How Edwards made S.C. believe

The work began two years ago, but the win began with Iowa.

Jenni Engebretsen was at Nightcaps on Devine Street, hoarse from yelling, dizzy with victory and lack of sleep. She’d been in Columbia since August, the first full-time spokeswoman of the S.C. presidential campaigns. Tonight, her five months — with no days off since Thanksgiving — were paying off.

Her guy, U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, surprised himself, Iowans and even his true believing staff, who’d hoped for fourth, by placing second in the Iowa caucuses that night, Jan. 19. Edwards had given a speech on CNN, smiling, sticking out his thumbs and waving, thanking Dick Gephardt, the early favorite whom he’d creamed.

The dozen lawyers and staffers at the core of the S.C. campaign had crammed in the dark bar, taping their Edwards posters to the backs of leather couches. They clinked Sam Adams bottles as returns rolled in. They watched, some with open jaws, some with nervous giggles, asfront-runner Howard Dean took the stage and lost his composure. (One of them guessed, “Too much Red Bull?”)

Now, at 10:30 p.m., the party was winding down. Engebretsen needed to get back to the office.

But she was waiting for her friend, Nu Wexler, director of the state Democratic Party, to come by to congratulate the Edwards team, the ones who had been here for months.

Then she heard. Wexler was at the John Kerry party, an impromptu event since Kerry had almost no staff in South Carolina to plan one.

She called him, saccharine venom in her voice. So sorry you couldn’t join us, I know you had more important things to do with the Kerry people, since Kerry’s advertised so much here (he hasn’t), visited so often (but not since September) and hired so much staff (well, seven, but four went to Iowa, and the Kerry campaign office in Columbia was empty much of the time).

She hung up.

Her cell phone rang 30 seconds later. It was Wexler, calling to apologize.

She answered, “Kerry for president! I’m sorry, that can’t be right, can it? Because Kerry’s people wouldn’t answer the phone.”

Then she went back to work.

A VICTORY CIGAR, A NEW LIFE FOR KERRY

Wexler was three miles away at Mac’s on Main, a jazz club and barbecue joint on Main Street. He had arrived late, like almost everyone else. Like them, he rolled in only after he saw the returns, stronger than projected, stronger than anyone could have imagined. A Kerry win, an Edwards second, two weeks before the S.C. primary.

Kerry had no organization to speak of in South Carolina. But it would no longer matter. He was the man to beat.

“Wow,” Wexler said, “This changes everything.”

Inside, the 10 people became 15, then 20, many of them old friends and veterans of Democratic campaigns who had signed up early for Kerry. He’d contributed mightily to the 2002 Democratic campaigns in South Carolina, sending staff and raising money for Democrats. It didn’t work, but he made friends.

Samuel Tenenbaum had a cigar wet on his lips that he wouldn’t light until the race was called. Tenenbaum is a retired steel man who spends much of his time in politics; his wife, Inez, is state education superintendent and the leading Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Tenenbaum was washing his hands in the men’s room when it hit him. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was wounded; U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt would be out.

“All of a sudden, we’re a very important state.”

The tables were empty of food. The Kerry faithful had run through restaurant owner Barry Walker’s fried chicken, Buffalo wings and peach cobbler. He had been expecting a smallish group for a dinner, not a largeish group for a party.

Walker had hosted candidates before: the Rev. Al Sharpton in July; Edwards in August; U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich in September (“He’s a vegetarian. There’s nothing for him here.”); Gen. Wesley Clark at Thanksgiving. Now this.

Walker had even laid a duct-tape path through the restaurant, lining it with autographed stickers from the candidates. “The road to the White House runs through Mac’s on Main.”

At 9:32 p.m., CNN called the Iowa race for Kerry.

Bill Nettles, a criminal defense attorney, grabbed a cigar. “Where do we go to get a beer?”

Nettles and his wife, Zoe Sanders Nettles, had signed on with Kerry more than a year earlier. Nettles was Kerry’s driver when he was in the state and his sparring partner in mock debates. He played Edwards; Tenenbaum played Dean.

Nettles had seen defections from Kerry’s state camp. He’d also seen Dean pick up endorsements, including some from national figures that, he thought, should have been Kerry’s. He kicked his leg, karate style, at the TV as it played footage of Dean and his buddies.

