John Edwards

   

John Edwards
John Edwards
Date of Birth: June 11, 1953
Place of Birth: Seneca, South Carolina
Marriage:

Elizabeth Edwards

Children:

Wade Edwards, son (deceased)
Cate Edwards, daughter
Emma Claire Edwards, daughter
Jack Edwards, son

Profession: Lawyer
Political Party: Democratic Party
For other uses, see John Edwards (disambiguation).

Johnny Reid "John" Edwards (born June 10, 1953) is the senior United States Senator from North Carolina. Edwards was one of the major contenders for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, and went on to be the running mate of the unsuccessful 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry.

Childhood and family

Edwards was born in Seneca, South Carolina. His name at birth was Johnny Reid. He spent his formative years in the town of Robbins, North Carolina. His father was a textile mill production manager, while his mother was a postal employee. Edwards was the first person in his family to attend university (North Carolina State University). He graduated with a bachelor's degree in textile technology in 1974, and later earned a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both with honors. While at UNC-Chapel Hill, he met and married his wife, fellow law student Elizabeth Anania. When he started his legal career, he began using the name John rather than Johnny.

Edwards and his wife Elizabeth have had four children. Their first two, Wade and Catharine, were born soon after John and Elizabeth's marriage. Just one month prior to the beginning of testimony in the Lakey case in 1996, Edwards lost his 16-year-old son, Wade, in an automobile accident; in remembrance of his son, Edwards wears Wade's Outward Bound pin on his suit jacket. Following Wade's death, Edwards and his wife chose to have children again; their two youngest, Emma Claire (1999) and Jack (2001) The Edwards family resides in Raleigh, North Carolina and Washington DC.

Legal career

Before entering politics, Edwards was a successful trial attorney who represented families and children that had allegedly been wrongly injured by negligent corporate manufacturers and municipal entities. Edwards made his personal fortune of millions of dollars in the process. Drawing on his experience in personal injury cases, Edwards has characterized himself as a defender of "the little guy."

The biggest case of his legal career was a personal injury lawsuit against Sta-Rite, the manufacturer of a defective pool drain which disemboweled a Cary, North Carolina girl, on June 24, 1993. Edwards established negligence by showing that the company had been aware of at least twelve similar injuries to other children. Turning down all offers of settlement from the company, Edwards pressed the case forward until he secured a $25,000,000 award from the jury, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. Fellow lawyers and law students crowded the courtroom to hear Edwards' closing arguments, while he spoke to the jury for two straight hours without referring to notes in an emotional appeal.

In December 2003, during his presidential campaign, Edwards (with John Auchard) published Four Trials (ISBN 0-74324-4974), a biographical book focusing on his legal career.

Senate term

Both the success of the Lakey case (which Edwards called "the best lawyering of my life") 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. A Democrat, Edwards won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998 by defeating the favored incumbent Republican, Lauch Faircloth.

Edwards's skill as a trial attorney was evident during President Bill Clinton's 1999 Senate impeachment trial. Edwards, who was responsible for the deposition of witnesses Monica Lewinsky and Vernon Jordan, played a critical role in the Senate proceedings that eventually ended in the President's acquittal.

During the 2000 Presidential campaign, Edwards made Democratic nominee Al Gore's Vice Presidential nominee short list (along with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gore's eventual pick), and in November 2000, People magazine named Edwards as its choice for the "sexiest politician." Edwards serves on several Senate committees, including the prestigious Intelligence and Judicial committees.

Before the 2004 Senate election, Senator 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.

2004 presidential campaign

Edwards unofficially began his presidential campaign as early as 2001, when he began to seek speaking engagements in Iowa, the site of the nation's first party caucuses. On September 15, 2003, Edwards unofficially announced his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (a news and political satire show), thus fulfilling a promise he made as a guest during TDS' coverage of the 2002 Mid-Term Elections. The next morning, Edwards made the announcement official from his hometown, Robbins, North Carolina. He has declined to run for re-election to the Senate this year.

As Edwards had been building support for a presidential bid 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.

Edwards's campaign was often characterized by the American news media as populist. His stump speech spoke of "two Americas", one composed of the wealthy and privileged, and the other of the hard-working common man (Excerpt from "two Americas" stump speech (http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards#Two_Americas)). His refusal to level direct negative attacks at his fellow Democratic contenders also attracted attention.

After campaigning for most of 2003, Edwards' campaign struggled to gain large support in the Democratic Party. But in early 2004, weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Edwards began to catch fire and his support and poll numbers began to rise steadily. Edwards' late stage momentum, as well as his departure from the negative campaigning which characterized other leading candidates, carried him into a surprising second place finish in Iowa, behind only John Kerry and ahead of former front-runner Howard Dean. Edwards finished with 12% support in the New Hampshire primary one week later, essentially tied for third place position with Wesley Clark.

