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John Reid Edwards
United States Senator from North Carolina
In office January 6, 1999 – January 3, 2005
Preceded by	Lauch Faircloth
Succeeded by	Richard Burr
Born	June 10, 1953 (1953-06-10) (age 54) Seneca, South Carolina
Nationality	American
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Elizabeth Edwards
Alma mater	North Carolina State University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Profession	Attorney, Politician
Religion	United Methodist
Signature

Johnny Reid "John" Edwards^[1](born June 10, 1953), is an American politician who was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004 and a one-term U.S. Senator from North Carolina. Edwards is currently a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 Presidential election.

He defeated incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina's 1998 Senate election and during his six-year term sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2004 presidential election.

He eventually became the Democratic candidate for Vice President, the running mate of presidential nominee Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. After Edwards and Kerry lost the election to incumbents George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Edwards began working full time at the One America Committee, a political action committee he established in 2001, and was appointed director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. He was also a consultant for Fortress Investment Group LLC.

Contents 1 Early life, education, and family 2 Legal career 3 Senate career 4 2004 presidential campaign 4.1 2004 vice presidential nomination 5 Post-Senate activities 5.1 Fortress Investment Group 6 2008 presidential campaign 7 Political views 8 Electoral history 9 Bibliography 10 See also 11 References 12 External links

Edwards was born on June 10, 1953 to Wallace Reid Edwards and Catharine Juanita "Bobbie" Wade in Seneca, South Carolina. The family moved several times during Edwards' childhood, eventually settling in Robbins, North Carolina, where his father worked as a textile mill floor worker, eventually promoted to supervisor; his mother had a roadside antique finishing business and then worked as a postal letter carrier when his father left his job.^[2]

A football star in high school,^[3] Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He attended Clemson University and transferred to North Carolina State University. Edwards graduated with high honors earning a bachelor's degree in [textile technology] in 1974 from North Carolina State University, and later earned his law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) with honors.

While at UNC, he met Elizabeth Anania, who is four years his senior. They married in the summer of 1977 and had four children. Wade, was born in 1979, Cate in 1982, Emma Claire in 1998, and Jack, born in 2000. Their son Wade was killed at sixteen in a car accident when strong winds swept his Jeep off a North Carolina highway in 1996. Edwards and his wife began the Wade Edwards Foundation in their son's memory; the purpose of the nonprofit organization is "to reward, encourage, and inspire young people in the pursuit of excellence." The Foundation funded the Wade Edwards Learning Lab at Wade's high school, Broughton High School in Raleigh, along with scholarship competitions and essay awards. Just weeks before Wade died, he had been honored at the White House by First Lady Hillary Clinton for an essay he wrote on entering the voting booth with his father.^[4][5]

On November 3, 2004, Elizabeth Edwards revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was treated via chemotherapy and radiotherapy,^[6] and continued to work within the Democratic Party and her husband's One America Committee. On March 22, 2007, Edwards and his wife announced that her cancer had returned; she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, with newly discovered metastases to the bone and possibly to her lung.^[7][8] They said that the cancer was "no longer curable, but is completely treatable"^[9] and that they planned to continue campaigning together with an occasional break when she requires treatment.^[10][7]

After law school, he clerked for a Federal judge and in 1978 became an associate at the Nashville law firm of Dearborn & Ewing, doing primarily trial work, defending a Nashville bank and other corporate clients. The Edwards family returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh where he joined the firm of Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove.^[11]

In 1984 Edwards was assigned to a perceived unwinnable medical malpractice lawsuit; the firm had only accepted it as a favor to an attorney and state senator who did not want to keep it. Nevertheless, Edwards won a $3.7 million verdict on behalf of his client, who suffered permanent brain and nerve damage after a doctor prescribed a drug overdose of anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse during alcohol aversion therapy.^[12] In other cases, Edwards sued the American Red Cross three times, alleging transmission of AIDS through tainted blood products, resulting in a confidential settlement each time, and defended a North Carolina newspaper against a libel charge.^[11]

In 1985, Edwards represented a five-year-old child born with cerebral palsy whose doctor did not choose to perform an immediate Caesarian delivery when a fetal monitor showed she was in distress. Edwards won a $6.5 million verdict for his client, but five weeks later, the presiding judge sustained the verdict but overturned the award on grounds that it was "excessive" and that it appeared "to have been given under the influence of passion and prejudice," adding that in his opinion "the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict." He offered the plaintiffs half of the jury's award, but the child's family appealed the case and settled for $4.25 million.^[11] Winning this case established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine if the patient understood risks of a particular procedure.^[12]

