Backing from an heiress to a Gilded Age fortune has put a dent in Democrat John Edwards populist image:
"His campaign simply exploited the biggest loophole in the campaign finance system in order to get public matching funds while arranging through allies to benefit from a 527. That's how they avoided the spending limits that are a condition of the public matching funds," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement. . . .So there really are "two Americas" -- one of which gives huge donations to support the Edwards campaign.
His memo was prompted by disclosure of a $495,000 donation from philanthropist Rachel Mellon to a 527 group called the Alliance for a New America that is running ads in Iowa in support of Edwards' campaign. . . .
An FEC report showed the donation came from Oak Spring Farms LLC, the corporate entity that holds Mellon's fortune. Mellon is the 97-year-old widow of Paul Mellon, the son of industrialist Andrew Mellon.
She also contributed the maximum $4,600 allowed to Edwards' campaign earlier this year.
As might be imagined, this disclosure -- and the effort by Sen. Barack Obama's to capitalize on it -- have caused some difficulty for Edwards in terms of his stump speeches, which rely heavily on class-warfare rhetoric against the greedy rich:
Last month at a town hall meeting in Bow, N.H., Edwards referenced the Mellon family as part of the Gilded Age interests and used it as an example of how he'll fight back against special interests if he's elected.-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times
Edwards said "back in the period where, you know, the Rockefellers and the Mellons and the Carnegies, all these people, owned most of America or a big chunk of America and they used their money and power to dominate what was happening in the government and to dominate what was happening in the economy."
On Saturday, Edwards had dropped the Mellons from his remarks.
"You remember before Franklin Roosevelt was president, America was mostly owned by a few families. Rockefellers, etc.," he said.
Comments (2)
Edwards is such a fraud and this is just the latest example of his hypocrisy. He claims to be for the "common man," yet he lives in a house that's bigger than Yankee stadium. He says he's for the poor and the "forgotten," yet his record in public office shows that he never created or sponsored any legislation that assisted poor people in any major way. I know that you've got to be a bit of a liar to be a politician, but Edwards is so bad at it that it's almost embarassing. He'll say just about anything to get elected. Please, we can do much better than that.
Posted by Libertyship46 | December 30, 2007 4:17 PM
Our former senator from NC has a proven track record of claims to be "for the the poor and disadvantaged" but never kept any of the promises he made. When he arrived in Washington he set out on his presidential ambitions and has been running every since. He never accomplished anything to my knowledge for the people of NC. A big phony.
Posted by Harvey | December 30, 2007 10:21 PM