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Edwards Ends His Run

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By JULIE BOSMAN and KATE ZERNIKE, The New York Times

Published: January 31, 2008

NEW ORLEANS - As of Tuesday afternoon, John Edwards' campaign staff members were still heading to North Dakota and Georgia. A television ad campaign was about to hit the airwaves. That evening, Edwards was flying here to deliver what was billed as a major speech on poverty.

That all changed around 2 a.m. Wednesday, when his spokesman, Mark Kornblau, called top campaign advisers to confirm what they had been preparing themselves to hear: It was over.

Faced with the prospect of coming out of next Tuesday's primaries with only two realistic possibilities, kingmaker or spoiler, Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, had decided it was time to get out.

"He wanted to have a shot at being president," said Joe Trippi, a senior adviser.

"He wanted to have a chance to change people's lives, not be a spoiler or a kingmaker and not play political games," Trippi said.

So Edwards made the end of his candidacy official Wednesday where it began 13 months earlier, when he became the first major Democrat to declare his candidacy.

In New Orleans' hurricane-stricken Lower 9th Ward, with broken-down houses draped in American flags as a backdrop, Edwards climbed onto a riser with his family, who had flown in from North Carolina.

"It's time for me to step aside so that history can, so that history can blaze its path," Edwards said, sounding hoarse from a cold he had been fighting for days.

It was the end of his second bid for the presidency, the first derailed by Sen. John Kerry in 2004, who later chose Edwards as his running mate.

Edwards had begun setting the stage for this presidential run almost as soon as their losing campaign was over.

He publicly reversed himself on his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war, and taunted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for her refusal to apologize for the same vote, hoping to appeal to a Democratic base that was increasingly anti-war.

What he did not anticipate was the entry of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who had been against the war in 2002 and who preached, as Edwards had in 2004, "the politics of hope."

Edwards found himself in the role of understudy in what quickly became a two-star play. John C. Moylan, a close friend and campaign adviser, said Edwards was constantly frustrated by his failure to grab media attention.

"Having the first serious African-American running against the first serious female - it's a hard story to get into," Moylan said. "There was an alignment of the stars this year, and it wasn't for us."

So Edwards' pitch to voters came down to the personal. Over and over, he touted his hardscrabble upbringing, his rise from poverty and what he described as the deeply held determination that led him out of difficult circumstances, growing up in mill towns in the South.

He had pitched himself as a populist, but it was hard to overcome what became known as his three H's: haircuts ($400), house (28,000 square feet in Chapel Hill, N.C.) and the hedge fund where he worked after his 2004 loss. The hedge fund had invested in companies that foreclosed on mortgages held by victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the city Edwards was trying to make the emblem of his anti-poverty work.

He also alienated many of his former supporters by abandoning his campaign approach in 2004, when he steadfastly refused to criticize his rivals by name, and by reversing his position on many of his Senate votes.

He insisted his message of populism was unchanged and that his tone had simply become more urgent.

Edwards did not immediately endorse another candidate, but he has long signaled that he favors Obama.

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