John Edwards facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Edwards
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Official portrait, c. 1999–2003
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| United States Senator from North Carolina |
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| In office January 3, 1999 – January 3, 2005 |
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| Preceded by | Lauch Faircloth |
| Succeeded by | Richard Burr |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Johnny Reid Edwards
June 10, 1953 Seneca, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | |
| Domestic partner | Rielle Hunter (2006–2015) |
| Children | 5, including Cate |
| Education | Clemson University North Carolina State University (BA) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (JD) |
| Signature |  |
Johnny Reid Edwards (born June 10, 1953) is an American lawyer and former politician who served as a U.S. senator from North Carolina from 1999 to 2005. He was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004 alongside John Kerry, losing to incumbents George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. He also was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008.
Edwards defeated incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina's 1998 Senate election. Toward the end of his six-year term, he opted to retire from the Senate and focus on a Democratic campaign in the 2004 presidential election. He eventually became the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president, the running mate of presidential nominee Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Following Kerry's loss to incumbent President George W. Bush, 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.
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Early life and education
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Edwards was born on June 10, 1953, to Wallace Reid Edwards and Catharine Juanita "Bobbie" Edwards (née Wade) in Seneca, South Carolina. The family moved several times during Edwards's childhood, eventually settling in Robbins, North Carolina, where his father worked as a textile mill floor worker and was eventually promoted to supervisor. His mother had a roadside antique-finishing business and then worked as a letter carrier when his father left his job. The family attended a Baptist church.
A football star in high school, Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He attended Clemson University for one semester before transferring to North Carolina State University. He graduated from NCSU with high honors with a bachelor's degree in textile technology and a 3.8 GPA in 1974, and later earned his Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law (UNC) with honors.
Legal career
After law school, Edwards clerked for federal judge Franklin Dupree in North Carolina, 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. Lamar Alexander, a Republican and future governor of and U.S. Senator from Tennessee, was among Edwards's co-workers. The Edwards family returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh, where he joined the firm of Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove.
In 1993, Edwards began his own firm in Raleigh (now named Kirby & Holt) with a friend, David Kirby. He became known as the top plaintiffs' attorney in North Carolina. The biggest case of his legal career was a 1996 product liability lawsuit against Sta-Rite, the manufacturer of a defective pool drain cover.
In December 2003, during his first presidential campaign, Edwards (with John Auchard) published Four Trials, an autobiographical book focusing on cases from his legal career. According to this book, 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, his daughter Cate, and David Kirby started a new law firm in 2013, named Edwards Kirby, with offices in Raleigh and in Washington, D.C.
Political career
Political positions
Edwards promotes programs to eliminate poverty in the United States, including arguing in favor of creating one million housing vouchers over five years in order to place poor people in middle-class neighborhoods. Edwards has stated, "If we truly believe that we are all equal, then we should live together too." He also supports "College for Everyone" initiatives.
On social policy, Edwards has a universal healthcare plan that requires all Americans to purchase healthcare insurance, "requires that everybody get preventive care", and requires employers to provide health care insurance or be taxed to fund public health care. He supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, is opposed to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage; and supports the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Edwards endorsed efforts to slow down global warming and was the first presidential candidate to describe his campaign as carbon-neutral.
Senate tenure
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Edwards won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998 as a Democrat running 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. He served alongside fellow Republican Senator Jesse Helms until Helms left office in 2003, having chosen to not seek reelection in 2002.
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, Jr. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was on Democratic nominee Al Gore's vice presidential nominee short list (along with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gore's eventual pick).
In his time in the Senate, Edwards co-sponsored 203 bills. Among them was Lieberman's 2002 Iraq War Resolution (S.J.Res.46), which he co-sponsored along with 15 other senators, but which did not go to a vote. He voted for replacement resolution (H.J Res. 114) in the full Senate to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, which passed by a vote of 77 to 23, On October 10, 2002, he stated 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.
He defended his vote on an October 10, 2004, appearance on Meet the Press, saying "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". He subsequently changed his mind about the war and apologized for that military authorization vote. Edwards also voted in favor of the Patriot Act.
