Video: Edwards promotes "Half in Ten" in Houston

from the Houston Chronicle

Sorry, I'm biased twords this guy. Now that he's no longer running for anything you will start to see him here more. Here is video from a presser in Houston as well as a snippet from an article about it. - Kale

He's urging lawmakers to help halve the number of poor over next 10 years

By DALE LEZON



Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards stopped in Houston Wednesday on a national tour to tout an anti-poverty campaign that aims to cut the number of the country's poor in half in a decade.

Edwards, from North Carolina, said he would "fight with every fiber of my being" to help low-income Americans.

The former Democratic vice-presidential candidate and one-time presidential hopeful joined local community and political leaders in a private roundtable discussion on poverty, the foreclosure crisis and similar issues hosted by ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

City Controller Annise Parker, Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, ACORN leaders and others attended.

At a news conference following the roundtable, local leaders, including state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, pledged support for Edwards' project.

The effort, dubbed Half in Ten, hopes to encourage state and national legislators to enact measures that will help reduce the number of impoverished citizens by 50 percent in the next 10 years.

Edwards said as the campaign's chairman he can bring national attention to the need to raise people out of poverty.

"I've got a soapbox," he said, "and I intend to use that soapbox with every fiber of my being to speak for those who have no voice."

He said that some of the measures that could help the poor and people in financial crisis would be to raise the minimum wage, expand the earned-income tax credit and make child care more affordable.

Texas ACORN president Toni McElroy said nearly 4 million people in Texas live in poverty and others are losing their homes to foreclosure. Texas, ACORN officials said, ranks 6th nationally in foreclosure rates.

State regulations are needed to protect people from lenders and mortgage brokers who encourage them to take out exotic loans, such as those that allow low down-payments for homes but later require balloon payments, ACORN leaders said.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

[Comment] Why Do We Turn Away?

from Time

By SEN. JOHN EDWARDS

If we want to end the great moral shame of America — the 37 million Americans who are denied economic justice in our country — then we need to ask the most basic question: why? Not why are "they" struggling every day, but why do we accept things as they are?

Why do we accept that the waitress who just brought us lunch needs the church's food pantry to feed her daughter for the rest of the month? She's working and that should be enough.

Why do we accept that the man who just bagged our groceries is 72 years old and lost everything when his wife got sick? He's worked all of his life and retirement shouldn't mean more work.

Why do we accept that the men and women who wore our uniform are committing suicide in their trucks because they can't afford to see a doctor? They served us and they shouldn't even have to ask.

Why do we accept the family living in their car, the mentally ill and the addicts who die on our streets, and the children who go to school tired and hungry? Maybe we accept things as they are because poverty has always been with us and we think nothing will change. Or maybe we accept things as they are because it's so easy to look away.

And that demands that we ask another question: why has it been so easy for us to look away?

We didn't look away when Katrina hit. We looked right at the families on the rooftops, the children crying at the Super Dome, the seniors trying to stay alive. We saw that this was America. This was "us:" the struggle and the help.

But, the hard truth is that it's been 40 years since we have led a sustainable effort to fight for economic justice in this country. We had many successes and failures in the 1960s, but we've forgotten the most important lesson: in order to end poverty you have to make it a priority. Well, if Moses was able to find the Promised Land after 40 years in the desert, then certainly we can renew the cause after wandering in our own.

Our journey begins by letting Americans know that something can be done: that acceptance of the ways things are can be replaced with real actions that will build a just world.

Last week, I joined a new campaign called "Half in Ten" which focuses on the belief that we can cut the poverty rate in half in the next ten years.

Here's how. We can make sure that waitress earns enough by raising the minimum wage so that it's a livable wage. We can give her a tax break by expanding the Earned Income Tax and Child Tax Credits. We can ensure that parents all across this country don�t have to choose between the job they need and the heartache of leaving their child in substandard care by guaranteeing access to quality child care. And when hardship hits when a job is lost, we should expand eligibility for Unemployment Insurance so families don't slip deeper into trouble.

The "Half in Ten" proposals are practical, proven and effective measures to get us closer to that goal. They could be enacted tomorrow if Congress and the President chose to, and for a fraction of the cost of George Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. This kind of leadership might not happen this year, but we can hope for the future. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have embraced these goals and with a Democratic President, I know they will be reached.

The common thread running through these proposals is work. In America, it's supposed to be enough. Most of the people I've met don�t need an economist to tell them that hard work isn't paying these days. You see it in their faces: the pride that comes from work and that panic about what tomorrow might bring.

I saw it in a mother in Kansas City who bundled her kids up at night with coats and hats because there was no heat and said to her children, "Don't tell the people at school or they'll take you away." I saw it in the great man I met in Virginia who went 50 years without speaking because he had no health insurance to correct a simple problem. He was so grateful and humble when someone fixed it for free and he could tell his story.

We don't want to look away from them anymore. We don't want to accept their daily struggles. We want to embrace their coming triumphs.

Groups Launch "Half in Ten" Anti-Poverty Campaign

from Political Affairs

On May 13, four of the nation's most prominent social justice organizations announced a new multi-year campaign to cut poverty in America in half in 10 years. The campaign, Half in Ten, will be chaired by former presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards, D. N.C.

"The challenge before us is to make it so that hard work is enough to get ahead again. That is not just a question of helping our brothers and sisters who are living in poverty – it is a question of restoring the fundamental fairness that this country was founded upon," said Sen. Edwards, in a statement.

"Half in Ten" is a partnership of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN), and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).

Sen. Edwards and the leaders of the four organizations kicked off the campaign with an event at Thankful Baptist Church in Philadelphia, PA, with local ACORN members along with leaders of other social justice organizations.