“Tom Harkin? You’re over,” Nettles said. “Come here, punk. Al Gore? Same thing.”

For months, South Carolina Democrats had been mumbling that Kerry was not a factor in the race here. Ben Gregg, a 2002 candidate for agriculture commissioner, was chastised last fall for saying it publicly.

“I’ll say this,” Gregg said, “He was not a factor two months ago, but tonight, he’s a factor.”

TO THEMSELVES, BUT NOT FOR LONG

The cold Iowa night belonged to Edwards and Kerry, but the sunny South Carolina day had belonged to two other contenders, Wes Clark and Al Sharpton. They were not competing in Iowa and had South Carolina to themselves.

They took advantage of the time. They had traveled the state extensively, hired staff and staked their reputations on doing well here.

Both spoke at the Martin Luther King Day rally at the State House. They joined 2,000 people who came to celebrate King’s birthday and to protest the presence of the Confederate flag on the Capitol grounds.

Sharpton preached about the flag of tyranny, the flag of the past.

Cheryl Miller nodded, eyes closed, hands clasped over her King T-shirt. “He’s empowering. He’s uplifting. I feel strength from what he said.”

But Miller, 44, a postal worker from Columbia, preferred Clark. She was a military person, and so was he. He spent King’s holiday showing respect, and so did she. He even knew all the words to “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”

“He was so into it,” Miller said. “I had my eyes on him.”

Before the event, Clark had popped into his campaign headquarters across Gervais Street from the State House. He saw his staff — 40 strong — on the phones, sending mail and writing weblogs. He saw paper stars hanging from the ceiling, each with the name of a volunteer for Clark.

At the State House, he stayed for the two-hour celebration, then strode across the grounds, past Trinity Cathedral and to his waiting van, with staff and fans in tow.

Clark was gaining numbers, hosting “meetups,” where supporters found one another via the Internet then went to coffee shops to talk about him and to bash President Bush. He was polling well in South Carolina, where as many as one in four voters were expected to have served in the military.

Reporters wanted to talk to Clark, but spokeswoman Meighan Stone had to mete out his time. Ten minutes for questions and answers during the celebration — the same 10 minutes that Sharpton was speaking.

Three minutes for local TV? Check. Five minutes for NHK, Japan’s public television network? No can do.

“I know they have 37 million viewers,” she said, “but can they vote in South Carolina?”

Sharpton left the rally just after he spoke, heading for other King Day services. As he crossed Senate Street, surrounded by support staff, he said he wanted to make sure the Democratic Party paid attention to the problems of black America. “I think that we can win. The worst we can do is make sure that we are not ignored.”

Sharpton said he had spent more time in South Carolina, especially in churches, than the other candidates. “I think people know this is not the first time up for me.”

MANY FRONT-RUNNERS, ONE BOY WONDER

Four front-runners in South Carolina, maybe five, depending on whom you asked.

Edwards’ state campaign chairman John Moylan would not have predicted it even three months before. “We wanted to be alive. We wanted to be close enough to survive, so that people would still be talking about us.”

Edwards himself said that even three weeks before Iowa, he felt pressure to change, especially to run comparative (aka negative) ads showing how he differed from the other candidates. He decided against swipes at his fellow Democrats.

“I was soaring at 5 percent in the polls,” Edwards said. “Everybody wanted me to change. But I said, ‘This is what I am; this is what I believe.’”

Belief had been a necessary component of Edwards’ campaign in South Carolina.

He staked his candidacy on winning here, the state where he was born.

But his family left his native Upstate when he was 10 years old. He later went to Clemson University for a year but transferred to North Carolina State.

He was a native son with no inheritance, polling in single digits for much of 2003, a fraction of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s number and about even with Kerry’s.

Nobody knew him.

To manage this all-or-nothing state campaign, Edwards chose Moylan, a recovering boy wonder who had not touched a campaign in a decade.

Moylan had been former Lt. Gov. Nick Theodore’s chief of staff at age 28 and his gubernatorial campaign manager at 32. But he went from a bitter primary against Charleston Mayor Joe Riley to a more bitter runoff and recount. Then, Theodore lost to Republican David Beasley in 1994.

Moylan left politics, mourning friendships lost in the primary, questioning decisions he’d made and feeling that he’d let a good man down.

