Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has raised $314,902 for his current presidential campaign in Alabama. We hope his donors got their money’s worth. Campaign disclosures made public last week showed that Edwards spent campaign funds on at least two haircuts, each costing him $400, and another $250 to a New Hampshire salon that caters mostly to women.
We love to say we told you so, and now we can say with great confidence that Edwards will never be president. Once again, and maybe once and for all, his quasi-populist campaign message has been crippled by his conspicuous consumption — a contrast that demonstrates clearly that his hypocrisy might be exceeded only by his stupidity.
In his campaigns, Edwards has said that there are “two Americas,” a fact that he illustrates by example. You see, there are two John Edwards, one defined by what he says and the other defined by what he does. He’s earned a place on The List.
Three years ago, Weekly staff writer Phillip Jordan first pointed out Edwards’ trial lawyer tastes after the then-vice presidential candidate paid a visit to Alabama. The candidate’s itinerary, as we recounted then, went something like this: Rubber chicken fundraiser at the Summit Club (30 minutes), unannounced/unpublicized visit to local headquarters (20 minutes), dinner at Bottega (3 hours).
Bottega is a fine place to eat, but not a smart place to campaign. Working the lines at the Fish Market with a camera crew in tow would be better electioneering, but Edwards opted for fried figs instead.
Then, in January, Edwards made his first visit to Alabama for the new campaign. Only he didn’t come courting votes. Instead, he solicited donations at the Mid Winter Conference of the Alabama Trial Lawyers Association. That’s right. Edwards was here, in his first campaign visit, to take money from trial lawyers. As we wrote then, if he had performed an abortion and married another man, he could have hit the trifecta for running crossways of Alabama values.
At that time, we asked Edwards why the previous campaign had not spent more time in Alabama. He deflected blame to his former running mate, Sen. John Kerry.
“I just expressed my view about this,” he said. “I was not the presidential candidate three years ago.”
That’s technically true — he was not the presidential nominee then. But sources who worked on that campaign have told us how badly they tried to wrestle a more visible visit from Edwards. For Edwards to deflect blame toward Kerry is all but a lie.
Edwards got caught on the cusp of a fib again last week, when he told the Associated Press that he hadn’t known how much the haircuts would cost.
But he had two, although he paid for them with campaign money. What’s more, the Beverly Hills hair stylist, Joseph Torrenueva, told AP that Edwards has been a long time client and that he had cut Edwards hair many times.
Oh, and did we mention that last year he bought one of the largest homes in all of North Carolina?
Talks like a mill worker’s son, but spends with a trial lawyer’s tastes.
“I grew up in the rural South, in South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina, small towns the whole time,” Edwards said during his visit in January. “I think I have a good understanding of what people in Alabama care about.”
Yeah, but we wonder in Mayberry RFD, where do you go to get a $400 haircut?
— Kyle Whitmire
Popularity: 11% [?]
April 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I have to cry foul on one of these things — my husband gets his hair cut at a salon that caters mostly to women, too. He doesn’t pay $400, though.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Give Edwards a break. At least he successfully fought big business on behalf of the little guy. Thank God for trial lawyers.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
In response to Kathy’s comment: Yes, lots of men get their hair cut in women’s hair salons, but the New Hampshire boutique wasn’t your typical salon. To quote from the AP story:
“According to Designworks’ Web site, the salon and spa features a wide variety of beauty and health services, including massages, facials, body polishes, self tanners, and rosemary mint and Caribbean therapy body wraps.”
So maybe I should have been more specific, with greater detail.
It’s not a crime to be rich in America, and voters won’t hold that against a candidate. It is a faux pas, however, to act like you’re rich, and voters will crucify you for that.
— K.W.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:45 am
yeah but he looks hott. So it’s okay.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Well, well, well.
You’ve added our former junior senator to your little “List.”
How nice.
Your points are well made and certainly he deserves to be on the “List,” but for more reasons than you outline.
• He only missed 40 of 62 U.S. Senate votes during his presidential campaign year. He found time to publish a book, “Four Trials” during that campaign year but he couldn’t show up for his elected office’s duties?
The year before that presidential campaign period, he attended only 34 percent of meetings, hearings and votes for his assigned Senate committee (Judiciary).
That voting record is something the TarHeel state is real happy about. Nice. Fortunately he retired before we could vote him out of office.
• In 2004, our would-be president was four months late paying his property taxes on his senatorial estate in Georgetown. Great example of two America’s: the poor taxpayers and the rich tax evaders.
• He and his wife hate his G-O-P gun toting, Rudi Giuliani-loving neighbor living near Raleigh. Furthermore Johnny’s neighbor likes to park mobile homes on his land next to Edwards AND he leaves his broken-down, eyesore of rotting birthplace within sight of the Edwards’ mansion. How kindly do Alabamians take to haters of mobile home owners? Since when was it OK for one man to dictate the property habits of his neighbor? Smaller conflicts over property rights have sparked wars.
• That TV show “Crossing Over” is a hoax which sucks in unaware housewives greiving from loss, and while that psychic isn’t our well-coiffed Johnny-boy, it is close enough to almost matter.
• And last but not least, this man would never prance his cancer-infested wife in front of TV cameras just to win a few votes. A North Carolina trial lawyer trying to create a dramatization in hopes of influencing the public? Never.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
How about we have a sense of proportion about this whole thing? Bob Riley has done nothing to clean up the endemic corruption at the Alabama Department of Youth Services which is not even willing to protect those in its care from being raped by its guards. Real people have suffered and continue to suffer from abuse and neglect in these facilities while Riley (at whose sole pleasure the people responsible for these outrages serve) does nothing.
Such an atrocity is far more severe than this haircut on my list.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:48 am
“You don’t want to be on The List. This enumeration is for the jackals and jackasses who have made Alabama and Birmingham a worse place in which to live, who have betrayed their constituents and fellow citizens. Their indiscretions border on the unforgivable.”
What has John Edwards really done to deserve to be on The List?