Edwards launches S.C. ad campaign

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The freshman U.S. senator from Raleigh launched a trio of ads Monday that combine an emphasis on his working class roots in Seneca with a plan to stem the flow of jobs overseas.

Edwards proposes ending breaks that make such transfers easy for companies "and I'll give the breaks instead to companies who build their plants right here."

In one, Edwards, 50, refers to his grandmother coming from a family of sharecroppers, his father, who worked in a mill all his life, and where "I helped out in the summers."

He criticizes President Bush's privileged background, saying that "he believes if we take care of folks at the top, that somehow the whole country will be lifted. The CEO's are doing great, but too many Americans aren't."

But Edwards is doing pretty good himself, said Katon Dawson, chairman of the state Republican Party.

Dawson took aim at the Edwards ad in which the senator stands in front of his boyhood home in Seneca and says, "I am John Edwards. I am running for president. I was born right here in South Carolina. This was my first home. I want you to know I will never forget where I came from."

"Apparently John Edwards can't even keep up with all the 'John Edwardsisms,'" Dawson said. "After all, this is the same John Edwards who conveniently forgot those proud roots when he campaigned for the Senate in North Carolina in 1998 (saying) in much of his campaign literature that he was a native of Robbins, N.C."

Dawson said Edwards' emphasis on his humble beginnings in Seneca and champion of the little guy rhetoric, "conveniently neglects to mention all the multi-million mansions he's recently called home."

Edwards, one of the Southeast's most successful trial lawyers until his election to the Senate, reported a blind trust fund worth $5 million to $25 million, according to financial statements filed with the Clerk of the U.S. Senate.

Willie Legette, a political science professor at South Carolina State University, said the surge by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean caught the rest of the Democratic field, including Edwards, by surprise and "now they've got to get more aggressive. So far, he said, Edwards hasn't found his niche and "him being from South Carolina has not taken hold that much."

At home, Edwards is under pressure from its leaders to declare whether he will stay in the presidential race or run for re-election.

He said Monday said that any talk of his abandoning the presidential race at this point to focus on re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2004 is "fantasy."

"I am totally in this race to stay," Edwards said when asked about the subject by Iowa reporters as he wrapped up a six-day swing through the nation's first presidential caucus state, The News and Observer of Raleigh reported.

John Moylan of Columbia, Edwards' state chairman, said the campaign is on track for the nation's third presidential contest.

"We worked hard the first part of this campaign to put together a strong network of supporters in South Carolina. Now, with a stepped-up travel schedule, a strong South Carolina team, and television ads, we are putting our plan into place to let voters know who John Edwards is and what he will do as president."

The campaign announced that Edwards will hold town hall meetings in Charleston, Columbia and Greenville on Monday and Tuesday.

Joe Lieberman, a U.S. senator from Connecticut and also a Democratic presidential candidate, is scheduled to scheduled to campaign in the Upstate next Wednesday.

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Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.