The tabloid report made Mrs. Edwards furious, and as the senator told me time and again, she screamed and yelled and cried and repeatedly threatened suicide. In the coming months, she would do everything possible to monitor his movements and track his contacts. Her telephone calls and demands for attention would make him late for many campaign appearances. But through it all, he never seemed to grasp the magnitude of the trouble he faced. Instead, he would tell me that if the truth ever came out, it would be, at worst, a one-?day news story because “everyone knows” that politicians screw around on their wives. What this position denied was the fact that ? thhis wife had cancer and he had sold himself to the American public as a devoted husband and family man who talked about his faith in order to appeal to Christian voters.
The senator’s minimizing may have been a psychological strategy, a way for him to stay calm while heading down the path to self-?destruction. I say this because if you look at what he did rather than what he told me, the fear is obvious. Why else would he work so hard to get me to serve as his protector? Almost immediately after the paper reported on Rielle, he issued a statement denying the affair and accusing the paper of fabricating the whole thing. “The story is false,” he said. “It’s completely untrue, ridiculous.” Speaking to reporters, he added that he had been “in love with the same woman for thirty-?plus years” and that she remained “loving, beautiful, sexy, and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story’s just false.”
The accusation and denial rippled through the mainstream media but did not build into a wave. In fact, if you got your news from the big papers or TV networks, you probably didn’t know a scandal was rumored. In the blogosphere, however, people feverishly shared insights, information, and gossip in an attempt to piece together the truth. Many bloggers announced that The New York Times was investigating another possible affair between the senator and a woman recently graduated from Duke University. A New York Post item that had been published weeks earlier about a politician visiting the city to see a mistress suddenly made sense. To others, the fact that the Enquirer was owned in part by Clinton backer Roger Altman’s investment company was proof that the charges were pure politics. When her name began to appear in many posts, Rielle gave a statement to Democratic blogger/strategist/consultant Jerome Armstrong: “When working for the Edwards camp, my conduct as well as the conduct of my entire team was completely professional. This concocted story is just dirty politics and I want no part of it.”
Remarkably, the senator’s denial, Rielle’s statement, and our effort to keep her away from reporters and photographers dampened interest in the story advanced by the Enquirer and a few other outlets. From mid-?October to mid-?December, we heard barely a peep from the press. Political insiders, however, remained alert to the possible scandal and the senator’s vulnerability. First and foremost among them was the senator himself. Every time we spoke, he reminded me that I was his main protector. He wondered aloud whether interest in the story might fade permanently (he hoped so), and he speculated whether Hillary Clinton’s camp might have been behind the Enquirer’s interest in Rielle. After one debate, the senator told me that Mrs. Clinton spoke to him privately to say she was sorry that he was in tabloid hell and to assure him that her campaign had nothing to do with it. Coming from someone he trusted, Hillary’s words would have been reassuring. But he didn’t trust her, and he didn’t believe her.
No ambiguity could be heard in the message Elizabeth Edwards left on my telephone in mid-?October, which I saved. Apparently, someone had told her that I had been helping her sister look for a house. (Obviously my inquiries about a rental to accommodate Rielle-whom I had referred to as my sister-got relayed to her in a mixed-?up way.) After complaining about this, Elizabeth w?is,ent on to say, “Do not communicate anything about our family to people. You have no authority. I don’t want you talking to anyone as if you have some position with my family. You do not. And I want you to stop. If I hear about it again, I’m going to see what kind of legal action I can take.”
The threat was unmistakable, and so was the anger in her voice. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the senator had persuaded her that although he had spent one night with Rielle, I had been involved with her for some time. If she believed this fiction, Mrs. Edwards also believed that I was a bigger threat to her husband’s dreams-and her own-than any of his political opponents. All they had worked for, from their personal ambitions to causes such as health care reform and ending the Iraq war, was being undermined by my supposed sexual sins and betrayal. No wonder she hated me.
I wouldn’t have blamed Cheri if she hated me, too. Rielle was a very demanding and self-?absorbed person who focused intently on her social life and fashion and had the manners of a teenager. If we prepared a salad for dinner and set it on the counter, she’d come in and start eating it with her hands. If we ran out of bottled water, she expected Cheri to run out for more immediately. To her credit, Cheri was patient about all of this and struggled to be helpful to a woman whose values were almost an affront to her own. Cheri cared about our family and our future, and therefore she worried about the way our lives had become entwined with the life of John Edwards. These concerns motivated her to help Rielle, not any sense of obligation to her as a friend or as someone important to the future of America, which was how Rielle increasingly viewed herself.