In 2006, 36.5 million people, or 12.3 percent of Americans, lived in poverty according to the Census Bureau. Minorities are disproportionately represented among the nation's poor, with Blacks and Hispanics comprising nearly 45 percent of those who live below the poverty line. Whites comprise less than 10 percent.

"Poverty sounds big and complex and insurmountable, yet by making some simple legislative changes—raising the minimum wage, expanding the earned income tax credit, and other fixes – economists tell us we can immediately lift thousands of people out of poverty, giving them a better chance at improving their lot," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of LCCR, at the event.

The campaign will highlight issues facing the nation's poor, working class, and middle class and mobilize those groups to advocate for policies that will address poverty, including:

* Raising state and federal minimum wages;
* Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit;
* Increasing the number of low-income families receiving child care assistance; and
* Increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance.

"The campaign has picked a set of policy solutions that are targeted, achievable, and effective. With advocates across the country supporting us, we will cut poverty in half," said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of CHN.

John Edwards to kickoff poverty fight in Phila.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Thomas Fitzgerald

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Former Democratic Sen. John Edwards is scheduled to hit the campaign trail this morning in Philadelphia, making his debut as chairman of a new effort to cut poverty in the United States by 50 percent during the next decade.

The effort – called Half in Ten - is a partnership of the Center for American Progress Fund, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Leaders say the group's campaign will focus on building support for practical legislation to attack poverty. The group, for example, plans to lobby to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, which helps low-income families; to raise both state and federal minimum wages; to increase the number of low-income families receiving child-care assistance, and to increase eligibility for unemployment insurance.

"We're going to be out there pushing legislators, pushing the Congress, pushing presidential candidates . . . and making sure that Americans, not just politicians, are responding" to the issue, Edwards said of Half in Ten last week on NBC's Today Show.

Edwards, who was the Democratic Party nominee for vice president four years ago, abandoned his 2008 presidential campaign Jan. 30 after finishing behind Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in early caucuses and primaries. He had made an attack on poverty central to his aggressive anti-corporate message.

Edwards is scheduled to speak at the Thankful Baptist Church in North Philadelphia at 9:30 a.m.

Edwards Answers Criticism During Poverty Tour

from The Washington Post

By Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writer

CLEVELAND-Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards defended himself against criticism that his expensive haircuts and lucrative income from a hedge fund undercut his campaign's effort to highlight the issue of poverty in America.

In an interview for the washingtonpost.com news program "PostTalk" Edwards said his life and career demonstrate the sincerity of his commitment to the plight of low-income Americans and continued willingness to push the issue forward during the 2008 presidential campaign.

"Anybody who's running for president ought to be subjected to serious examination from every conceivable angle," Edwards said. "So theres nothing wrong with that. What bothers me about this is, I don't want whatever personal criticism people have of me to detract in any way from the people whose lives were trying to help. That's the only thing about it that's troublesome."

Edwards cited his work as a trial lawyer defending people against major corporations, the poverty center he started after the 2004 campaign, an after-school center he and his wife Elizabeth created that caters largely to low-income students, as well as a program designed to make it possible for low-income students to go to college.

"This is something I've cared about for a very long time," he said. "Im proud of what I've done. But it is the nature of presidential politics that anything you do is going to be looked at through a microscope. So I expect that."

Edwards was interviewed midway through a three-day poverty tour that will take him from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans to stricken areas of Mississippi to an inner city neighborhood here threatened by foreclosures to rural communities in Appalachia.

The purpose, aides said, is to shine a light on a problem that Edwards believes the country has too long ignored. He is retracing some of the steps taken by Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy during the 1960s as they sought to highlight the problems of poverty.

During the interview, Edwards outlined policies he would seek to implement to achieve his goal of ending poverty within three decades. He also described what steps he would take if a withdrawal of U.S. combat forces in Iraq resulted in an escalation of sectarian violence or even genocide. He also made clear that he believes he would have a better chance of winning a general election than any other candidate seeking the Democratic nomination.

As the Senate continues debate on a series of resolutions aimed at changing U.S. policy in Iraq, Edwards said he remains committed to his view that legislators should not give in to the White House and should continue to send President Bush funding bills that include a timetable for withdrawal.

Edwards said he opposes a precipitous withdrawal but would like to see all combat forces out of Iraq over a period of about a year. But he also outlined contingency steps he favors to guard against the violence spiraling out of control once U.S. forces leave.

Among those steps would be establishing a rapid deployment force in Kuwait and exploring the stationing of U.S. forces in Jordan, if that government approves. He also said if the situation went totally out of control, he would consider establishing buffer zones around the borders of Iraq and steps to move people out of major population centers.

Edwards said he would not make a judgment about sending U.S. forces back into Iraq if there were a genocide taking place and argued that the rest of the world should step up under United Nations auspices to deal with such a humanitarian crisis.

"I think the very humanitarian crisis and circumstances that exist in western Sudan that have prompted the UN to move forward would exist in Iraq and I think there would be a different environment for bringing others in," he said.

In urging the Congress to resist approving any measure short of a clear timetable for withdrawal, Edwards said Democratic lawmakers should do everything possible to keep pressure on Bush.

"If they continue to submit bills to the president funding the troops with a timetable for withdrawal, eventually the president's going to have to make a decision about what to do because he's not going to have the money to continue the war," he said. "He's going to have to start deciding what to do with the troops, which I think will force a redeployment out of Iraq."

Edwards specifically said Democrats should not vote for the measure offered by Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and John Warner of Virginia, calling on Bush to prepare a new strategy, even if that were the only measure that could gain enough support to pass the Congress. "It's not enough," he said.

