Edwards’ wife reiterates in LV visit: Campaign a family affair
Elizabeth Edwards is confident her husband’s presidential bid has the backing of all of his children.
She laughs when she recounts the absurd political tempest that flared up momentarily last week, when an Internet-fed misunderstanding led to a rumor that 25-year-old Cate Edwards was planning to support Hillary Clinton rather than her father, John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and former vice presidential nominee.
“We went to this fair, Hometown Days in West Branch, Iowa,” Elizabeth Edwards recounted in an interview in Las Vegas on Saturday. “They had a booth to thank the Democrats for spending a beautiful day handing out literature. And somebody said, ‘Well, Emma Claire, who do you support?’
“And she looked at me really slyly, and she put her finger towards dad’s, the pin that had her father on it, and then she pointed toward Hillary’s instead. And I said, ‘Come on, who do you really support?’ And she goes like this,” pointing back to the Edwards pin.
The local newspaper, however, reported only that a daughter of Edwards had pointed to a Clinton pin, and then the Drudge Report Web site picked up the item, asserting that the daughter in question was Cate, who campaigned vigorously for her father in 2004. (Emma Claire is 9.)
The result was the sort of mini-firestorm that is the hallmark of modern 24-7 politics. Elizabeth Edwards personally went online to rebut the Drudge story on a blog.
“Honestly, does she understand universal health care and the importance of it? No,” her mother said of Emma Claire. “But she knows the guy pretty well and thinks he can do the job.”
Edwards noted that her husband recently won a national Father of the Year award, “so it’s not just her opinion.”
Edwards was in Las Vegas on Saturday for the official opening of the campaign’s Las Vegas office, near the intersection of Pecos and Flamingo roads.
It was a strange arrangement, with Edwards on a platform at the front of a room divided into empty cubicles.
An audience of about 150 people huddled into the cubicles, only their heads visible over the dividers, like prairie dogs emerging from holes in the ground.
Edwards said she preferred not to speechify and spent most of her stage time taking questions from the audience. An attorney, Edwards parried detailed policy questions with ease, a show of the extent to which political spouses these days are often expected to be as versed in the nitty-gritty of policy positions as the candidates themselves.
Edwards was folksy, saying to one audience member who was waving a paper fan toward her, “I’m fine, I’m from North Carolina. You fan yourself. I’m doing OK, but that was very sweet.”
After she said her husband agreed with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy” for the party, Edwards was asked whether Dean was a possible running mate. She laughed and said, “I love Howard, but Howard doesn’t want to play No. 2.”
One audience member said, “I’m 69 years old, and I have a partner of 37 years, and we have no legal rights. Britney Spears came here, got drunk and got married, and she had more rights than we do after 37 years.”
Edwards said, “That is an appalling comparison.” But she had to tiptoe a bit around her husband’s position, which is that states should define marriage, not the federal government.
Edwards in March learned that her breast cancer had returned, which doctors say could well be deadly. She said she currently has no symptoms; she is taking pills and getting monthly intravenous treatment that is mild enough that her hair hasn’t fallen out. She said she gets energy from being out on the campaign trail rather than sitting home feeling sorry for herself.
Shortly after the cancer news and the announcement that the Edwards campaign would continue despite it, she accompanied her husband to Las Vegas, where he participated in a forum on health care and the couple sat down for a lengthy interview with “60 Minutes.” “I didn’t know that was going to happen, so I didn’t have an outfit,” she said.
As a result, one of her impressions of Las Vegas is “there’s great shopping here,” she joked.
While Elizabeth Edwards was in Las Vegas, her husband was campaigning in Reno. Elizabeth Edwards also spoke to a group of Hispanic Democrats on Saturday evening.
Amanda Vertner, a 20-year-old Las Vegas college student, asked Edwards a question about health care and was impressed not only with her answer, but with her willingness to take questions rather than giving a canned speech.
Like a less facetious Emma Claire, Vertner said she was torn between supporting Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. “I would love to see a woman president, but I want to make sure I pick the right candidate,” she said. “As a Democrat, this primary is hard. We have so many great candidates.”
