Edwards Family Interviews

Edwards Family Interviews

John Lendman writes:
Standing with the Covering the Iowa Caucuses class Wednesday night in a Starbucks across the street from our hotel, watching what seemed like every fire department in the tri-county area try to assess why we were evacuated, made me realize that our trip was going to be more interesting then I thought.

Soon after, we discussed what each student had planned to cover with their candidate the next day. I decided to head to Iowa City, about an hour away from Bettendorf, to see Democrat John Edwards make a quick stop at a popular restaurant just hours before the caucuses.

The next day, we drove through the acres of densely snow-covered, flat farmlands that I would imagine make up most of the landscape in Iowa. We passed by “Iowa 80: The World’'s Largest Truck Stop”, in between Bettendorf and Iowa City; it was the only thing more interesting then the frozen cattle (livestock-sicles, if you will?) and the occasional abandoned car.

When we finally reached the restaurant where my assigned candidate was speaking, I ran into a young woman I had noticed get off the campaign bus after Edwards. I asked her how long she had been working on the campaign and looking confused she asked, “"Oh, with my dad’'s campaign?"

I was shocked to learn that she was actually John Edward’s's daughter, Cate. I got a great interview about what she had observed traveling with her father during his 36-hour “Marathon for the Middle Class,” and his trial-lawyer experience. To top that off, I briefly spoke with his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, right before she got back on the tour bus, about gay and lesbian issues for another story I was working on.

The actual caucus that night was very strange, however. A local radio broadcast reporter I spoke with described the event as being similar to that of a New England village meeting, joking about the state’'s archaic method of counting caucus-goers.

Each section of the middle-school gym represented a major campaign. While the Obama, Edwards, and Clinton corners were filled with supporters, the Kucinich and Dodd areas were virtually empty, lacking any real campaign signs, stickers, or even chairs for supporters to sit on.

The people of Iowa were very polite about who they supported; one man on the Obama side would joke with his wife in the Edwards area about the old ladies from Clinton’s' corner who were trying to talk the Richardson people into joining them after their candidate was deemed unviable.

While you always hear that it’'s not wise to discuss politics with your neighbors, in Iowa it's an open forum.

John Lendman is an undergraduate journalism student from San Antonio, Texas.