After this trial, Edwards gained national attention as a plaintiff's lawyer. He filed at least twenty similar lawsuits in the years following and achieved verdicts and settlements of more than $60 million for his clients. These successful lawsuits were followed by similar ones across the country. When asked about an increase in Caesarean deliveries nationwide, perhaps to avoid similar medical malpractice lawsuits, Edwards said, "The question is, would you rather have cases where that happens instead of having cases where you don't intervene and a child either becomes disabled for life or dies in utero?"^[11]

In 1993, Edwards began his own firm in Raleigh (now known as Kirby & Holt) with a friend, David Kirby. He became known as the top plaintiffs' attorney in North Carolina.^[11] The biggest case of his legal career was a 1997 product liability lawsuit against Sta-Rite, the manufacturer of a defective pool drain cover. The case involved a three-year-old girl^[13] who was disemboweled by the suction power of the pool drain pump when she sat on an open pool drain whose protective cover other children at the pool had removed, after the swim club had failed to install the cover properly. Despite 12 prior suits with similar claims, Sta-Rite continued to make and sell drain covers lacking warnings. Sta-Rite protested that an additional warning would have made no difference because the pool owners already knew the importance of keeping the cover secured.

In his closing arguments, Edwards spoke to the jury for an hour and a half and referenced his son, Wade, who had been killed shortly before testimony began. Mark Dayton, editor of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, would later call it "the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen."^[14] The jury awarded the family $25 million, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. The company settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating additional punitive damages, rather than risk losing an appeal. For their part in this case, Edwards and law partner David Kirby earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's national award for public service.^[12] The family said that they hired Edwards over other attorneys because he alone had offered to accept a smaller percentage as fee unless the award was unexpectedly high, while all of the other lawyers they spoke with said they required the full one-third fee. The size of the jury award was unprecedented, and Edwards did receive the standard one-third plus expenses fee typical of contingency cases. The family was so impressed with his intelligence and commitment^[11] that they volunteered for his Senate campaign the next year.

After Edwards won a large verdict against a trucking company whose worker had been involved in a fatal accident, the North Carolina legislature passed a law prohibiting such awards unless the employee's actions had been specifically sanctioned by the company.^[11]

In December 2003, during his first presidential campaign, Edwards (with John Auchard) published Four Trials, a biographical book focusing on cases from his legal career. The success of the Sta-Rite case and his son's death (Edwards had hoped his son would eventually join him in private law practice) prompted Edwards to leave the legal profession and seek public office.

Edwards won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998 as a Democrat against incumbent Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth. Despite originally being the underdog, Edwards beat Faircloth by 51.2% to 47.0% — a margin of some 83,000 votes.

During President Bill Clinton's 1999 impeachment trial in the Senate, Edwards was responsible for the deposition of witnesses Monica Lewinsky and fellow Democrat Vernon Jordan. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was reported to be on Democratic nominee Al Gore's vice presidential nominee "short list" (along with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gore's eventual pick).^{[citation needed]} During his time in the Senate, Edwards cosponsored 203 bills.^[15]

He cosponsored Lieberman's S.J.RES.46, the Iraq War Resolution, and also later voted for it in the full Senate to authorize the use of military force against Iraq,^[16] saying on October 10, 2002 that "Almost no one disagrees with these basic facts: that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a menace; that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons; that he has supported terrorists; that he is a grave threat to the region, to vital allies like Israel, and to the United States; and that he is thwarting the will of the international community and undermining the United Nations' credibility."^[17] He subsequently apologized for that military authorization vote. Edwards also supported and voted for the Patriot Act.

Among other positions, Edwards was generally pro-choice and supported affirmative action, and the death penalty. Among his first sponsored bills was the Fragile X Research Breakthrough Act of 1999.^[18] He was also the first person to introduce comprehensive anti-spyware legislation with the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act.^[19] He also advocated rolling back the Bush administration's tax cuts and ending mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders.^[20] Edwards generally supported expanding legal immigration to the United States while working with Mexico to provide better border security and stop illegal trafficking.^[20][21]

Before the 2004 Senate election, Edwards announced his retirement from the Senate and supported Erskine Bowles, former White House Chief of Staff, as the successor to his seat; Bowles, however, was defeated by Republican Richard Burr in the election.

In November 2000, People magazine named Edwards as its choice for the "sexiest politician alive."

Edwards served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary and was a member of the New Democrat Coalition.

