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John Edwards

Johnny Reid "John" Edwards (born June 10, 1953) was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004, and a one-term U.S. Senator from North Carolina. On December 27, 2006, he announced his entry into the 2008 Presidential election.

Edwards was a trial lawyer before entering politics. He defeated incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina's 1998 Senate election and during his six-year term sought the Democratic 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 the 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.

Edwards was born on June 10, 1953 to Wallace R. Edwards and Kathryn "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 worked as a postal worker postal letter carrier when his father left his job. Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He first attended Clemson University and later transferred to North Carolina State University. Edwards graduated with 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), both with honors.

While at UNC, he met fellow student and eventual partner Elizabeth Anania, who is four years his senior. They married in the summer of 1977 and have four children. Their son, Wade, was born in 1979 and daughter Cate followed in 1982. In 1996, Wade, age 16, was killed in a car accident when strong winds swept his Jeep off a North Carolina highway. Following Wade's death, Edwards and his wife chose to have children again: Emma Claire, born 1998, and Jack, born in 2000. The Edwards family now lives on a farm Orange County, in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill metro area of North Carolina.

On November 3, 2004, the day Kerry and Edwards conceded defeat in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, Elizabeth Edwards revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was treated via chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and has continued to remain an activist for women, cancer patients, the Democratic Party, and her husband's One America Committee. On March 22, 2007, the Edwards announced that her cancer had metastasized to her rib, but that she was asymptomatic and expected to continue her activities in his Presidential campaign while being treated.

Both Edwards and his wife began private practice with law firms in Nashville, Tennessee. Edwards became an associate at the law firm of Dearborn & Ewing in 1978, doing primarily trial work, defending a Nashville bank and other corporate clients. The Edwards family (John, Elizabeth, and son Wade) returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh.

Before entering politics, Edwards was a personal injury trial attorney. He represented families and children, and specialized in corporate negligence and medical malpractice claims. Edwards made his personal fortune through his trial successes and his 2003 financial disclosure forms showed a total net worth between $12.8 and $60 million. Edwards was criticized for paying himself mostly through subchapter S corporate dividends, rather than a salary, to take advantage of a tax-law loophole that allowed him to avoid paying $591,000 in Medicare taxes; Edwards claimed that he chose the subchapter S structure to protect his assets from liability.

Edwards' first important case was a 1984 medical malpractice lawsuit. In that case, 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. In 1985, Edwards obtained a $5.75 million settlement in a cerebral palsy case for medical malpractice during childbirth, representing Jennifer Campbell, a five-year-old cerebral palsy patient. This established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine if the patient understood risks of a particular procedure. During the trial, it has been argued that Edwards relied more on his verbal skills as a trial lawyer than on actual science. While delivering his summary, Edwards said that "I have to tell you right now — I didn't plan to talk about this — right now I feel her [Jennifer], I feel her presence...[Jennifer's] inside me and she's talking to you."

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 Raleigh, North Carolina girl, Valerie Lakey, 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. In his closing arguments, Edwards spoke to the jury for an hour and a half without referring to notes. It was an emotional appeal that made reference to his son, Wade, who had been killed shortly before testimony began in the trial. Mark Dayton, editor of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, would later call it "the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen." The jury awarded the Lakeys $25 million, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. The company settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating punitive damages, rather than risk 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.

In December 2003, during his presidential campaign, Edwards (with John Auchard) published Four Trials, a biographical book focusing on cases from his legal career.

Both the success of the Lakey 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. A Democrat, Edwards won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998 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). 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 and U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary.

During his Senate term Edwards cosponsored 203 bills. 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, but subsequently apologized for that vote. Edwards also supported and voted for the Patriot Act. Among other positions, Edwards generally supported abortion rights, affirmative action, and the death penalty. Among 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 also advocated rolling back the Bush administration's tax cuts and ending mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders.

Edwards supported the expansion of the H-1B visa program to increase the number of work visas for immigrant workers. Edwards generally supported expanding legal immigration to the United States while working with Mexico to provide better border security and stop illegal trafficking.

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.

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 January 2, 2003, he announced formation of an exploratory committee, allowing him to begin fundraising while not officially campaigning. On September 15, 2003, Edwards unofficially announced his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, thus fulfilling a promise he made as a guest during the show's coverage of the 2002 midterm elections. The next morning, Edwards made the announcement officially from his hometown. He declined to run for reelection to the Senate in 2004 in order to solely focus on his presidential run. Edwards' campaign was chaired by North Carolina Democratic activist Ed Turlington.

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' 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.

After campaigning for most of 2003, Edwards' campaign struggled to gain substantial support in the Democratic Party. In early 2004, weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Edwards began to gain momentum and poll numbers began to rise steadily. Edwards' late-stage momentum carried him into a surprising second place finish in Iowa with the support of 32% of caucus delegates, behind only John Kerry's 39% and ahead of former front-runner Howard Dean at 18%. Edwards finished with 12% support in the New Hampshire primary one week later, in fourth place behind Kerry, Howard Dean, and Wesley Clark. The following week, 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 also garnered the second largest number of second place finishes, again falling behind Clark.

After Dean's withdrawal from the contest, Edwards became the only major challenger to Kerry for the Democratic nomination. He finished with 34% of the votes and second place to Kerry in the Wisconsin primary on February 17.

Edwards 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' campaign ended after a disappointing finish in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 2, when Kerry finished well ahead in nine of the 10 states voting that day. 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. News of Edwards' withdrawal from the race 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 showing of Dennis Kucinich in that state.[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, making him the only Democratic candidate besides Kerry to win nominating contests in two states.

On July 6, 2004 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. According to sources close to Kerry, other individuals said to have been under consideration for the vice presidential nomination by the Kerry campaign were Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, Florida Senator Bob Graham, Clark, and Congressman Richard Gephardt (the New York Post had incorrectly reported a day earlier that Kerry had decided on Gephardt for the running mate slot). Though Ralph Nader and many Democrats supported the nomination, others criticized Kerry because of Edwards' perceived lack of experience. In particular, the nomination caused the business community, including the Chamber of Commerce network, to throw its support to George W. Bush when they had been neutral in previous presidential elections, because of Edwards' opposition to tort reform.

The highlight of Edwards' campaign for the vice presidency was the debate with incumbent Dick Cheney, in which the Vice President blindsided Edwards with the false charge that they had never met before, and blamed this on Edwards' frequent absences from the Senate to campaign for the Presidency. Later, the media found at least one videotape of a Cheney/Edwards meeting.

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