Democrat rising son: Sen. John Edwards is the most talked about candidate for the Democratic presidential ticket in 2004. Should Republicans be worried about this charismatic Southerner?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 29, 2002 | by Hans S. Nichols

"Sure, I've thought about it." That's as far as first-term North Carolina Sen. John Edwards goes when asked if he's seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Even with his famous trial-lawyer gift for occasional humorous understatement, no one in Washington, let alone his home state, doubts that he's merely "thought about it."

In fact, he's probably thought about it a great deal. All the signals suggest that Edwards is running for president. And Republicans and Democrats agree his opponents are running scared.

From Al Gore to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), from Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.) to Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), from Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) to Joe Biden (D-Del.), other Democratic presidential hopefuls are looking over their shoulder at the likely candidate about whom everyone is talking. Not only are these Democrats worried about Edwards, but Republicans too are knitting and furrowing brows about this self-styled Southern moderate with what political operatives call the "intangible."

He has Robert Redford's good looks, complemented by a disarming Southern charm. But what has his opponents really worried is that intangible--something in the way Edwards commands a room, chairs a committee hearing or casually mingles with ordinary North Carolinians in a stuffy Senate room, as he does once a week on Tar Heel Thursday, a weekly gathering for constituents stopping off in Washington. As one Tar Heel Republican activist concedes, "Bar none, he's the most natural and gifted politician I've ever seen. He's good. Very good. We should be very worried."

Of course, Democrats only recently suffered the consequences of nominating a "natural" by the name of Bill Clinton. Since Clinton owns the political rights to "The Natural," the redfordian Edwards probably will have to make do with being called "The Candidate." Thus far, he doesn't seem to mind the glamour and free press that either moniker has given him. In the last few months, he's been the subject of fawning profiles in both the New Yorker and Vanity Fair--journals with an all but religious following among big-time Democratic donors.

Part of what has Democratic diehards salivating about Edwards is his ability to turn his political liabilities into assets. Back in the early days of his 1998 race, before he even made it out of the primary, incumbent GOP Sen. Lauch Faircloth recognized Edwards' star potential and went negative on him early, trying to convince voters that trial lawyers such as Edwards had driven up the cost of health care with their aggressive litigating.

Edwards promptly turned the tables, pitting Faircloth as a stooge of the insurance industry. Republicans and Democrats who have been following Edwards ever since note that there is nothing he likes better than presenting himself as advocate for the unrepresented, those wronged by the system. Many Republicans have been flabbergasted at his ability to make a virtue of his background as a plaintiff's trial lawyer--even in a tobacco state.

He does so by invoking names such as Ethan Bedrick, who was denied health-care insurance because of his cerebral palsy. For Edwards, the Republican effort to curtail excessive litigation and rein in runaway healthcare costs is a sinister plot to deny the rights of the Ethan Bedricks of the world. "I see on one side a little boy named Ethan Bedrick and on the other side piles of money and power and lobbyists," says Edwards.

Of course, there's a lot of money lining up behind the Ethan Bedricks of the world as well--such as the lawyers who get rich representing them and who have run the price of medical-liability insurance to the moon. As its critics put it, the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) is fiercely territorial about protecting the ability of ambulance-chasers to sue the deep pockets. Meanwhile, no one disputes that the ATLA has thousands of members with deep pockets themselves, nor that trial lawyers are reliable and eager Democratic donors.

The trial lawyers have been steadfast in ensuring that Congress doesn't infringe on their territory, and in Edwards they have an eloquent spokesman--one of their own. While the total of trial-lawyer campaign donations cannot be fully calculated since the Federal Election Commission does not categorize donors by profession, Hill aides say that the ATLA has had little trouble stopping tort reform--first with a threatened Clinton veto and now with Democratic control of the Senate.

So Edwards' strategy of standing up for trial lawyers has his old courthouse buddies pleased. These are the same colleagues who back in North Carolina took to sitting in the back of the courtroom during closing arguments to watch Edwards work his magic. "They were just that good," says a Raleigh lawyer who watched Edwards win judgments of as much as $25 million.

An apolitical trial lawyer with a gift (and a highly honed method) for reading a jury, Edwards seemed to come from nowhere to upset incumbent Faircloth in 1998. Prior to that he didn't even vote regularly, Republicans grumble. His friends say that Edwards became interested in politics when life got his attention after the 1996 death of his son in a car crash on Carolina's outer banks. Edwards apparently felt called to a higher duty than suing insurance companies and became interested in public service. His wife (four years his senior) went on hormone-replacement therapy and bore two more children when she was in her late 40s and early 50s.