But two years ago, he heard Edwards on TV. There was something about him. Not that he was from Seneca, a small town like Moylan’s native Walterboro. Not that he was a trial lawyer, like Moylan. But that he was talking about poor people; he was talking about dying textile towns; he was talking about the things Moylan had been waiting to hear a Democrat say.

“I told my wife, ‘I’m going to work for that guy.’”

He e-mailed the Raleigh headquarters, drove up to meet Edwards’ staff and agreed to run the state campaign strictly as a volunteer. Most directors are paid and paid well, since the work comes only every so often, and requires 16-hour days, six or seven days a week.

Moylan wanted it to be clear why he was back in. It was not the money. It was the guy.

MIXING OLD SCHOOL AND HIGH TECH

They called it the “No Regrets” campaign.

Moylan had lost enough sleep in 1994 and the years that followed. He wanted everyone who joined the Edwards team to know that come Feb. 3, the day of the Democratic Primary, they had done everything they could.

It was electronic, with TV spots starting in the fall and radio ads on gospel and contemporary stations.

It was high-tech, with weblogs, digital picture albums and “JREmails,” updates named for John Reid Edwards.

But the state campaign was mostly old school, with endorsements from 89 officeholders, from soil conservation district members to sheriffs to state senators.

It was traditional, with chairmen in every county, and precinct workers on the ground at the neighborhood level.

It was ready to pay “get-out-the-vote” money, to local preachers and organizers who make sure people vote.

And it was quick to court Gephardt’s state workers, especially campaign manager Ike Williams, who accepted a job with Edwards within three days after Iowa. Williams, 58, had been a political organizer since he was 17, and was on leave from his job as U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn’s district director. With him came more organizers and more of Gephardt’s, and Clyburn’s, people.

Toward the end, Moylan said, they added “door-to-door visits, direct mail, robo-calls, personal calls, you name it.”

A ground organization costs money and takes time. The question is, when opponents have big-time momentum and nonstop news coverage, how much does a phone call or flier matter?

“The honest answer is, ‘Who knows?’ “ Moylan said. “But in the last days, you’re glad you have it.”

‘CAN’T WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT GUY?”

State Sen. Robert Ford bet a steak dinner that Edwards would win 50 percent of the S.C. vote. No big thing now but a dicey prospect when Edwards was at 6 percent. “He would have gotten 60 percent if Clark hadn’t jumped in.”

Ford mailed thousands of letters on heavy orange paper, imprinted with his Senate seal: SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS, LET’S GET REAL.

He told CBS Evening News that Kerry “had lost his mind” for not spending more time in South Carolina.

He called the Edwards campaign four times a day — at least.

He hung nicknames on the staff. National spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri was “Hey, press lady.” Engebretsen was “Hey, Wisconsin,” for her home state.

He agreed to an interview with “60 Minutes” and asked Lesley Stahl more questions than she asked him. (Why did she look so small on TV? How much would her retirement package be?)

“Robert Ford,” Edwards mused, smiling. “Can’t we do something about that guy?”

Ford was a civil-rights worker — arrested 73 times, he says — who came to Charleston for Martin Luther King in the late 1960s. He never left.

He was originally for Kerry. But Ford dropped him in April, when his sister reminded him that he would face re-election this year.

“Look,” Ford said. “If I’m a Democrat and I’m running in November with Kerry leading the ticket, I’m doomed.”

Kerry can’t win and he’ll hurt Southern Democrats, Ford said, because Republicans will brand him a Northeastern liberal. That’s a code word for someone who believes in welfare and entitlement programs, who capitulates to minority interests. “That’s somebody that no white person in the South is going to vote for.”

So Ford said he got behind Edwards for his own survival, and that of other Democrats. Ford went where Edwards went, driving to Spartanburg and Seneca, even though his arthritis hurt him terribly.

The more he heard, the more he liked.

He saw Edwards talk about jobs everywhere; he saw him talk about poverty everywhere; and, most importantly, he saw him talk about race everywhere, something Ford said he had not seen in working seven previous presidential campaigns.

“Look,” Ford said. “White people would not turn off. He got standing ovations in Greenville, Lexington, everywhere.”

He lobbied other legislators, including his lunch buddies in the state Senate, Maggie Glover of Florence and Darrell Jackson in Columbia. They were already leaning toward Edwards, and they pledged support, too.

Ford was in the crowd when Jackson introduced Edwards at a rally at a Columbia cosmetology center.