The senator and Mrs. Edwards were just about the only sources of conflict in our marriage, but they provided enough trouble to spark frequent arguments. Although I was disillusioned, I was stubborn about my commitment to the senator and to the issues he represented. Ever since 2000, when he was hailed as the future of the Democratic Party, I had operated as if I were helping to make history. Cheri had long since stopped trying to stand against the cause and agreed to follow my lead if possible. But this didn’t mean she was happy about it. In fact, eight years after I started working for a politician, she still didn’t like or trust any of them. And she was furious about the time one particular politician demanded from me. But it was a good time for me. In this period I raised almost $3 million in donations and was paid a percentage of the money I made, which increased my income substantially. It was a long way from the days of the phone banks.
I would have had an easier time persuading Cheri to have a little faith in politicians if the one I worked for hadn’t become so reckless and selfish. These flaws had always been part of his character, along with the small-?town insecurity bred in Robbins and the immaturity that comes with being Mama’s favorite boy who could never do anything wrong. But the more people told him he could and should be president and invested their time and money in making it happen, the more pronounced these flaws became. As he was welcomed into the seats of power in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and other places, Edwards came to believe his? to place there was part of the natural order of things. When he told me, “This thing is bigger than any one of us,” he meant that his destiny was practically born in the stars. This status could justify almost anything.
The senator wasn’t the only one who got intoxicated by power. Mrs. Edwards had knowledge of her husband’s affair and understood that if he won the nomination, the Democratic Party and the country could be traumatized if the truth about Rielle came out. She also had the power to demand he drop out, but she did not. Instead, she pressed on with the drive for the White House and became increasingly strident and critical. On November 9, 2007, after she and the senator had finally hired a few more professionals to help the campaign, she sent this blistering e-?mail to Joe Trippi (who had helped make Howard Dean a star in 2004), Jonathan Prince, and pollster Harrison Hickman:
The videos I saw (which Kathleen forwarded me, as if it was somehow forbidden for anyone to speak to me directly) were well-?shot (with the exception of the set piece that had the dismal background, a visual completely inconsistent with the message) but that is all I can say good about them.
The complaints that followed were numerous. Mrs. Edwards charged Trippi, Prince, and Hickman with “doing a lousy job” and being so focused on undermining one another that they had not developed any coherent advertising strategy. She dubbed them a dysfunctional “white boys’ club,” and her litany of failures criticized the negative content of the material, and bitterly complained about what she presumed was their expenditure of “money John raised (by being away from his family) to focus group that lousy bunch of advertisements… Testing lousy material to see what is the least lousy is hardly the way to run a presidential campaign.” According to Mrs. Edwards, they had “the best candidate in the race with which to work,” but were “producing the worst possible product.” Rather than presenting John Edwards as a “contemplative” or “energetic” candidate, or a “candidate with hope,” she claimed the videos made him look like “[j]ust a sanctimonious bellower.” In a particularly vivid barb, she charged, “You may end up having crapped on one another, but it all sticks to John.” She claimed they hadn’t listened to her in the past, and doubted they would listen to her now. Finally, in closing, she issued the following imperitive: “And Jonathan, you can keep testing me but this is a test I will win. Send it now.”
These last two lines in the message, copies of which went to eight additional staffers, referred to Rielle Hunter’s phone number. For months, Mrs. Edwards had been demanding that Jonathan Prince hand it over, and he had dodged these requests. Eventually, he would be able to tell her that he didn’t have the number, because, in fact, we changed it many times. I thought he was wise to avoid being triangulated between the senator and his wife. Joe Trippi responded this way:
It has been an honor working for you and John. I have done the best I could under the circumstances. But I will step aside. Your email makes it clear to me that I have outlived any usefulness to the campaign. I am sorry for that.
Mrs. Edwards’s outburst had revealed how her dark side was coming to the fore to obscure all of her better qualities. The better parts of John Edwards were as real as his faults, and these gifts- his intelligence, compassion, energy, and courage-had led me, over the years, to invest my future in his success. In that same time I had learned that many, if not most, powerful men operate with the same sense of entitlement shown by the senator.