When he turned to discussing the contest for the Democratic nomination, Edwards dismissed the idea that recent changes in the top levels of his campaign represent any attempt to shake up or rejuvenate a candidacy that has fallen far behind Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) the race for campaign cash, sagged in some national polls and is struggling in New Hampshire.

"This is nothing but growth," he said of the additions of two former staffers for an anti-Wal-Mart group and the increased role of Joe Trippi, who managed former Gov. Howard Deans 2004 presidential bid. Edwards said he anticipates no significant changes in the campaigns approach or strategy as a result of the reshuffling.

Edwards would not directly address possible weaknesses of Clinton or Obama, the two leading Democratic candidates, as general election nominees. But he stated without hesitation that he would be the Democrat with the best chance of winning.

"I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that I'm the strongest general election candidate," he said citing his election to the Senate from a red state and his roots in the rural South.

Edwards also sought to clarify a brief discussion with Clinton that was captured on tape in which the two talked about limiting the size of Democratic debates. He denied that he favors pushing others out of the debates. "I am not in favor of excluding anybody from debates," he said.

He added that he would support any mechanism to get away from sound-bite driven debates. That might include formats limiting the number of topics or debates that included smaller groups of candidates, selected at random by the sponsors.

"When you ask eight people standing on a stage what would you do in Iraq and you give them either 30 or 60 seconds to answer, there is no way that any normal person watching that debate is going to be able to keep in their heads the differences or understand in any depth what the differences are and what we believe," he said. "And there are differences, and people need to understand those."

CLEVELAND-Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards defended himself against criticism that his expensive haircuts and lucrative income from a hedge fund undercut his campaign's effort to highlight the issue of poverty in America.

In an interview for the washingtonpost.com news program "PostTalk" Edwards said his life and career demonstrate the sincerity of his commitment to the plight of low-income Americans and continued willingness to push the issue forward during the 2008 presidential campaign.

On Tour to Highlight Poverty, Edwards Tries to Shift Race's Focus

from The Washington Post

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer

MARKS, Miss., -- From the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans to the Mississippi Delta to this town where Martin Luther King Jr. began his Poor People's Campaign almost four decades ago, John Edwards's message has been the same: Americans living in poverty are working hard but need more help from the federal government and their wealthier countrymen.

"A lot of Americans think of people who are struggling as people who don't want to work, and that's nonsense. We need to make sure the country understands that," the Democratic former senator from North Carolina said.

On the second day of an eight-state tour of impoverished communities in the South and Midwest, Edwards tried to connect his presidential campaign with the legacy of King and Robert F. Kennedy and the issue they tried to publicize in the 1960s: poverty. The four-day tour will end in Prestonsburg, Ky., where Kennedy concluded a tour of Appalachia in 1968.

After meeting with a group of poultry workers in Canton, Miss., on the way here, Edwards urged reporters to "please stay focused on the stories we heard" from the workers, rather than the candidate. But for Edwards, the trip represents an attempt to change the focus of Democratic primary voters.

Trailing his two main rivals, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) in fundraising and in most polls, Edwards has been unable to make much headway in part because of a series of controversies that cast doubt on the image he has cultivated as a millionaire lawyer who as the son of a millworker understands the plight of those with less than he has.

First there was publicity about the 28,000-square-foot mansion in North Carolina he was building, then the disclosure that he had charged a pair of $400 haircuts to his campaign, then the further disclosure that the hedge fund he worked for after the 2004 election employed the kind of overseas tax shelters he has deplored on the campaign trail.

"Voters vote mainly on who the person is. He's trying to communicate a message about who he is, a person who does not forget where he comes from," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who is not working for any of the party's 2008 hopefuls. "The haircut issue is significant in that context; it cuts against the story."

At its headquarters in Chapel Hill, N.C., the Edwards campaign has undergone a retooling in hopes of getting past these controversies. Joe Trippi, credited with both the dramatic rise and fall of former Vermont governor Howard Dean's 2004 presidential run, is taking an increasingly influential role, and one of his proteges, former Dean political director Paul Blank, this week started running the day-to-day operations of the campaign as its deputy manager.

On the road, Edwards said nothing about those developments, focusing instead on what he calls "the great moral issue of our time." But the 37 million Americans in families that make less than $20,000 a year, the federal definition of poverty, are not the kind of group that can push Edwards to victory. Poor people vote at lower percentages than their wealthier counterparts, by definition don't have much money to give to candidates and aren't an organized political constituency like the elderly.

"He undoubtedly knows it's an issue without a real constituency that votes," said Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of a party think tank called Third Way. "It's brave and bold, or brave and foolhardy."

Democrats such as Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have demanded that the country do more to help the poor, but after the 1992 campaign, when Bill Clinton directed much of his attention to what he termed "the forgotten middle class," the party has largely avoided making explicit political appeals to the poor.

Middle-class voters may care about poverty, but they list education, health care and the economy as their most important priorities. Edwards dismisses this argument, telling a group at a small meeting at a charter school in New Orleans that "I think the country cares."

"We just need someone to tap into that," he said.

The Edwards campaign hopes that Democrats focused on the Iraq war or other issues who don't care that much about poverty will like someone who does. "I think it gives people an insight into the kind of person he is," said Harrison Hickman, Edwards's pollster.

Most of the ideas Edwards is offering to end poverty, such as increasing the minimum wage and integrating neighborhoods so they don't have large concentrations of low-income people, have long been advocated by policy experts, who have been unable to build a strong political consensus behind them.

Edwards said Monday that ending poverty could not be accomplished only by "big government taking care of people," and he visited a restaurant in New Orleans that gives jobs to at-risk youths and a community center, emphasizing his support of innovative solutions for improving poor communities. At the same time, both in New Orleans and in Canton, the federal government was blamed for almost every problem.

