About
Trail Mix, the campaign blog of the Winston-Salem Journal, is a conversation about North Carolina's elections in 2008. Come here for news and analysis on the U.S. Senate race, the governor's race and all the other statewide races. We'll also follow John Edwards as he makes his second run for the White House.
Trail Mix is written by James Romoser, the Journal's Raleigh reporter. Got a tip? E-mail me at .
Her support may not be as coveted as the Des Moines Register, but Mari Culver, the wife of Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, publicly endorsed John Edwards today. Edwards is close with the Culvers, and as NBC’s Tricia Miller points out, even their campaigns are intertwined. This summer, Jennifer O’Malley, the Iowa director for the Edwards campaign, married Patrick Dillon, Gov. Culver’s chief of staff. The governor is not endorsing anyone in the Iowa caucuses, and Mari Culver said her endorsement does not speak for her husband.
At a raucous campaign rally attended by about 350 Edwards supporters, most of them union workers, Culver said she believes that Edwards is both the most qualified and the most electable candidate. She said:
I believe John Edwards can win. Not just the caucuses, but the general election, too. He’s ready. He’s been battle-tested. He’s been through this before, having been on a national ticket. I think these experiences give him a real advantage.
That sounds a lot like the pitch that Hillary Clinton’s supporters make for her. Will Culver’s endorsement turn women voters away from Clinton and toward Edwards?
After the Des Moines Registerendorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, John Edwards said he has “a fundamental difference” with the newspaper’s editorial board. The Register‘s endorsement is perhaps the most prized endorsement of the Democratic race. It is one of the few newspaper endorsements that is still considered to carry significant clout, and the paper’s endorsement of Edwards during his 2004 run helped boost him to a second-place finish in Iowa. Back then, the paper called him “one of those rare, naturally gifted politicians who doesn’t need a long record of public service to inspire confidence in his abilities” and whose “life has been one of accomplishing the unexpected, amid flashes of brilliance.”
This time around, the Register‘s editorial board, which is mostly composed of members who were not on the board four years ago, feels differently. On Sunday, the board wrote that Clinton’s experience makes her best prepared to take on the nation’s challenges. At a campaign stop, asked by reporters about the endorsement, Edwards said:
Congratulations to Sen. Clinton. I had their endorsement four years ago. I think it’s one of the things that caucus-goers will consider. But it’s pretty obvious from reading the discussion in the endorsement that I have a fundamental difference with them. ... I think if you don’t have a president who has the fight and the backbone to stand up against corporate power and corporate greed, nothing is going to change in this country, and that’s the difference I have with them. I understand, I respect their view. I have a different view.
WATERLOO, Iowa — On the same day that John Edwards traded barbs with Barack Obama over how to achieve health care reform, Edwards’s wife had a potentially awkward run-in with some stunned Obama supporters.
In between campaign rallies, Elizabeth Edwards stopped off at an Edwards campaign office in Waterloo where workers coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts for Black Hawk County. She rallied the troops and made a few phone calls to voters. Next door to the Edwards office, in the same small, brick building, is an Obama office, and as Edwards was leaving, she ran into about a dozen Obama volunteers heading inside. A moment passed. The Edwards people and the Obama people sized each other up. Then Mrs. Edwards marched over and began shaking their hands. The Obama volunteers, unsure how to react, were wary at first. But they loosened up when she commanded, “Look me in the eye! Shake my hand!” She thanked them for the work they were doing, and said at one point, “We’re on the same team.”
Then the Edwards people boarded their bus. As they rolled away, the Obama people began chanting the Obama campaign slogan: “Fired up! Ready to go!”
DUBUQUE, Iowa — Iowa is a like a cookie sheet—very square and very flat. This morning we’re in the northeast corner, just across the Mississippi River from Illinois. Yesterday’s stops were in the town of Elkader, which is named after the national hero of Algeria, and Manchester, which is the probably only the second-most important town named Manchester in this presidential election. Read my wrap-up story here.
On the schedule for today: an event here in Dubuque, and then on to Waterloo and Mason City.