After Howard Dean's withdrawal from the contest, Edwards became the only major challenger to Kerry for the Democratic nomination. Remarking on his unexpectedly strong finish, Edwards humorously cautioned Kerry: "Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear."

Edwards maintained a positive campaign and largely avoided attacking Kerry until a February 29, 2004 debate in New York, where he attempted to put Kerry on the defensive by characterizing the front-runner as a "Washington insider" and by mocking Kerry's plan to form a committee to examine trade agreements.

Edwards's campaign ended after a disappointing finish in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 2, when Kerry finished well ahead of Edwards in eight of the 10 states voting that day. (Dean won his home state of Vermont.) Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry in Georgia, but, failing to win a single state, chose to withdraw from the presidential race. He announced his official withdrawal at a Raleigh, North Carolina press conference on March 3, 2004.

Edwards on the campaign trail in 2004.
Enlarge
Edwards on the campaign trail in 2004.
News of Edwards's withdrawal from the race made major media outlets relatively early on the evening of Super Tuesday, at about 6:30 PM CST, before polls had closed in California and before caucuses in Minnesota had even begun. This influenced many people in Minnesota to vote for other candidates, which may partially account for the strong showing of Dennis Kucinich in that state. Edwards did win the presidential straw poll conducted by the Independence Party of Minnesota.

As the last major contender to withdraw from the race, many political pundits speculated that Edwards's presidential bid was not a "serious" campaign, but merely an attempt to raise his national profile, perhaps to earn a vice-presidential spot on the Democratic ticket.

On July 6, 2004 John Kerry announced, first in an email to his supporters and later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that Edwards would be his vice presidential running mate. Kerry's decision was widely hailed by Democratic voters in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders in interviews.

The Kerry/Edwards ticket narrowly lost the 2004 election; Edwards' presence on the ticket failed to deliver even his home state of North Carolina for the Democrats, although this was not widely expected. Many pundits speculated that Edwards' presence on the ticket was designed to appeal to rural and middle-class voters in midwestern states.

Edwards is widely regarded as a potential candidate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election; his concession speech at the close of the 2004 race hinted at his continued presidential ambitions: "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away. This fight has just begun."

Issue Stances

While campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, Edwards completed the National Political Awareness Test. Some of Edwards' positions, ideas, and experiences with national issues which made up his campaign platform were:

  • National Service: Edwards believes in increasing military compensation. He supports increasing the servicemen's refundable child tax credit and improving the pay, housing, and health care for American troops. Edwards believes that more needs to be done to support soldiers' families and has introduced legislation to expand child care for families of active duty personnel and reservists.
  • Economy: Edwards proposed a plan to stimulate the economy in the short term while restoring the long-term fiscal discipline and leveling the playing field for American businesses. Edwards has fought for more resources to let individuals and communities recover from trade-related plant closings, and is a proponent of "fairer" trade agreements.
  • Education: Strengthening public schools is one of Edwards's top priorities. Edwards is against private-school voucher plans.
  • Security & Foreign Policy: Edwards believes that the country must be protected, but not by sacrificing rights and freedoms. Edwards believes in America's right to self-defense and working within the framework of international law. [1] (http://www.vote-smart.org/npat.php?can_id=CNC68243#17)
Edwards supported legislation to improve airport security, increase seaports safety, reduced vulnerability to bioterrorism, and enabled law enforcement agencies to keep known terrorists from entering the country. He cosponsored legislation to strengthen nuclear shipments safety (container strength, shipment escorts, and emergency coordination). Edwards is a proponent of legislation to fight cyberterrorism.
Edwards has proposed a new domestic intelligence agency to fight terrorist cells, strengthening security along borders, making terrorist targets less vulnerable to attack, and developing a better emergency warning system.
  • Immigration: Edwards favors increasing border security, reducing border deaths, and addressing the large inflow of undocumented workers. Edwards is a proponent of removing the backlog at the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in order to encourage family reunification. Edwards believes in expediting citizenship applications and waiving the processing fees of immigrants serving in the U.S. armed forces. Edwards opposes the proposal to create a guest worker program without a path to citizenship. Edwards supports all major expansions of H-1B visas. [2] (http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/Library/Politicians/Edwards.htm)
  • Law & Justice: Edwards opposes racial profiling. He favors fostering the due process rights of all those within American borders.
  • Gay Rights: Although Edwards does not support legalization of same-sex marriage, he opposes a Constitutional amendment to define marriage. He supports adoption rights for homosexual couples and overturning the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuals in the U.S. military.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about John Edwards.


Wikisource has original works written by or about John Edwards.</div>


Preceded by:
Lauch Faircloth 		Senators from North Carolina Succeeded by:
incumbent
(Richard Burr, Senator-elect)
Served alongside: Jesse Helms, Elizabeth Dole



Preceded by:
Joe Lieberman 		Democratic Party Vice Presidential candidate
2004




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