While he has emphasized poverty from the time he announced his candidacy in December, he cannot completely claim the issue. Obama, who touts his work as a community organizer in low-income neighborhoods of Chicago before entering politics, will give a speech on urban poverty in Washington on Wednesday. Clinton already delivered a major address detailing how she would seek to reduce income inequality.

"If Edwards falters, it's not a repudiation of themes," said Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale University who advised Edwards on his health-care proposal. "It's a much more populist Democrat field than it was last time. He's not as clearly distinguishable as he was from Democrats in the past."

Despite those complexities, Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, seemed determined to change Americans' minds about the issue, at times sounding more like a public service announcement than a presidential campaign.

"When you say 37 million people who live in poverty, it's just a number," Elizabeth Edwards said. "It's too big a number. Part of this tour is to tell a story. This tour has the capacity, as Katrina did, to put a face on the working poor."

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.

John Edwards road-tests poverty theme

from The Los Angeles Times

On his eight-state tour, the Democratic presidential candidate hopes to find that such talk is not, in fact, a politically losing idea.

By Mark Z. Barabak, Times Staff Writer

Seeking to regain his political footing, White House hopeful John Edwards is pursuing a road less traveled: a three-day, eight-state tour through pockets of urban and rural poverty.

Beginning Sunday night in New Orleans and ending Wednesday in Appalachian Kentucky, the former North Carolina senator will reinvigorate an old campaign theme and test an even older notion: that talking about poor people is a politically losing proposition.

The poverty rate in America has stayed fairly constant since the late 1960s. But polls show that the issue of poverty and homelessness consistently ranks low among voters' priorities. The discussion has become so fraught with moral and racial overtones that presidential contenders often find it best to say little or nothing.

But Edwards insists that "people do care" about those less fortunate and believe government has a role, even a responsibility, to help those who cannot help themselves. They just have to be asked.

"I think the best measure is not a poll," the Democrat said Thursday, "but the way Americans responded when a hurricane hit New Orleans. They made contributions. They volunteered."

Skepticism is widespread. "To the extent that Edwards can link the poverty issue to a wider problem that the middle class can associate itself with, then he may be able to get some traction," said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a domestic policy advisor during President Clinton's first term. "If it's simply a question of the bottom 10% of the population, then he will not."

Ben Tulchin, whose firm conducts polling for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, another Democratic presidential contender, put it this way: "It's a nice story, the poverty thing. But at some time, voters are going to say, 'What's in it for me?' "

For some Democratic primary voters — Edwards' target audience — there is a tinge of nostalgia.

The tour was conspicuously modeled after past pilgrimages, stopping in Marks, Miss., where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began his 1968 Poor People's March on Washington, and finishing at the Floyd County Courthouse in Prestonsburg, Ky., where Sen. Robert F. Kennedy ended his iconic anti-poverty tour the same year.

But the parallels only go so far.

ABC's "Good Morning America" plans to host an Edwards town-hall meeting in New Orleans, and the campaign is using the Internet to solicit $8 contributions in support of Edwards' candidacy, symbolic of the one in eight Americans living in poverty. The online solicitation said: "The cynics might attack us…. Let them attack. We know what's right."

Edwards' travels could bolster his image as the most liberal of the leading Democratic candidates, a shift from his 2004 run for president. He has staked the position with uncompromising opposition to the Iraq war and an expansive healthcare proposal.

Though poverty may not resonate as an issue with most Americans, "there are few groups that are more concerned about the poor than Democratic primary voters," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

Edwards could also benefit from talking about poverty, precisely because there is apparently so little political gain, demonstrating a personal conviction that transcends polling.

He has laid out perhaps the most comprehensive program of any Democrat running. His goal is eradicating poverty within 30 years through tax credits and other incentives, programs expanding access to healthcare and higher education, and government creation of 1 million "stepping-stone jobs" for adults who have struggled to find work.

The tour comes at a difficult time for Edwards' candidacy. His fundraising in the second quarter of the year dropped significantly from the first, placing him much closer financially to the lower-tier candidates than to the two Democratic front-runners, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

More damaging were stories calling attention to certain extravagances — pricey haircuts, the huge North Carolina mansion he built — as well as his work for a hedge fund and the large fees he has collected to speak about poverty. The revelations were all the more destructive because of the image Edwards cultivated in his first White House campaign — as the son of a millworker, who grew wealthy as a lawyer fighting for the little guy — and his theme of two Americas, separate and unequal.

Edwards has tried humor to minimize the harm. "We want people to be able to do well. We want somebody to be able to come from nothing to spending $400 on a haircut," he joked during a speech last month on economic inequality.

But clearly his image has suffered, and questions about such fripperies are likely to trail him throughout his 1,800-mile trip — which his campaign dubs the "Road to One America Tour."

"He's trying to create an emotional narrative about himself," said Mellman, who conducted polling for the 2004 ticket of Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry and Kerry's running mate, Edwards. "There's no doubt the haircuts and the home and the hedge fund could create some doubts about the authenticity of that narrative."

Edwards, speaking via cellphone from a campaign stop in Detroit, dismissed such talk: "I think if you look at the arc of my life it's a very clear pattern" of helping those with less.

White House hopeful Edwards seeks to show a rich man can care about poor

from International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press
Thursday, July 12, 2007

WASHINGTON: The campaign of presidential hopeful John Edwards has a ready answer for all the criticism about his expensive haircuts and expansive home: A man can be wealthy and care about the poor, too.

Just look at a Democratic hero — Robert F. Kennedy.

Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, plans to spend three days next week on a poverty tour reminiscent of Kennedy's 1968 trip while he was running for president. Edwards even plans to end his journey where Kennedy did some 40 years ago, in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.