DES MOINES, Iowa - The Democratic presidential candidates debated yesterday for the last time before the Iowa caucuses. At the time, your humble correspondent was stuck on a tarmac on a delayed flight through Cincinnati, so I didn’t see it in person. But I caught a recording. No huge developments emerged; these guys have debated so many times that they pretty much know what they’re all going to say. Stylistically, Edwards struck a balance between two contrasting styles. He stuck relentlessly to his populist message, yet never came across as pugnacious.
Above is a clip illustrating the Edwards worldview in a nutshell — America’s problems stem from “corporate power and corporate greed” — followed by an amusing exchange in which he seems to momentarily forget his prepared lines. Keeping with the debate’s benevolent tone, Hillary Clinton lets him off the hook in a way that says she, and we, have heard it before.
Would John Edwards have the best chance of beating a Republican in the general election? A new poll released this week suggests he might.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll matched each of the three leading candidates in the Democratic field against the four leading Republicans. Edwards was the only one of the Democrats who came out ahead of all four Republican frontrunners. From CNN’s summary:
On the Democratic side, Edwards performs best against each of the leading Republicans. In addition to beating Huckabee by 25 percent and McCain by 8 percent, the North Carolina Democrat beats Romney by 22 percentage points (59 percent to 37 percent) and Giuliani by 9 percentage points (53 percent to 44 percent).
The poll shows that, in head-to-head match-ups, Hillary Clinton would beat Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, but would lose by a thin margin to John McCain. Barack Obama came out on top of Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani, but would tie McCain.
All hypothetical of course, but it’s a fascinating poll. It suggests that in a general election, Edwards would do best for the Democrats and McCain would do best for the GOP. But first, Edwards and McCain would have to win the nomination. And right now, both men are trailing within their own parties.
We begin in Iowa. For the next six days, I’ll be crisscrossing the Hawkeye state, where the uniquely influential Jan. 3 caucuses loom like a silo over a cornfield. For most of my time here, I’ll be traveling with the Edwards campaign, but I’ll also try to chat up some ordinary Iowa voters. That is, if there are any Iowans left who haven’t already been picked clean by the hordes of pollsters and journalists who descend here quadrennially.
Edwards has bet it all on Iowa; few people believe he can win the nomination if he doesn’t have a strong showing here. So far, he appears competitive with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—although most polls put him in third place, just slightly behind the two frontrunners.
One big question: which of Edwards’s two conflicting styles will come through in these waning weeks? There’s the blithe, above-the-fray Edwards, familiar to many North Carolinians from his time as a sunny U.S. senator. It’s the John Edwards who is reluctant to go negative, and it worked for him in Iowa in 2004, when he came in a surprise second place by staying out of spats between Dick Gephart and Howard Dean. But during the ’08 campaign, we’ve seen an increasingly angry Edwards, who lashed out at Hillary Clinton in at least one debate and consistently rails against powerful Washington interests.
Over at the excellent Talking About Politics blog, Gary Pearce, a Democratic consultant in North Carolina, sees signs of a shift for Edwards—away from the angry approach that has defined his current campaign, and back toward the optimism that is perhaps more natural for him. I’ll be closely watching Edwards’s style as I join his campaign midway through an eight-day tour of Iowa.
Welcome to Trail Mix, a place for bite-sized political morsels—and maybe a scoop or two. The 2008 election year will be a big one for North Carolina voters. We’ll be electing a new governor and a new lieutenant governor—two races that are crowded with candidates but have no single frontrunner. Elizabeth Dole, the senior U.S. senator from North Carolina, faces a tough re-election bid. John Edwards, the South Carolina-born North Carolinian, is making his second run for president. And at the state level, the city of Winston-Salem could play a larger role than usual in 2008: two candidates are trying to become the first Winston-Salem natives (correction: residents) in over 100 years to be elected to an executive-branch position in state government.
For the next 11 months, I’ll cover all of these campaigns and more. From you, I want to know what I’m getting right and what I’m getting wrong. me an e-mail or, even better, post a comment here.