Main article: United States presidential election, 2004

In 2000, Edwards unofficially began his presidential campaign when he began to seek speaking engagements in Iowa, the site of the nation's first party caucuses. On January 2, 2003, Edwards began fundraising without officially campaigning by forming an exploratory committee. On September 15, 2003, Edwards fulfilled a promise he made a year earlier as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to unofficially announce his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination. The next morning, Edwards made the announcement officially from his hometown. He declined to run for reelection to the Senate in order to focus on his presidential run. Edwards' campaign was chaired by North Carolina Democratic activist Ed Turlington.

As Edwards had been building support essentially since his election to the Senate, he led the initial campaign fundraising, amassing over $7 million during the first quarter of 2003, more than half of which came from individuals associated with the legal profession, particularly Edwards' fellow trial lawyers, their families, and employees.^[22]

Edwards' "stump speech" spoke of two Americas with one composed of the wealthy and privileged, and the other of the hard-working common man, ^[23] causing the media to often characterize Edwards as a populist.^[24][25]

Edwards struggled to gain substantial support but his poll numbers began to rise steadily weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Edwards' had a surprising second place finish with the support of 32% of delegates, behind only John Kerry's 39% and ahead of former front-runner Howard Dean at 18%. One week later in the New Hampshire primary, Edwards finished in fourth place behind Kerry, Howard Dean, and Wesley Clark with 12%. During the February 3 primaries, Edwards won the South Carolina primary,^[26] lost to Clark in Oklahoma, and lost to Kerry in the other states. Edwards garnered the second largest number of second place finishes, again falling behind Clark.^[27]

Dean withdrew from the contest leaving Edwards the only major challenger to Kerry. In the Wisconsin primary on February 17, Edwards finished second to Kerry with 34% of the votes.

Edwards largely avoided attacking Kerry until a February 29, 2004 debate in New York, where he characterized him as a "Washington insider" and mocked Kerry's plan to form a committee to examine trade agreements.

In the Super Tuesday primaries on March 2, Kerry finished well ahead in nine of the ten states voting and Edwards' campaign ended. In Georgia, Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry but, failing to win a single state, chose to withdraw from the race. He announced his official withdrawal at a Raleigh, North Carolina press conference on March 3, 2004. Edwards' withdrawal made major media outlets relatively early on the evening of Super Tuesday, at about 6:30 p.m. CST, before polls had closed in California and before caucuses in Minnesota had even begun. It is thought that the withdrawal influenced many people in Minnesota to vote for other candidates, which may partially account for the strong Minnesota finish of Dennis Kucinich.^{[original research?]} Edwards did win the presidential straw poll conducted by the Independence Party of Minnesota.

After withdrawing from the race, he went on to win the April 17 Democratic caucuses in his home state of North Carolina,^[28] making him the only Democratic candidate besides Kerry to win nominating contests in two states.

Main article: John Kerry presidential campaign, 2004

On July 6, 2004 Kerry announced that Edwards would be his running mate. The decision was widely hailed by Democratic voters in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders. Though many Democrats supported Edwards' nomination, others criticized the selection for Edwards' perceived lack of experience. The nomination caused the Chamber of Commerce network to throw its support to George W. Bush due to Edwards' opposition to tort reform.^[29] In the vice presidential debate, Dick Cheney incorrectly told Edwards they never met due to Edwards' frequent absences from the Senate. The media later found at least one videotape of Cheney and Edwards meeting.

Kerry's campaign advisor Bob Shrum later reported in Time magazine that Kerry said he wished he'd never picked Edwards, and the two have since stopped speaking to each other. ^[30] Edwards said in his concession speech "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away. This fight has just begun."

The day after his concession speech he announced his wife Elizabeth had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Edwards told interviewer Larry King that he doubted he would return to practice as a trial lawyer and showed no interest succeeding Howard Dean as the Democratic National Committee chairman.

In February 2005, Edwards headlined the "100 Club" Dinner, a major fundraiser for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. That same month, Edwards was appointed as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for studying ways to move people out of poverty. That fall, Edwards toured ten major universities in order to promote "Opportunity Rocks!", a program aimed at getting youth involved to fight poverty.

On March 21, 2005, Edwards recorded his first podcast^[31] with his wife. Several months later, in August, Edwards delivered an address to a potential key supporter in the Iowa caucus, the AFL-CIO in Waterloo, Iowa.

In the following month Edwards sent an email to his supporters and announced that he opposed the nomination of Judge John Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States. He was also opposed to the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito.

