Senator John Edwards (D-NC)
JOHN EDWARDS was born in Seneca, South Carolina and raised in Robbins, North Carolina. There, he learned the values of hard work and perseverance from his father, Wallace, who worked in the textile mills, and from his mother, Bobbie, who ran a shop and worked at the post office.
A proud product of public schools, he became the first person in his family to attend college, working his way through North Carolina State University and then earning a law degree with honors in 1977 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For the next 20 years, he dedicated his career to representing families and children just like the families he grew up with in Robbins.
In 1998, he took this commitment into politics to give a voice in the United States Senate to the people he had represented throughout his career. He ran for the Senate and won, defeating an incumbent Senator.
In Congress, Senator Edwards quickly emerged as a champion for the issues that make a difference to American families: quality health care, better schools, protecting civil liberties, preserving the environment, saving Social Security and Medicare, and reforming the ways campaigns are financed. As a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, he worked tirelessly for a strong national defense and to strengthen the security of our homeland.
Senator Edwards brought a positive message of change to the 2004 presidential primaries, speaking about the two Americas that exist in our country today: one for people at the top who have everything they need and one for everybody else who struggles to get by. After the Democratic primaries, Senator John Kerry picked Senator Edwards to serve as his running mate in the 2004 general election.
From February 2005 to December 2006, Senator Edwards served as the Director of the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Senator Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, have had four children, including: their eldest daughter, Catharine; Emma Claire, 8; and Jack, 6. Their first child, Wade, died in 1996.