However, Kennedy, the former attorney general and brother of President John F. Kennedy, did not make it to the November 1968 elections. He was shot to death after a campaign appearance in Los Angeles several months earlier.

Edwards' eight-state tour shifts the spotlight to an issue that has been the focus of his campaign since his first run for the White House four years ago. In recent weeks, publicity about his personal wealth — $400 (€290) haircuts, construction of a 28,000-square-foot (2,600-square-meter) house, hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary to speak about poverty and advise a hedge fund for the superrich — has opened him to charges of hypocrisy and threatened to undermine his message.

Edwards' advisers argue that hair cuts and square footage should not undermine his candidacy when the nation has far greater concerns such as the Iraq war, nearly 44 million uninsured and 37 million living in poverty. They note that nearly all the leading candidates running for president in 2008 are wealthy, as well as those in the past who have championed poverty.

"I think voters understand that whether it was Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson or Bobby Kennedy, there's been a lot of people interested in issues that don't fit their own financial situation," said Edwards pollster Harrison Hickman.

Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said the perception of hypocrisy has become a problem for Edwards, fair or not, but he doesn't think it is insurmountable.

"I think it's something he has to live with now," Scala said. "You try to make light of it, which I think he did. You try to change the subject as gracefully as possible."

Edwards is not changing the subject as much as he is taking it head on. When the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing Wednesday to discuss how hedge fund managers avoid paying taxes on much of their compensation, Edwards embraced it as a chance to decry the abuse of the tax code even though he has, in the past, provided consulting services for some of those managers.

Edwards advisers say they fully expect the poverty tour will revive more questions about his finances verses his message and he is prepared to answer them.

He frequently talks about how he was born into a working-class family and has been able to live the American dream. But the tour is an attempt to show that the debate should not be about him but about one in eight Americans living in poverty.

"Let them attack," Edwards said in a letter to supporters, asking for symbolic $8 (€5.80) campaign donations to support his effort. "We know what's right. And we will keep fighting to end the national disgrace of 37 million Americans living in poverty."

Taking the trip also is a risk since it is a significant detour from campaigning in early states and raising money. But his campaign hopes the tour will provide visuals of the candidate addressing concerns of the poor that will stick throughout the campaign.

Edwards' tour was to begin Sunday night in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Then he planned to travel to Marks, Mississippi, where Martin Luther King Jr. launched his 1968 Poor People's March to Washington.

Other scheduled stops were in West Helena, Arkansas; Memphis; Cleveland; Youngstown, Ohio; and Pittsburgh. He planned to visit a remote health care clinic in Wise, Virginia; talk about economic opportunity for young people growing up in Whitesburg, Kentucky; then give a speech Wednesday at the Floyd County Courthouse in Kentucky where Kennedy spoke.

Edwards Pitches Poverty Publicity

from US News

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards’s planned three-day swing through hard-pressed neighborhoods and communities next week has been designed to wake up the press and public officials to the issue of poverty, the candidate’s national campaign manager, former Rep. David Bonior, said Monday.

“We want to force this issue into the debate,” Bonior said during an afternoon conference call with reporters in which he gave details of Edwards’s “Road to One America” tour, which will begin Monday in New Orleans. Last December, Edwards announced his candidacy in the city’s Katrina-devastated Ninth Ward. The campaign swing echoes a 1968 poverty tour by Robert F. Kennedy, who shortly afterward announced his candidacy for president.

The effort, which will take Edwards through eight other cities and states before ending July 18 in Prestonburg, Ky.--not coincidentally where Kennedy’s tour wound up--“is aimed, quite honestly, at you,” Bonior told reporters.

“It’s a disgrace,” he said, that in the “richest country on earth … 1 out of 8 are still living in poverty.”

The campaign has pointedly noted that no early primary states have been included on the itinerary and that Edwards, whose rich America/poor America message defines his campaign, plans no fundraisers during the tour. But, just for the record, Edwards’s populist message has proved popular in Iowa, where candidates face their first test in that state’s January caucuses.

Edwards downplays time at hedge fund

from The Seattle Post Intelligencer

By MIKE GLOVER

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards argued on Tuesday that his work for a hedge fund shouldn't overshadow his efforts on poverty and other issues after the 2004 campaign.

"If you look at what I've done since the last election, it is true that I did consulting work for a hedge fund, part time," Edwards told The Associated Press in a brief interview. "It's also true that I started a poverty center at the University of North Carolina, that I led minimum wage initiatives in six states - all successful - that I started a college-for-everyone program for poor communities in eastern North Carolina, that I helped organize thousands of workers into unions, that I did humanitarian work in Africa."

Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee, again declined to say how much money he was paid for his yearlong position with the New York-based Fortress Investment Group. "It will come out when the disclosure comes out," Edwards said, referring to financial reports due Tuesday.

Last week, in an interview with the AP, Edwards said he worked for a hedge fund between presidential campaigns to learn about financial markets and their relationship to poverty - and to make money too.

Fortress reported assets of about $35.1 billion as of Dec. 31, 2006. Hedge funds, now numbering more than 9,000 in the U.S. with assets estimated to exceed $1 trillion, traditionally cater to the rich, as well as pension funds and university endowments, but are increasingly luring less wealthy investors.

Edwards said his work at Fortress should be put into context with the anti-poverty work he's undertaken since he and John Kerry made a failed run for the White House.

"If you look at all the things I've done since the last election, it's pretty clear where my commitment is," he said.

Edwards was in Iowa to announce the support of 1,500 women caucus-goers. In the interview, Edwards said the experience he gained in the 2004 Iowa caucuses have taught him the need for a grass-roots organization in the state.

"I can tell you I've been through this," he said. "I'm experienced and seasoned at what it takes to organize in Iowa."