He was there, too, when Jackson welcomed Edwards to his church, Bible Way of Atlas Road, and praised him with 2,700 members in attendance.

“My prayer has always been, ‘Lord, give us someone who has a good consistent message,’” Jackson said. “Thank you for being consistent.

“We know that once you get to the White House, your message will not change.”

‘WE’RE GETTING THERE’

Kerry won big in New Hampshire, the second test of the primary season. Dean was second, and Edwards a distant third.

That night, Jan. 27, Edwards got the heads-up that Kerry would be getting the endorsement of Jim Clyburn, the leading black politician in South Carolina. Kerry already had the backing of U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings.

Edwards’ own polls showed him and Kerry within one point of each other, even before the Clyburn endorsement.

Edwards left New Hampshire immediately, bound for a “Bringing It Home” rally at South Carolina State University.

The ice storm slowed him.

The campaign plane was supposed to fly to Orangeburg but was rerouted to Columbia because of the weather.

The morning of the rally, Edwards was traveling by bus to Orangeburg. He spoke by cell phone to Rick Wade, the 2002 Democratic candidate for secretary of state, who hosts a political show on gospel station 95.3 FM.

The recording equipment failed.

So Edwards had to answer the questions a second time, live, after a Kerry ad.

Wade asked whether Edwards, who is in his first term as a senator, had enough experience to be president. Edwards said he had served long enough to get things done, but not so long that he couldn’t see what’s wrong with Washington.

“It’s actually been a tremendous asset,” Edwards said.

At the end of the segment, Edwards’ cell phone began to cut out.

“You must be at least to St. Matthews by now,” co-host Tony Jamison said.

Said Edwards: “We’re getting there.”

The S.C. State campus was frozen. No running water in dorms. No heat. More than 16,000 homes and businesses in Orangeburg had no power.

“It’s a disaster,” said John Rickenbacker, who’d spent weeks organizing the rally. “It’s worse than Hurricane Hugo.”

It was 20 minutes before “go time,” 10 a.m., and Rickenbacker was sweating. There was still power in the fine arts center, but classes were canceled and most students had gone home to their families. Members of the marching band were trickling in, a French horn here, a piccolo there, but so far reporters and photographers were outnumbering students.

Go time, 10 a.m., came and went.

But Edwards’ supporters were arriving, filling the chairs not grabbed by reporters. A few more carloads of band students pulled up, rounding out the numbers.

At 10:30, Rickenbacker wiped sweat from his face with his palm, grabbed the mike, and yelled, “Any Bulldogs in the House?”

He then cried, “It is my pleasure to introduce to you the next president of the United States, Senator John Edwards!”

The band flew into the brass line from Beyonce Knowles’ “Crazy” — Ba, ba ba ba ba ba. And Edwards came out, between a run and a walk, microphone clipped to his lapel, music and applause so big you could almost touch it.

Edwards smiled and began to speak, but his mike wasn’t working. He tried again. And again, static. The 200 people in the room could hear him fine, but the TV crews needed the mike adjusted for broadcast. So he waited. Five seconds, 10 seconds, 18 seconds, before it was fixed.

Then Edwards launched into his “Two Americas” speech. He argued that we live in two Americas, one for the rich and one for the poor, with two different health care systems, two public school systems, two economies, two governments.

“And, we still live in an America divided by race,” Edwards said. “The people in this room know this. You’ve lived with it all your lives.”

He asked everyone to work with him to heal these divisions.

“This is not an African-American issue,” Edwards said, to growing applause, “this is an American issue.”

Minutes after the speech, Edwards was back on his bus, and the traveling reporters on theirs. They all were bound for Oklahoma — Durant and Tulsa — then for Missouri — Springfield and St. Louis. They were coming back to South Carolina that night.

Rickenbacker gave interviews himself — TV, newspaper, radio. Then he started pulling down the Edwards signs from the walls so he could use them somewhere else.

He wasn’t worried anymore.

The event? It went fine. Jim Clyburn? A good man, but only one man, not the hundreds that Edwards had working for him. Kerry’s momentum and headlines? His growing number of state volunteers? Nah.

Rickenbacker had his 50 Orangeburg precincts organized, with people going block to block, organizing rides, making calls.

And he had a candidate who was real, and when his mike worked, was reaching people. “When you got all that, it’s like gravy.”

