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North Carolina: Senior Senator Sen. John Edwards (D) Last Updated September 23, 2003
John Edwards, now the senior senator from North Carolina and a presidential candidate, is a Democrat first elected in 1998. He was born in South Carolina and grew up there and in Robbins, in Moore County, North Carolina, where his father was a supervisor in a textile mill and his mother ran a furniture refinishing business. He was the first in his family to go to college, at North Carolina State, and then went to the University of North Carolina Law School. He started off defending recording companies accused of pirating Elvis Presley records, then moved to Raleigh in 1981 and became a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer, working hard to prepare cases (he was one of the first trial lawyers here to use focus groups) and fluently and persuasively presenting them in down-home style to juries. He was good at it, winning verdicts of $152 million; with 30% or more going to the lawyer, this enabled him to amass a fortune variously estimated at $20 million to $50 million. In January 1997 he won $25 million in compensatory damages for a nine-year-old girl from Cary horribly injured by a faulty swimming pool drain--the largest personal-injury verdict in North Carolina history. At about this time, Edwards began thinking about running for the Senate. He had not run for office before, had not even voted in every election, and said he could not remember whether he had first registered as a Democrat or Republican. But he did have strong views on some issues, and proved to have acute judgment in spotting the political weakness of incumbent Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth. In the years since his surprise victory in 1992, Faircloth, a wealthy hog farmer and long-time political insider, had a voting record as conservative as Jesse Helms's and had been a strong critic of the Clintons in various investigations. Some better-known Democrats dropped out of the race, and Edwards' main rival in the May 1998 Democratic primary was D.G. Martin, former lobbyist for the University of North Carolina and a nearly successful House candidate in 1984 and 1986. He refused to take money from PACs or Washington lobbyists. His ads were criticized for suggesting that he was born in North Carolina and that he worked his way through college loading UPS trucks (he worked there for six months). But Edwards outspent Martin 4-1 and, needing 40% to avoid a runoff, won 51%-28%. The contrast between Edwards and Faircloth was vivid. Edwards was articulate, charming, young (45 and a three-time marathon finisher); Faircloth was wrinkled with his 70 years, the embodiment of an older, rural, conservative North Carolina that many natives and newcomers wanted to leave behind. Faircloth, recognizing the threat, ran ads against Edwards in the primary, contending that he was a trial lawyer who earned millions suing doctors and driving up health care costs. He continued the negative approach, despite the voters' contented, pro-incumbent mood, throughout the campaign. Edwards proposed they pool their money and, instead of running ads, buy time for televised debates; Faircloth, less than eager for debates with a highly competent trial lawyer, would not even allow photographs one of the few times their paths crossed on the campaign trail. Edwards ran positive ads, and called for hiring teachers, building schools, regulating HMOs, and fixing Social Security. Occasionally, his inexperience showed. He said credit unions should be taxed like banks, then backed off; he refused to say how he'd vote on tobacco bill, then later said he would have voted to kill it. This was a big-spending race: Edwards spent $8.3 million, nearly three-quarters of it his own money; Faircloth spent nearly $9.4 million, including $1.7 million of his own. Faircloth started to slip in the polls and even changed pollsters in October; Edwards edged to a lead, and won 51%-47%. In this race, the Democrat carried younger voters, the Republican carried the elderly; Edwards won 55%-44% in the Raleigh-Durham area and ran well in traditionally Democratic east Carolina counties. In the Senate, his voting record is in the moderate to conservative range of Senate Democrats. After Hurricane Floyd in September 1999, he pushed hard for disaster aid, threatening to hold up Senate proceedings in November; in time the state got more than $250 million. He did not announce his position on PNTR with China until the last minute in September 2000; he was evidently worried about the effect on the textile industry, but argued that North Carolina could gain export jobs in pork, poultry, furniture, telecommunications and software and ultimately voted for it. He brought in longtime University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith to testify for his bill to outlaw betting on college and other amateur sports. Edwards made an immediate favorable impression in the impeachment debate: He was one of three Democrats to preside over the depositions of Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan and Sidney Blumenthal, and his floor speeches were rated by many as the most effective during the debate. There was little in Edwards's brief Senate record to make him a national figure, yet he was Al Gore's runner-up choice for the vice presidential nomination. The reason is his appealing manner. Though he is now rich--he sold his law practice for $5 million and in 2002 he bought an elegant $3.8 million house in Georgetown--he still has a common touch. He has an appealing family, touched by tragedy: His 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash in 1996 (a consolation call came from Jesse Helms, who had been impressed by the young man in an awards ceremony in Washington). For all Edwards' charm he is also persuasive and capable of making complex arguments understandable and undercutting an opponent's; as one Republican senator says, "Never yield the floor to John Edwards." Political consultants Bob Shrum and Tad Devine pressed Gore to pick Edwards for VP; after he was passed over he spoke to the national convention delegations from Massachusetts, New York and California--filled with big contributors--and Iowa as well. He declined to chair the DSCC and declined to be chief spokesman for the Gore campaign in Florida. And he was abashed when in November 2000 he was named as the sexiest politician in People's "Sexiest Man Alive" issue. In 2001 Edwards began preparing to run for president and for the first time took a lead role on major legislation. In February 2001 he was in Iowa addressing the Drake University Law School's annual dinner in Des Moines. That same month he co-sponsored with John McCain and Edward Kennedy an HMO regulation bill similar to the Dingell-Norwood bill which had passed the House in October 1999. The Senate passed the bill in June 2001 59-36, despite a veto threat by George W. Bush; the House in August 2001 passed 226-203 a different version, based on concessions Republican Charlie Norwood made in meetings at the White House. The Senate bill provided for most lawsuits to be heard in state courts, which have tended to be more favorable to plaintiffs than federal courts, and