Although his main Democratic rivals, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, draw larger crowds, Edwards said is focused more on organizing. Such work paid off in a surprising second-place showing in Iowa in 2004 and will pay dividends again, he said.

Only about 100,000 Democratic activists will likely show up to decide the caucuses on Jan. 14, and most will have met at least one of the candidates. Edwards said the comfort level he's built with activists over the years is a distinct advantage.

"I think the importance of it is that people in Iowa - caucus-goers - feel like they know me, they know Elizabeth," said Edwards. "That comfort level makes it easier for them to hear what you want to do as president. It doesn't yet mean they are for you, but it means they are more receptive to what you have to say."

Tuesday's visit was Edwards' 23rd to Iowa since the 2004 election.

On poverty, Edwards faces old hurdles

from MSNBC

By Alec MacGillis

ALLENDALE, S.C. - His rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination were busy April 26 preparing for their first televised debate, but John Edwards was 45 miles south, strolling along a dirt road in this struggling town in South Carolina's Low Country to chat with what few people he could find among the many abandoned houses.

"We've got 37 million people who wake up every day in poverty," he declared moments later to residents gathered outside a local church, under the shade of a giant live oak. "This is not okay, not in the richest country on the planet."

As he makes his second bid for the White House, the former senator from North Carolina is sounding a clarion call of a sort not heard on the presidential campaign trail since Robert F. Kennedy's run in 1968. A millworker's son who became a multimillionaire trial lawyer, Edwards brings to the subject a hard-edged rhetoric and a host of proposals culled from the University of North Carolina's poverty center, which he started and ran after his losing campaign for vice president in 2004.

Advocates and researchers praise Edwards for focusing on an issue they say too many have shied from over the years. "It's so refreshing," said Peter Edelman, a former aide to Kennedy who quit the Clinton administration in protest over its welfare overhaul and now teaches at Georgetown Law School. "It's a wake-up call for a lot of people in this country."

But Edwards's plan to "end poverty in 30 years" also underscores the challenges of tackling poverty in the political arena, of the intractability of the problem and of the seeming timelessness of the debates over solving it.

Edwards dedicated himself to the subject for two years, effectively making it his part-time job and part of the record on which voters will judge him, and yet he said in an interview that his time at the UNC center did not reshape his thinking on poverty. The platform he has produced, while lengthier than his rivals', consists primarily of ideas that have been percolating in the academy for years and are shared by some other candidates, such as creating publicly subsidized temporary jobs, expanding the earned-income tax credit and easing college affordability.

If there is a personal imprint on Edwards's plan, it is his argument for reducing racial and economic segregation — that, as he put it in one speech, "if we truly believe that we are all equal, then we should live together, too." To achieve this, Edwards proposes doing away with public housing projects and replacing them with 1 million rental vouchers, to disperse the poor into better neighborhoods and suburbs, closer to good schools and jobs.

The idea sounds bold, but it faces a deflating reality: A major federal experiment conducted for more than a decade has found that dispersing poor families with vouchers does not improve earnings or school performance, leaving some economists puzzled that Edwards would make such dispersal a centerpiece of his anti-poverty program. Edwards said he was unaware of the experiment.

"The Edwards proposal is a good idea, but I don't think it's likely to accomplish the primary aim he intends," said Jeffrey Kling, a Brookings Institution economist who has studied the experiment.

Missing from Edwards's approach, some thinkers on the subject say, is the same crucial component lacking in past proposals: a way of framing the problem that can inspire political will to help a segment of society that tends not to vote.

Margy Waller, a policy adviser in the Clinton administration, said that because so many Americans believe poverty results from bad personal decisions, it is better to address it in broader terms of improving social cohesion, reducing inequality and strengthening the economy, instead of focusing on "poverty."

That is how Prime Minister Tony Blair has sold his anti-poverty plan in Britain, she said, and she is surprised that Edwards has not framed his proposals that way, since there is so much research showing that the public's views are a hurdle. She worries that it will be hard for Edwards to get elected, much less implement his plans, with his current rhetoric.

"We don't need new policy. We have plenty of policy," said Waller, now part of a Washington think tank called Inclusion. "It's just that no one's helping us move it."

Poverty center asserts own role after Edwards' exit

from Yes Weekly

Four months after North Carolina Senator John Edwards lost a bruising presidential election as Democratic nominee John Kerry's running mate in 2004, UNC-Chapel Hill announced that the defeated candidate would lead the new Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the university's law school.

With the stated goal of bringing together "faculty and other national public policy experts to examine innovative and practical ideas for moving more Americans out of poverty and into the middle class," the center might have seemed a ready-made opportunity for Edwards to keep his name in the national spotlight and develop policy ideas as he considered another run for president.

"I don't think it requires any stretch of the imagination to conclude that the poverty center was a political vehicle for John Edwards," said John Hood, president of the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation. Following the launch announcement for the new center, the conservative think-tank, which favors free-market approaches to help the poor, teasingly offered to brief Edwards on poverty - an overture rejected by the former senator.

Less than two months after the 2006 mid-term elections Edwards did indeed announce himself as a candidate for the 2008 presidential election. On Dec. 28, the same day he launched his campaign with the hurricane-battered New Orleans neighborhood of the 9th Ward as the backdrop, UNC School of Law Dean Jack Boger received Edwards' letter of resignation.

Edwards, a 1977 graduate of the law school, noted in his letter that "almost two years ago, I began a series of discussions with the leadership of UNC-Chapel Hill about ways to reinvigorate the public debate on one of the most pressing moral challenges facing our country, the 37 million Americans who live in poverty." That theme has already resonated in his young presidential campaign.