RUNNING ON EMPTY AND DIET COKE

Edwards was on to other towns, other rallies, the same speech, different faces.

There were a few constants. He liked iced-down Diet Coke, so there were always cans and cans of it. He tried to run four to five miles every day even if it meant getting lost in Heathwood and having to ask directions. And he always had hand sanitizer in a bottle on the bus, in the dashboard of every car, on the desk of every staffer.

“It’s the only way,” he said, “I shake so many hands.”

Even with his precautions, he battled bronchitis during his last week in South Carolina.

When Edwards wasn’t giving speeches, he was giving interviews, early in the morning, late at night. Two in a four-mile ride from Allen University to ETV. More at the ETV studios, via satellite. (“How many of these are there?” he asks. Five or six.)

He was tired.

On the day before the primary, his children were traveling with him: Kate, a senior at Princeton University; Emma Claire, 5; and Jack, 3. The campaign had been begging for the “babies” to come down; they were so adorable, leaning out the bus window, watching for their dad to get out of the crowd and back on the bus.

His wife, Elizabeth, arrived in Columbia and caught a ride to Allen to meet the bus. Emma Claire ran from the back of the bus to hug her. “Mama!”

They would be in South Carolina for 36 more hours: Seneca, Clinton, then back to Columbia, to Jillian’s sports bar for the victory party. Then, as long as they won, it would be on to somewhere else.

FROM UNCERTAINTY TO VICTORY

On election morning, the Edwards team was uncertain.

Polls showed him building a lead, but polls had been wrong many times lately.

Edwards was staying with Moylan, his campaign manager, who had become a friend. “He was asking me, ‘Do you think there’s any chance we’ll get to 40 percent?’ “ Moylan said. “We had no idea.”

That afternoon, they heard that exit polls showed Kerry was winning other states but Edwards was winning South Carolina.

At 5:30 p.m., Moylan had workers stop calling South Carolinians to remind them to vote. He wanted them to start calling Oklahomans instead.

At 7, Edwards was sitting on the Moylans’ couch when the networks named him the winner in South Carolina.

At 7:02, he went downstairs to the basement apartment to practice his victory speech.

At 8:15, he spoke to more than 200 supporters at Jillian’s in the Vista. He thanked them for their work and for their trust in his message.

“We believe, I believe that the family you’re born into, and the color of your skin, in our America should never control what you’re able to do,” Edwards said.

“I can’t change this country by myself but I know that you and I can change this country together.”

The crowd included Barry Walker, from Mac’s on Main. He considers himself a Republican; he’s running for Town Council in Irmo. He had met — and fed — almost all of the candidates. But he voted for Edwards. “We need to send Kerry a message,” he said. “You cannot win without the South.”

The crowd also included Kerry Abel, an after-school coordinator with Richland 1 schools, who had been for Clark but who switched to Edwards. He liked Clark’s military pedigree but saw in Edwards a potential Bill Clinton — smart, positive, warm.

“Look at the people here,” Abel said. “Age diversity. Race diversity. That’s what we need. We need a campaign that looks how America looks. That’s what Edwards is doing.”

NACHOS AND TEARS

At midnight, in a corner booth at Jillian’s, the core of the Edwards campaign staff decompressed.

They won South Carolina, with 45 percent of the vote. They were second in Oklahoma, a thousand votes behind Clark. Kerry won five states but wasn’t even close here.

They were happy. Jenni Engebretsen got her next posting with the Edwards campaign — in Wisconsin. She called her mom in Milwaukee. “I’m coming home.”

Moylan picked at a plate of tri-colored nachos, the third plate of food his wife had ordered for him. The others were gone. “Robert Ford ate my food.”

Moylan had said goodbye to Edwards at the airport as the senator left to campaign in Tennessee.

Moylan wore a white tie with blue palmettos, the jolly silk of victory. Like Edwards, he was losing his voice. He was showing the stress of the last weeks in little folds under his eyes.

Two years, four offices, nine full-time state staffers and more than 1,000 volunteers.

Moylan looked up from his cooling food and out at the rowdy crowd, holding beers, kicking balloons.

In Edwards, they saw what he saw.

Why did Moylan, who let politics break his heart once, give it another chance? He started to cry.

“This guy made me believe again.”

Reach Bauerlein at (803) 771-8485 or vbauerlein@thestate.com.