Among other positions, Edwards supported affirmative action and the death penalty. One of his first sponsored bills was the Fragile X Research Breakthrough Act of 1999. He was also the first person to introduce comprehensive anti-spyware legislation with the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act. He advocated rolling back the Bush administration's tax cuts and ending mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders. Edwards generally supported expanding legal immigration to the United States while working with Mexico to provide better border security and stop illegal trafficking.
Edwards served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary, and was a member of the New Democrat Coalition.
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 was defeated by Republican Richard Burr in the election.
Post-Senate activities
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 in succeeding Terry McAuliffe 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 with his wife.
Edwards is now a personal injury lawyer in Pitt County, North Carolina.
Political campaigns
Electoral history
North Carolina United States Senate election, 1998 (Democratic primary)
- John Edwards – 277,468 (51.39%)
- D.G. Martin – 149,049 (27.59%)
- Ella Butler Scarborough – 55,486 (10.28%)
North Carolina United States Senate election, 1998
- John Edwards (D) – 1,029,237 (51.15%)
- Lauch Faircloth (R) (inc.) – 945,943 (47.01%)
- Barbara Howe (Lib.) – 36,963 (1.84%)
2004 Democratic presidential primaries
- John Kerry – 9,930,497 (60.98%)
- John Edwards – 3,162,337 (19.42%)
- Howard Dean – 903,460 (5.55%)
- Dennis Kucinich – 620,242 (3.81%)
- Wesley Clark – 547,369 (3.36%)
- Al Sharpton – 380,865 (2.34%)
- Joe Lieberman – 280,940 (1.73%)
2004 United States presidential election
- George W. Bush/Dick Cheney (R) (inc.) – 62,040,610 (50.7%) and 286 electoral votes (31 states carried)
- John Kerry/John Edwards (D) – 59,028,111 (48.3%) and 251 electoral votes (19 states and D.C. carried)
- John Ewards [sic] (D) – 1 electoral vote (faithless elector)
2008 Democratic presidential primaries
- Barack Obama – 17,869,542 (48.2%)
- Hillary Clinton – 17,717,698 (47.8%)
- John Edwards – 1,006,289 (2.65%)
2004 presidential campaign
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's 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's fellow trial lawyers, their families, and employees.
Edwards's stump speech spoke of "Two Americas", with one composed of the wealthy and privileged, and the other of the hard-working common man, causing the media to often characterize Edwards as a populist.
Edwards struggled to gain substantial support, but his poll numbers began to rise steadily weeks before the Iowa caucuses. In these he 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, Dean and Wesley Clark, with 12%. During the February 3 primaries, Edwards won the South Carolina primary, 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.
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 vote.
He largely avoided attacking Kerry until a February 29, 2004, debate in New York, in which 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's 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 press conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, on March 3. Edwards's withdrawal 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. 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. 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, making him the only Democratic candidate besides Kerry to win nominating contests in two states in 2004.
2004 vice presidential nomination
On July 6, 2004, Kerry announced that Edwards would be his running mate; the decision was widely hailed in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders. Though many Democrats supported Edwards's nomination, others criticized the selection for Edwards's perceived lack of experience. In the vice presidential debate, Dick Cheney told Edwards they had never met because of Edwards's frequent absences from the Senate, but that was later proven to be incorrect. Videotape later surfaced of Cheney and Edwards shaking hands off-camera during a taping of Meet the Press on April 8, 2001. On February 1, 2001, Cheney thanked Edwards by name and sat with him during a Senate prayer breakfast. George W. Bush's campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt described the event as an "inconsequential meeting". On January 8, 2003, they met when John Edwards accompanied then-Senator Elizabeth Dole to her swearing-in while Cheney was President of the Senate.
Kerry's campaign advisor Bob Shrum later reported in Time magazine that Kerry said he wished he had never picked Edwards, and the two have since stopped speaking to each other. Edwards said in his concession speech, "You can be disappointed, but you cannot walk away. This fight has just begun."
2008 presidential campaign
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 Hurricane Katrina destroyed it. Edwards stated that his main goals were eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.