Boger quickly appointed law professor Marion Crain, Edwards' deputy director, to fill the new vacancy. Crain said that Edwards has raised a $2 million endowment for the center, which will ensure its continued stability and viability.

"I've been running the center all along," said Crain, who has overseen day-to-day operations during Edwards' frequent trips out of the state. Edwards appeared with NC Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat, and NC Treasurer Richard Moore in May 2006 to promote a state minimum wage increase, but his efforts in North Carolina have been eclipsed by more high profile appearances on behalf of unions and living-wage campaigns from California to Iowa and Wisconsin. Crain said the staff "had set in motion plans for the center's future" prior to Edwards' resignation.

"Going forward we will likely have a couple programs in the spring," Crain said. "We've got a book, a collection of essays written by a group of scholarly folks and activists called Ending Poverty In America that's edited by John Edwards, Arne Kalleberg and myself, coming out. We've got a documentary film on the working poor coming out sometime in January."

The center's website had no upcoming events listed as of Jan. 5. Over the past two years the center has sponsored three conferences, a series of panel discussions and speeches by guests such as NC National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President William Barber.

Crain said the poverty center was conceived as a nonpartisan research organization to bring academics together with activists.

"We make an affirmative effort to include all positions," she said. "We'll have someone who espouses a free-market position or someone who espouses a more conservative position. We also include activists on every panel. They're not exclusively left; some are right. These are folks who are working in the field in concrete ways to address poverty."

Crain disavowed any notion that the center's purpose is to generate economic policy ideas for Edwards' presidential campaign over the next two years.

"We are completely separate from the campaign," she said. "He may of course listen to some of the participants on the panels and decide someone is making a good argument, but that is on an individual basis."

Hood, who heads the John Locke Foundation, argued that the center has little function beyond its association with the former senator.

"It all has to do with its proximity to Edwards," he said. "Poverty is not a new issue in North Carolina. We've had public policy groups that have been devoted to issues of poverty for a long time. From the right, groups like mine have been arguing about how to address poverty. The center has not been the center of much of anything."

Hood is quick to add that he does not minimize Edwards' presidential aspirations, and believes the candidate could inject his ideas about poverty into the national discourse by winning the Democratic nomination even if he fails to win the general election.

David A. Mills, the executive director of the Common Sense Foundation and one of the few representatives of left-leaning public policy groups in the state willing to comment on the record, said the poverty center has made a valuable contribution to the public discourse through its research.

"We've seen a lot of very interesting original research that has been sponsored in some way by the center, on the [earned-income tax credit], on hunger, on single motherhood and how that impacts poverty, on job training, which we think is one of the critical issues of the twenty-first century," he said. "The center has, we think, established a great niche for doing policy research in North Carolina."

Mills added that Edwards' national profile has helped direct public attention to poverty.

"Anybody with his level of celebrity or public recognition can really bring something to the table when he gets involved in something like this," Mills said. "He has created media attention for things like the minimum wage and the earned-income tax credit, and I think that's very valuable."

Crain suggested that the center has advanced the discussion in meaningful ways that rely neither on conventional approaches of increasing government spending nor classically conservative free-market approaches.

"The sixties, seventies and even the eighties featured an emphasis on an old-style focus on poverty, meaning that government spending programs would address the problem," she said. "We are very clear as a center and as a nation that that can't be the whole solution. It's much more complicated than it might appear. Our center and [the] Brookings [Institution] are working on ideas about work as a path out of poverty, on creating not just jobs, but good jobs.

"Unions are one way they happen, although union density is declining," Crain added. "There are a number of other worker initiatives, some of them from faith groups and some of them that are community-based such as living-wage campaigns and living-wage ordinances enacted by counties and municipalities to ensure that companies provide good wages and benefits within specific geographic boundaries."

Other approaches are more basic.

"Quite a few of our panelists are working on smaller community-based efforts," Crain said. "Lack of literacy is a huge problem for the workforce. CEOs will tell you that is the biggest problem for hiring for low-level jobs."

Hood said he hasn't felt compelled to follow the center's progress. As a contender in the battle of ideas he said he finds it more critical to keep up with the reports issued by the NC Justice Center, a Raleigh anti-poverty organization formed in 1996 through the merger of two legal services organizations.

"If you wanted to find good quality work, the Justice Center puts out an annual report that's a screed for the living wage," Hood said. "And that's a substantial contribution to the discussion. I think it's wrongheaded. If things are so bad here, why is everybody flocking to North Carolina? ... The Justice Center has clearly had an impact on the poverty debate because they draw critics like me."

With the exception of Mills from the Common Sense Foundation, Hood's counterparts on the left appear to be reluctant to go public with their views about the center's efficacy as an anti-poverty organization. Representatives of the NC Justice Center, Institute for Southern Studies and the Raleigh office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN - organizations that, like Edwards, backed the $1 minimum wage increase signed into law by Gov. Mike Easley last year - either declined to comment on the record about the center or failed to return phone calls for this story.

"Whether it's activism or service delivery or policy groups," Hood said. "North Carolina has a lot of poverty groups."

To comment on this story, e-mail Jordan Green at jordan@yesweekly.com

Edwards leaves Poverty Center

from The Herald Sun

By Emily Coakley

CHAPEL HILL -- Former Sen. John Edwards has left the UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity he founded three years ago to make a second run for president.

Edwards gave up the UNC job Thursday, the day he made official what he had long hinted and was revealed a day earlier when his campaign accidentally went live with his "John Edwards '08" Web site, that he will be a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Edwards chose the back yard of a victim of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward to declare his candidacy Thursday.

Edwards, 53, called for an increase in community service and cuts in poverty, global warming and troops in Iraq. He said he made a mistake in voting for a resolution to go to war with Iraq, but noted that he didn't conduct the war.