imposed no limit on damages for pain and suffering. The House bill tried to channel cases to federal courts and limited pain and suffering damages to $1.5 million. For months no conference committee met, and Edwards, McCain and Kennedy tried to negotiate with administration officials. But negotiations fell apart in August 2002, when the administration agreed to accept a $4 million limit and Edwards and his co-sponsors refused. Trial lawyers, from whose ranks Edwards sprang, oppose such limits. Edwards had other legislative causes. He sponsored a bill to speed up approval of generic drugs, blocked by lawsuits from pharmaceutical companies. He sponsored a privacy law, to prevent firms providing GPS equipment to sell information on customers' movements. He criticized the Bush administration for regulations he said weakened the Clean Air Act. On the Judiciary Committee he opposed the nomination of Terrence Boyle, a former aide to Helms, to a federal appeals court. He grilled appeals court nominee Judge Charles Pickering about his ex parte communication with the Justice Department in a cross-burning case; Pickering had been concerned that the ringleaders had been treated more leniently than arguably less culpable participants. Edwards's sharp questions, cutting off Pickering's responses and demanding flat yes and no answers elicited admiration from the judge's critics and cries of unfairness from his supporters. The latter included Richard Scruggs, the Mississippi trial lawyer who organized the tobacco litigation and supported Pickering. Edwards failed to return Scruggs's phone call, and Scruggs said, "He can forget my support and that of anybody I have influence with." That is possibly a potent threat: Edwards depends for much of his contributions on trial lawyers, who have made literally billions from tobacco and asbestos litigation. He supported the Iraq war resolution in October 2002. Edwards's emergence as a presidential candidate is based more on his persona than his achievements. The New York Times called him "the next Bill Clinton"; Vanity Fair raised the question of whether he was "a perfect politician." Many in Washington would say of him what Walter Lippmann said about Franklin Roosevelt in 1932: "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president." But Lippmann was wrong about Roosevelt, and these critics may be wrong about Edwards. Certainly he was the candidate feared most by the Bush political strategists in 2002 and early 2003; they thought his Southern background, his moderate voting record on many issues and his attractive persona might put into play some Southern and Northern states which would be safe for Bush against other possible nominees. In 2001 there was little doubt Edwards was moving toward running. He traveled to Israel and Iowa, to Democratic fundraising events for candidates around the country, to Park Avenue and Beverly Hills living rooms to meet big contributors. In 2002 the travels continued, to all of the above venues, plus Number 10 Downing Street, for a talk with Tony Blair, and Comedy Central, for jokes with Jon Stewart. Edwards's performance on Meet the Press in May 2002 was criticized as lightweight; he did better with George Stephanopoulos on This Week in January 2003. He talked frequently with Bill Clinton, as good a political strategist as there is in America today. In late 2002 he delivered a series of speeches setting out detailed positions on issues, much as Clinton had in late 1999. On foreign policy in October, despite his support of Bush on Iraq, he accused him of "arrogance without purpose" and "gratuitous unilateralism." On the economy in November he called for a $500 family tax credit, repeal of tax cuts for households with incomes over $200,000 and retention of the estate tax on estates over $7 million. On education in November he called for a tuition-free year in college for students who are in work study or community service and for incentives for better teachers. He opposed vouchers, favored public charter schools and called for tenure reform to make it easier to fire bad teachers--a proposal likely to rankle the teachers' unions. On homeland security in December he called for security clearances for police officers, new minimum standards for nuclear and chemical plants, more immigration inspectors and $1.5 billion of federal money for local police forces and firefighters. He formed a New American Optimists PAC which took in soft money contributions, mostly from lawyers, through November 2002, and on January 2, 2003, set up an exploratory committee. "The fact that I see issues through the eyes of regular people is an enormous strength," he said in December, and in January he used the phrase "regular people" over and over. Voters usually seek in the next president qualities they miss in the incumbent; Edwards seemed to be describing himself with that in mind in January 2003: "The President has a different kind of administration that is run to a large extent by insiders and for insiders." Edwards's obvious strategy is to win over enough voters with his persona and with intensive campaigning to make a good showing in Iowa and New Hampshire against candidates who come from adjoining states--to exceed expectations. This may be more difficult because of his support of the Iraq war resolution, which will make him anathema to many of the left-wing Democrats so numerous in those states. Then comes the primary in South Carolina, where he was born, and where he must hope to win over both black and white voters; in previous contests a majority or near-majority of South Carolina Democratic primary voters have been black, but more whites may choose to vote in the contest in 2004 since there will be no contest for the Republican nomination. Will Edwards also run for reelection in North Carolina in 2004? In late 2002 and early 2003 he would not say. North Carolina law allows him to run for both offices (and thus also for vice president and senator); the filing deadline is February 27 which under the caucus and primary schedule would allow him to make a decision knowing how well he has done in Iowa and New Hampshire. But as he has been making moves to run for president, his ratings in North Carolina polls have not been very good; a plurality of voters there say he should not run for president, and reports that he has said privately he will not seek both offices ring true. A March 2003 poll found that 43% of voters approve of his presidential bid while 49% disapprove. The Bush White House has been encouraging Congressman Richard Burr to run; in November 2002 he said he would decide by summer, and with White House backing he could raise ample funds. North Carolina Democratic leaders were encouraging Erskine Bowles, Clinton White House chief of staff and 2002 Senate nominee, to run if Edwards doesn't. Other Democrats said to be considering a race were former Speaker Dan Blue, who finished second to Bowles in the 2002 primary, and 2d District Congressman Bob Etheridge. There is a precedent that is encouraging to Republicans: Since 1968, no one has been reelected to this seat, and it has passed back and forth from party to party in each election.
Update: September 23, 2003
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