Edwards starts poverty tour

from Reuters

By Matthew Bigg

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is touring eight U.S. states this week to highlight poverty in America, and put the issue at the heart of his campaign.

The decision to focus on poverty serves as a challenge to his top Democratic rivals, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and enables Edwards to present himself as a leader with a cause bigger than his own ambition, analysts said.

"This (focus on poverty) is not a political strategy. This is a huge moral issue facing America," Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, said at the start of his campaign swing late on Sunday.

But analysts said the strategy could backfire in a country where many voters see poverty as the result of bad choices.

Edwards is third in national opinion polls ahead of the November 2008 elections, behind leader Clinton of New York and Obama of Illinois. But Edwards is strong in the crucial early voting state of Iowa, where he leads many state polls.

He began the four-day tour in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a city that exposed U.S. poverty to a global audience during Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005.

On a brief walk through the district, which remains largely empty, he and his wife Elizabeth met Henry Phipps, 63, who lives in a government-issued trailer while he tries to rebuild his house flooded nearly two years ago.

"You getting any help paying for it (the house)?" Edwards asked. "Nah. I ain't getting no help," said Phipps, who said he owned a bar and other properties before the storm and is now retired.

"We're proud of you," Edwards said, after a brief conversation.

TWO WORDS'

"Working poor: two words that should never be used in combination in America," Edwards later told a few dozen people gathered at the Martin Luther King Charter School in the neighborhood.

"A lot of Americans think of people who are struggling on low incomes as people who do not want to work. And that is complete nonsense," he said.

The U.S. government defines poverty as an annual income of roughly $20,000 for a family of four, and Edwards argues it is unacceptable that 37 million Americans are poor by that standard.

The son of a millworker who became a hugely successful trial lawyer, Edwards has faced criticism for his mansion in North Carolina and a famously expensive haircut, choices that contrast with his focus on poverty.

Embracing a fight against poverty carries further risks, several analysts said, because it is not a core issue for a broad spectrum of voters.

"To the extent that they (average voters) think poverty is an issue they think it's a poor, black person's fault," said William Jelani Cobb, history professor at Spelman College in Atlanta.

People on low incomes do not come from a single political constituency that can be targeted and are likely to contribute little financially to a campaign, said analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

Even among poor voters, Edwards struggles to match Clinton and Obama, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll which showed him trailing Clinton by 45 percentage points and Obama by 10 percentage points among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents with household incomes below $20,000.