He also said the country should provide universal health care for all and end its dependence on foreign oil. He said he would tax oil company profits and eliminate President Bush's tax cuts to pay for his priorities.

"We need to ask Americans to be willing to be patriotic about something beyond war," he said.

He said that will include a National Call to Action Day on Jan. 27 where Americans can contribute their time to help enroll children in government health care programs, fight for an increase in the minimum wage or other efforts.

In his bid for the presidential nomination, Edwards will likely battle a host of Democrat foes, possibly including U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Biden of Delaware, Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, among others.

Edwards was the Democratic Party's 2004 vice presidential nominee on a failed ticket with Kerry. Edwards had earlier dropped his own presidential bid.

Edwards, an extremely successful trial lawyer in North Carolina who built a personal fortune on the strength of some highly visible personal injury awards, served one six-year term in the U.S. Senate after being elected in 1998. He did not seek re-election to the Senate in 2004.

In his letter of resignation to Jack Boger, UNC's law school dean, Edwards outlined what he saw as the achievements of the center he helped create and which is housed in the law school.

The center's achievements, Edwards wrote, include holding conferences and panel discussions and, in April of next year, publishing a book of essays from a variety of scholars called "Ending Poverty in America."

Edwards, a native of South Carolina who grew up in the mill town of Robbins in the Sandhills of North Carolina, graduated from UNC's law school in 1977.

Despite Edwards' departure, there are no plans to discontinue the center's work.

Boger has already announced the appointment of Marion Crain, the center's deputy director, to replace Edwards as director.

In his resignation letter, Edwards said the center had managed to raise enough funds "to ensure that the Poverty Center remains a permanent part of the UNC family and will be able to continue its work for many years to come."

Edwards got a warm send-off from UNC Chancellor James Moeser.

"We wish John Edwards all the best in his future pursuits. He has done an excellent job in guiding the initial work of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. There is a strong foundation in place for the center to continue to address issues related to poverty," Moeser said.

In related news, it appears Edwards' campaign headquarters is up and running in Chapel Hill. Contact information on his campaign Web site, www.johnedwards.com, lists the campaign's mailing address as Southern Village.

Edwards will wind up a two-day, five-state tour with a "special homecoming rally" at 4 p.m. Saturday in Southern Village.

Tickets are required. They are free and available at www.johnedwardsevent.com

Edwards remains focused on poverty and economic inequality

from The Knoxville News Sentinel

By MIKE BAKER, Associated Press Writer
December 16, 2006

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) _ At a time when the political passions of many Americans are focused on Iraq and national security, John Edwards remains focused on poverty and economic inequality.

Don't expect anything different should he again run for president.

''Edwards has identified a message area that will give him a niche,'' said Chris Lehane, a longtime Democratic strategist who has worked on several presidential campaigns. ''The issue of poverty reminds people about Democratic values. It reflects his character and distinguishes him.''

Not long after Edwards and running mate John Kerry lost the 2004 election, the former North Carolina senator set up shop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, opening a research center to investigate ways to expand economic opportunity in the U.S. and eliminate poverty in the next 30 years.

During his travels around the country, Edwards has joining Teamsters President James Hoffa on a Miami picket line and joined with other unions in their fight with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. He's campaigned actively for higher minimum wages and complained loudly about federal bankruptcy laws he says keep people in a cycle of debt.

This spring, he plans to edit and publish a book with contributions from scholars analyzing the causes of poverty and offering solutions.

''Low-income families have been left the furthest behind,'' Edwards said. ''And nobody's been their advocate.''

While the issue of poverty is likely to resonates with the Democratic base, observers question whether it's an issue that can propel him to the White House. It wasn't during his first run for president, when Edwards debuted his ''Two Americas'' stump speech that highlighted the disparity between the nation's rich and poor.

Not since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has a candidate running on such a platform won the presidency.

''Poverty _ 'Two Americas' _ that's Edwards' main calling card and it's always a concern for voters,'' said Emory University political scientist Merle Black, who points out that since the 2004 election, a strong American economy has lowered the unemployment rate and increased wages across the country. ''But it's not the issue that gets someone elected. It would be more powerful if there were actually more people in poverty.''

Yet there are signs voters are willing to listen _ and more importantly cast ballots _ on Edwards' signature issue. In November, voters in six states approved an increase in the minimum wage, while state legislatures in 10 other states passed similar raises this year. All had the active support of Edwards, who calls the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour ''a national embarrassment.''

''Sen. Edwards has played a crucial role in nationalizing this discussion,'' said Bruce Raynor, general president of UNITE HERE, the only major union to endorse Edwards in the 2004 nominating process. ''He's virtually the only national figure talking about poverty as a problem and that gives him the credibility.''

Along with his work at the poverty center and advocacy around the nation, Edwards started an anti-poverty and education program in rural Greene County. The ''College for Everyone'' program rewards qualifying students with academic scholarships and has helped nearly double the number of college-bound seniors from Greene Central High School.

Edwards and other donors are now paying the college bills for roughly 80 students.

''It definitely has been a big help for me and my family,'' said 18-year-old Anna Harris, now a freshman at North Carolina State University. ''College bills really do add up. And we're just one poor county in North Carolina. There are a lot of other places in the country where a program like this could work.''

Edwards focus on poverty opens himself up to attacks about his own personal wealth. The former personal injury trial lawyer just completed construction on a $4.2 million home in Chapel Hill that includes a 10,000-square-foot mansion. Republican officials are already talking about the home, saying it offers insight into Edwards' character.

''There's a disconnect between who he actually is and who he tries to portray himself as. It's deceptive,'' said Linda Daves, chairwoman of the North Carolina Republican Party. ''That's no way to build up your credibility.''