During the summer and fall of 2005, he visited homeless shelters and job training centers and spoke at events organized by ACORN, the NAACP and the SEIU. He spoke in favor of an expansion of the earned income tax credit, a crackdown on predatory lending, an increase in the capital gains tax rate, housing vouchers for minorities (to integrate upper-income neighborhoods), and a program modeled on the Works Progress Administration to rehabilitate the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. In Greene County, North Carolina he unveiled the pilot program for College for Everyone, an educational measure he promised during his presidential campaign, in which prospective college students will receive a scholarship for their first year in exchange for ten hours of work a week.

Edwards was co-chair of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on United States-Russia relations alongside Republican Jack Kemp, a former congressman, Cabinet official, and vice presidential nominee.^[32] The task force issued its report in March 2006.^[33] On July 12, the International Herald Tribune published a related op-ed by Edwards and Kemp.^[34]

On April 6, 2006, Edwards joined Ted Kennedy at a rally for raising the minimum wage.^[35]

Although on an October 10, 2004 appearance on Meet the Press, Edwards defended voting for the Iraq War resolution to Tim Russert "I would have voted for the resolution knowing what I know today, because it was the right thing to do to give the president the authority to confront Saddam Hussein...I think Saddam Hussein was a very serious threat. I stand by that, and that's why [John Kerry and I] stand behind our vote on the resolution",^[36] on November 14, 2005, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he said he regretted voting for the Iraq War, and discussed three solutions for success in the conflict.^[37] In a February 4, 2007 appearance on Meet the Press, Edwards told Russert "over time, when I reflected on what I thought was going to be necessary going forward, to have some moral foundation to work on issues like poverty and genocide, things that I care deeply about, I could no longer defend this vote. It was pretty simple. And I got to the place I felt like I had to say it and had to say it publicly. And so—what? — a year — a year or so ago I did that."^[38]

In October 2005, Edwards joined the Wall Street investment firm Fortress Investment Group as a senior adviser, later working with them as a consultant.^[39] Unknown to Edwards,^[40] Fortress owned a major stake in Green Tree Servicing LLC, which rose to prominence in the 1990s selling subprime loans to mobile-home owners and now services subprime loans originated by others. Subprime loans allow buyers with poor credit histories to be funded, but they charge higher rates because of the risk, and sometimes carry hidden fees and increased charges over time.^[40] In August of 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that a portion of the Edwards' family's assets were invested in Fortress Investment Group, that had, in turn, invested a portion of its assets in subprime mortgage lenders, some of which had foreclosed on the homes of Hurricane Katrina victims.^[41][42] Upon learning of Fortress' investments, Edwards divested funds and stated that he would try to help the affected families.^[43] Edwards later helped set up an ACORN- administered "Louisiana Home Rescue Fund" seeded with $100,000, much of it from his pocket, to provide loans and grants to the families who were foreclosed on by Fortress-owned lenders.^[44]

This article or section contains information about one or more candidates in an upcoming or ongoing election. Content may change as the election approaches.

Main article: John Edwards presidential campaign, 2008

On December 28, 2006, John Edwards officially announced his candidacy for President in the 2008 election from the yard of a home in New Orleans, Louisiana that was being rebuilt after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.^[45][46] Edwards has stated that his main goals are eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.^[47]

National polls have had Edwards placing third among the current Democratic field since January, behind Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama.^[48] As of July 2007, the Edwards campaign raised a total of $23 million from nearly 100,000 donors, placing him behind Obama and Clinton in fundraising.^[49]

Main article: Political positions of John Edwards

Edwards denounced a troop surge in Iraq and is a proponent of withdrawal. In January, 2007, Edwards criticized silence on the "escalation of the war in Iraq."^[50] Despite President Bush's vetoes of funding bills with withdrawal timetables, Edwards pushed Congressional Democrats to continually present funding bills with withdrawal timetables.^[51] Edwards supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants,^[52] is opposed to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage,^[53] and supports the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

• 2004 Race for U.S. President & Vice President
  • George W. Bush/Dick Cheney (R) (inc.), 51% (286 electoral votes)
  • John Kerry/John Edwards (D), 48% (251 electoral votes)
  • John Edwards (D), 0% (1 electoral vote)
  • Others, 0% (0 electoral votes)

• 1998 General election for United States Senate
  • John Edwards (D), 51%
  • Lauch Faircloth (R), 47%
  • Others, 2%

• 1998 Democratic primary for United States Senate
  • John Edwards (D), 51%
  • D. G. Martin (D), 28%
  • Ella Scarborough (D), 10%
  • Others, 11%

• Four Trials (with John Auchard) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) ISBN 0743244974
• Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (New York: Collins, 2006) ISBN 0060884541
• Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream, co-editor (New Press, 2007)^[54]