National polls had Edwards placing third among the Democratic field beginning in January 2007, behind Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. By July 2007, the Edwards campaign had raised $23 million from nearly 100,000 donors, placing him behind Obama and Clinton in fundraising.
Edwards was first to boycott a Fox News-sponsored presidential debate in March 2007. Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, and Barack Obama followed suit.
On January 3, 2008, in the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the nomination process, Edwards placed second with 29.75% of the vote to Obama (37.58%), with Clinton coming in third with 29.47% of the vote. On January 8, Edwards placed a distant third in the New Hampshire Democratic primary with just under 17% (48,818 votes). On January 26, Edwards again placed third in the primary in South Carolina – his birth state – which he had carried in 2004, and he placed third in the non-binding January 29 vote in Florida.
On January 30, 2008, following his primary and caucus losses, Edwards announced that he was suspending his campaign for the Presidency. He did not initially endorse either Clinton or Obama, saying they both had pledged to carry forward his central campaign theme of ending poverty in America. In April 2008, he stated that he would not accept the 2008 vice presidential slot if asked. On May 14, 2008, Edwards officially endorsed Senator Obama at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
On June 15, 2008, Edwards stepped back from his initial outright denial of interest in the position of Vice President, saying, "I'd take anything he asks me to think about seriously, but obviously this is something that I've done and it's not a job I'm seeking." On June 20, 2008, the Associated Press reported that according to a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the names of Edwards and Sam Nunn were on Obama's vice presidential shortlist. Ultimately, then-Senator Joe Biden of Delaware was tapped to become Obama's running mate.
Personal life
Family
While at UNC, he met Elizabeth Anania. They married in 1977 and had four children (Wade in 1979, Cate in 1982, Emma Claire in 1998, and Jack in 2000). Edwards also has a son, Frances Quinn Hunter, born in 2008, from a relationship with Rielle Hunter.
Wade was killed in a car accident when strong winds swept his Jeep off a North Carolina highway in 1996. Three weeks before his death, he was honored by First Lady Hillary Clinton at The White House as one of the 10 finalists in an essay contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Voice of America for an essay he wrote on entering the voting booth with his father.
Edwards and his wife began the Wade Edwards Foundation in their son's memory; the purpose of the non-profit 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, Needham B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, along with scholarship competitions and essay awards.
On November 3, 2004, Elizabeth Edwards revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was treated by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and continued to work within the Democratic Party and her husband's One America Committee. On March 22, 2007, during his campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination for the presidency, 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. They said that the cancer was "no longer curable, but is completely treatable" and that they planned to continue campaigning together with an occasional break when she required treatment. In June 2010, Elizabeth published a book called Resilience.
On December 7, 2010, Elizabeth died of metastatic breast cancer, aged 61.
Residence
In Washington, D.C., Edwards lived on Embassy Row, at 2215 30th Street. In 2004, he sold his house to the Hungarian Embassy to the United States.
Indictment and trial
On May 24, 2011, ABC News and the New York Times reported that the U.S Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section had conducted a two-year investigation into whether Edwards had used more than $1 million in political donations and planned to pursue criminal charges for alleged violations of campaign finance laws.
On June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury in North Carolina on six felony charges, including four counts of collecting illegal campaign contributions, one count of conspiracy, and one count of making false statements.
On May 31, 2012, Edwards was found not guilty on Count 3, illegal use of campaign funding, while mistrials were declared on all other counts against him. On June 13, 2012, the Justice Department announced that it dropped the charges and would not attempt to retry Edwards.
Return to law practice
After his political career ended, Edwards, along with attorneys David Kirby and William Bystrynski, founded the law firm Edwards Kirby in Raleigh, specializing in medical malpractice cases. In 2015, his daughter Cate was the managing attorney of the San Diego office of the firm.
Books
- Four Trials (with John Auchard) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) ISBN: 0-7432-4497-4
- Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives (New York: Collins, 2006) ISBN: 0-06-088454-1
- Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream, co-editor (New Press, 2007) ISBN: 1-59558-176-6
See also
In Spanish: John Edwards para niños
- Two Americas
- 2008 United States presidential election
- 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidates
- Opinion polling for the Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008
- Democratic presidential debates, 2008