By the year 2008, Internet outlets had buzzed with rumored affairs involving Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and both John and Cindy McCain, so I thought that all of the viable candidates for president faced potential scandal. Republican rule had been such a disaster for America that I was almost desperate to see a Democrat win, and I believed Edwards had the best shot, especially since he might win a few states in the South that I believed were beyond the reach of the others. This concern, combined with our long-?standing relationship, explains why, even after I knew so much about his shortcomings, helping him remained a reflex.
I thought we would get a break from Edwards duty at Thanksgiving. Cheri and I took the kids to her parents’ house in Illinois while Rielle entertained her old roommate from New Jersey, Mimi, and Mimi’s two adolescent sons. Most of the communication I got from her over the holiday was innocuous. Comically, after the turkey feast she sent me a text message that said she was watching the movie Knocked Up and “it’s great.” Two days later, she wrote that her holiday was going well except for the fact that she was “not hearing from him.” I was off duty until Sunday, when I would have to go home to North Carolina to get the Batphone and deposit it in the campaign jet before the senator left on a speaking tour.
Leaving Illinois ahead of my family, I flew into Raleigh and drove to the Montross house. Thinking I was late, I grabbed the phone and raced to the fixed base of operations (FBO) that served the jet Fred Baron had bought to lease to the campaign. The only help I had for this mission would come from a personal assistant (who was paid by the campaign) at the Edwards mansion who was still my friend. She called my cell phone to warn me when they left the house for the airport.
I was relaxed when I reached the FBO because I now thought I had plenty of time. I saw Fred’s plane, which had the tail number N53LB, and I talked my way past the maintenance crew and out to the stairway. Once on board, I could see the plane was dirty and hadn’t been stocked with food, drinks, or periodicals. Realizing something was wrong, I went back down the steps and noticed that one of the two engines had been removed for repair. This jet wasn’t going anywhere.
A quick call to the personal assista?ersnt brought me the name of a different FBO where Edwards was to board a replacement jet. I talked one of the ground crew into driving me over there in a golf cart. When we reached the plane, I persuaded the pilots to let me board. Here all the skills of bluff and bluster that I had acquired as a political operator came in handy. They had never handled a presidential candidate’s schedule, so I explained that they should always expect an advance man to come for a preflight cabin check. As I walked down the narrow aisle, I slipped the phone into the right seat-?back pocket. After giving the pilots a thumbs-?up, I emerged from the cabin doorway to see the Edwards caravan approaching. I jumped onto the tarmac, trotted to the golf cart, and left before I got caught. From a distance, I saw Elizabeth outside the plane, kissing her husband good-?bye.
They caught me, Andrew! It’s the National Enquirer. They surrounded my car taking pictures. What should I do?”
Rielle was calling from her BMW as she drove away from a supermarket near her obstetrician’s office. She was giddy with excitement, but also a bit worried about what it might mean for the paper to publish photos of her, heavy with child-and possibly not so pretty-running errands just a few miles from the Edwards mansion. She asked me to connect her with the senator, and I did, immediately. When their call was finished, he rang my phone. He sounded both desperate and demanding. “This is bad, Andrew,” he said. “You have to get her under control.”
In a rapid-?fire conversation, we reviewed what had happened and concluded that Rielle should come to my house. Before he hung up, the senator asked me if I had any idea how the Enquirer had found Rielle in North Carolina. “Just between us,” he said, “I suspect she’s talking to them. Do you think so?”
I told him, “Hell yes. All she does is talk on her damn phone about you.”
He didn’t want to believe it. He preferred to theorize that the paper had staked out Mimi’s house and followed her by car to the Governors Club at Thanksgiving. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how Rielle had been discovered. All that mattered was the picture they had captured and the fact that the Iowa caucuses were three weeks away. Edwards was neck and neck with Barack Obama for the lead in the polls. (Hillary Clinton was a distant third.) After years of work and a huge investment in cash, the hopes of the millions who saw a bright future in John Edwards might be realized if he won Iowa and received the inevitable rush of donations that could power him through the primaries. Of course now, with the Enquirer guys chasing Rielle as if she were Princess Diana (a thought that both scared and thrilled her), the campaign could be ruined by scandal. After all, as Rielle said, she was “tired of living a lie.”
As far as I could tell, no one followed her to our place, but I had Rielle park in the garage behind the closed door just in case. She came inside grinning and shaking and talking excitedly about