• Two Americas
• United States presidential election, 2008
• Official and Potential 2008 United States presidential election Democratic candidates
• Opinion polling for the Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008

• John Edwards for President official campaign website
• John Edwards '08 Blog official campaign blog
• Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity
• Myspace profile
• Notable cases via FindLaw
• Men's Vogue profile of John Edwards
• John Edwards's biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• John Edwards's voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Congresspedia profile
• Notable Names Database profile
• On the Issues issue positions
• OpenSecrets.org campaign contributions
• John Edwards at the Open Directory Project
• John Edwards eNews Reference
• USAElectionPolls poll results

Speeches and statements

• July 27, 2004, Democratic National Convention speech: Transcript text
• October 5, 2004, Vice Presidential Debate: Transcript text, Audio and Video

United States Senate
Preceded by Lauch Faircloth	United States Senator (Class 3) from North Carolina 1999–2005 Served alongside: Jesse Helms, Elizabeth Dole	Succeeded by Richard Burr
Party political offices
Preceded by Joe Lieberman	Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate 2004 (lost)	Succeeded by N/A: Most recent(1)
Notes & References
1. Most recent presidential election as of 2007

v • d • e John Edwards
Books authored	Four Trials · Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives · Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream
Political activities	John Edwards presidential campaign, 2008  · Political positions of John Edwards  · United States presidential election, 2004  · United States Senate election in North Carolina, 1998

v • d • e United States Senators from North Carolina

Class 2: Johnston • Martin • Franklin • Turner • Stokes • Branch • Brown • Mangum • Reid • Bragg • Abbott • Ransom • Butler • Simmons • Bailey • Umstead • Broughton • F. Graham • Smith • Lennon • Scott • Jordan • Helms • Dole Class 3: Hawkins • Bloodworth • Stone • Franklin • Stone • Locke • Macon • Iredell • Mangum • Strange • W. Graham • Haywood • Badger • Biggs • Clingman • Pool • Merrimon • Vance • Jarvis • Pritchard • Overman • Morrison • Reynolds • Hoey • Ervin • Morgan • East • Broyhill • Sanford • Faircloth • Edwards • Burr

v • d • e United States Democratic Party Vice Presidential Nominees

John C. Calhoun · Martin Van Buren · Richard Mentor Johnson · George M. Dallas · William Orlando Butler · William R. King · John C. Breckinridge · H. Johnson/Lane (SD), George H. Pendleton · Francis Preston Blair, Jr. · B. Gratz Brown · Thomas A. Hendricks · William Hayden English · Thomas A. Hendricks · Allen G. Thurman · Adlai E. Stevenson · Arthur Sewall · Adlai E. Stevenson · Henry G. Davis · John W. Kern · Thomas R. Marshall · Franklin D. Roosevelt · Charles W. Bryan · Joseph Taylor Robinson · John Nance Garner · Henry A. Wallace · Harry S. Truman · Alben W. Barkley · John Sparkman · Estes Kefauver · Lyndon B. Johnson · Hubert Humphrey · Edmund Muskie · Thomas Eagleton/Sargent Shriver · Walter Mondale · Geraldine Ferraro · Lloyd Bentsen · Al Gore · Joe Lieberman · John Edwards

v • d • e United States presidential election, 2008
Straw polls · General polls · Candidates · Congressional support · Fundraising · Timeline
Democratic Party	Straw polls · Primary polls · General polls · Debates · Primaries · Convention
Candidates	Biden · H. Clinton · Dodd · J.R. Edwards · Gravel · Kucinich · Obama · Richardson
Withdrawn	Bayh · LaMagna · Vilsack
Republican Party	Straw polls · Primary polls · General polls · Debates · Primaries · Convention
Candidates	Cort · Cox · Gilbert · Giuliani · Huckabee · D.L. Hunter · Keyes · McCain · Paul · Romney · Tancredo · F. Thompson
Withdrawn	Brownback · Gilmore · R. McKinney · T. Thompson
Constitution Party	Convention
Green Party	C. McKinney · Mesplay · Swift
Libertarian Party	Convention · Imperato · Kubby · Phillies · Root · C. Smith
Independent	Sharkey
Withdrawn	Stanhope
Open FEC committees	W. Clark · H. Dean · Gore · Kerry · Nader · Sharpton
Other 2008 elections: House · Senate · Gubernatorial

Persondata
NAME	Edwards, Johnny Reid
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Edwards, John
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American politician
DATE OF BIRTH	June 10, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH	Seneca, South Carolina
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH