52 percent of women thought the Democratic couple from Chapel Hill are happily married. U.S. Sen. John McCain and his wife, Cindy, led Republican candidates with 35 percent.

WTN TV 10/17/07
http://www.witntv.com/home/headlines/10613152.html

LOOK, I’m definitely absolutely for sure not saying this is so. I’m only reporting a reaction to the Enquirer’s recent allegation that candidate John Edwards may have strayed. He has denied this. All I know is, his staffers are newly nervous. Some reached out to pros for how to deal with this. They’re not just dismissing it. They’re discussing it. One who was tapped for insight puts it at, “They’re profoundly worried.”Some possible worry might be that, even minus this kerfuffle, he’s disintegrating in New Hampshire and slipping to third place in Iowa. Hard to tell, and I really don’t know. I’m but a lowly reporter, not a highborn kingmaker.

New York Post 10/16/07
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10162007/gossip/cindy/edwards_camp_getting_jittery.htm

Last night I went to see John Edwards speak at a junior high auditorium in Ridgeland, SC. It was a pretty standard campaign event (though the Edwards campaign couldn’t accomodate for an interview like they had some other press, they were exceedingly helpful and apologetic and didn’t blush when I said I was from NR.)

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to report that while the national media aren’t biting on the story surrounding Edwards’ alleged affair yet, it definitely is picking up some steam despite Edwards’ denial. Traveling across the state, he was asked about it at every press availibility yesterday.

One reporter I spoke to who wrote for a major media outlet said that one thing that may force the major media to start picking up on the story is how the local news on the campaign trail handles it. Well, I watched the 11 O’Clock news in Charleston last night, and along with the usual B-roll of him touring schools and eating barbecue, they mentioned it. With people talking about it on the ground, I imagine the Edwards campaign can only call in so many favors back in Washington to keep it out of the national news.

National Review 10/12/07
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTkzOWQ5ZjlmN2RiYjQyMDEyZTg0Nzg1OWQ1MDNlNDg=

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that rumors and scandal take on a life of their own. No one even needs to report anything! Once a story is out there, it’s fair game for everyone else to repeat it, often under the guise of media analysis. The story starts at the bottom of the food chain of credibility. Bloggers and tabloid outlets egg each other incrementally on, until eventually more serious outlets pick it up.

We may be about to leave the early stages of such a cycle with the growing scrutiny into the professional relationship between John Edwards and a woman named Rielle Hunter, a.k.a. Lisa Druck, who produced films for his One America prepresidential campaign. Ann Coulter is even involved! The following timeline details the anatomy of an innuendo, including a few steps into the perhaps inevitable future.

• January 2007. John Edwards’s One America campaign debuts a series of Web videos about him, made by relatively unknown documentarian Rielle Hunter. The pair met at a bar, where she sold the future candidate on the idea. Hunter subsequently followed Edwards around the country, filming. Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman, upon watching the final cuts, notes that “in the midst of a short theme sequence that begins each Webisode, the camera lingers over the former senator’s behind as he tucks a starched white shirt into his pants.”

• August 27, 2007. The Post’s “Page Six” runs the following blind item: “WHICH political candidate enjoys visiting New York because he has a girlfriend who lives downtown? The pol tells her he’ll marry her when his current wife is out of the picture.” This is later reprinted by commenters on the Huffington Post blog.

• September 26, 2007. Young Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein writes about his efforts to track down the Web videos, which have now been taken off the internet*. Stein writes an oddly detailed account of his chase of the videos and points out that both the Edwards campaign and Hunter’s production company blame one another for their vanishing act. Stein even checks with the Screen Actor’s Guild to get more information and tracks down production assistants on the project, none of whom will say much. Finally, Edwards’s people offer to let him see the videos — while accompanied by a campaign minder. Stein says he accepted the offer, but does not report whether he actually saw them or not.*

• September 27, 2007. Daily Kos contributor Ben Bang links to Stein’s post and viciously berates the reporter. “Are we supposed to infer something from this non-ending, douchebag?” Ben Bang asks, going on to call him a him a “no-article-finishing, character-assassinating hack fuck.”

• October 10, 2007. The National Enquirer reports that Edwards is having an affair with a mystery woman who had traveled with the campaign and met the candidate at a bar. An Edwards rep calls the allegations “false, absolute nonsense.”
(more…)

SUMMERTON, S.C. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards says a tabloid story that he had an extramarital affair is untrue. ”The story is false. It’s completely untrue, ridiculous,” Edwards told reporters Thursday after he was asked about the National Enquirer report.The supermarket newspaper reported that the former North Carolina senator had an affair with a woman who worked on his campaign. It did not identify the woman, nor did it name the source of the information for its report.Edwards said the story was simply “made up” and that he loves his wife, Elizabeth, who is being treated for an incurable form of cancer.”I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years and as anybody who’s been around us knows, she’s an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known,” he said. “So the story’s just false.”

Associated Press 10/11/07http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jnMKwr-NYRAB_crSy_UcwFw-zOiAD8S7C9680

Political Flesh Feast 10/2/07
http://politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=577