Compared with political wives like Teresa Heinz Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and even Laura Bush, Elizabeth Edwards presented a more approachable and warmly human persona to the world. In private she was sometimes these things, but she was also fiercely ambitious and determined to advance herself. Because she got help from people like me and the nanny, Heather North, who lived with her husband, Jed, in an apartment over the garage, she had the kind of support for her writing that others just don’t get. She poured herself into the work, especially during early 2006, and even made frequent overnight trips related to this project and others.
When Elizabeth was away, Emma Claire and Jack were tended to by the senator and Heather North. Heather saw as much of the family as I did, and we became friends as we talked—shared war stories, really—about the care and feeding of folks who considered themselves “the First Family in waiting.” She set firmer limits than I did on the time she gave to the Edwardses, and this caused some friction between her and Elizabeth. But Heather’s job was safe, because when she was on duty she was completely reliable, Jack and Emma Claire loved her, and she loved them back with a consistency that made them feel safe and secure. She was a perfect fill-in mom.
Heather was so much like a third parent that when Jack was upset and couldn’t find his mother or father, he naturally ran to her. In the fall of 2006, this happened in the middle of the night when Elizabeth was away and Jack went to his parents’ room hoping to get a reassuring snuggle from his father. He found the bed empty and then ran to awaken Heather. She took him by the hand to look for his dad and found he was gone. Somehow she managed to get Jack to go back to sleep, and in the morning the senator was back in the house to make breakfast and see the kids off to school.
My phone rang at nine A.M. On the other end of the line, Heather sounded worried, angry, and confused as she reported that the senator had gone missing in the night along with one of the family cars. (This was the first of several incidents like this.)
I didn’t lie when I told her I didn’t know where he might have been, but I did try to offer the most innocent explanation. He must have been unable to sleep and driven someplace where he could take a run.
How, then, Heather asked, would I explain the hotel key card from the Courtyard by Marriott hotel that she had found on a kitchen counter?
I couldn’t explain the card, except to say that perhaps he had gotten tired and just checked in someplace. I knew this was a lame explanation, but I did manage to calm her down, and since Mrs. Edwards was on her way home, she agreed to throw away the card and stay quiet, at least in the short term. As I told her I would look into things, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, as if a long-dreaded crisis were at hand. I also found myself recalling little incidents that should have given me pause in the past but that I had chosen to ignore.
On the campaign trail, I had seen that the senator occasionally pocketed notes from eager women he met at an event rather than hand them to me for disposal. I had also received calls from other staffers who said that the senator had begun to request that they stay on different floors, away from him, whenever they were booked into a hotel for the night. On the hundred-county tour, there were many nights when he would go out for “jogs” at two o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t been concerned about those episodes because I believed he was faithful to his wife.
My worries and Heather’s report came spilling out that morning as I told Cheri about Heather’s phone call. A committed skeptic when it came to John Edwards, she was not surprised that he might be sneaking around, but she was upset about the threat an affair posed to his family. For all her flaws, Elizabeth was an essentially good person. Jack and Emma Claire were great kids who adored their dad. These concerns dominated Cheri’s reaction. But in a moment, when she was able to set them aside and offer a witty observation or two, she said she was shocked that the key card was from an inexpensive hotel and equally surprised by the identity of the woman I suspected was his mistress. For a man who could have his pick from among thousands of women who had literally thrown themselves at him, Rielle Hunter was, in my eyes and Cheri’s, a strange if not dangerous choice.
I could have confronted Senator Edwards immediately, but I didn’t. For one thing, the prospect of challenging one of the nation’s great trial lawyers without more evidence than I possessed seemed futile. For another, I thought—or rather hoped—that whatever he was doing amounted to a brief fling that would end soon and never be discovered. Despite his complaints about her, he loved Elizabeth and his children, and I knew he wouldn’t want to hurt them. I thought he would understand that an affair, if made public, would ruin him politically and personally. Cheri and Heather and I decided to keep our mouths shut in the hope that with a little time, he would realize that he had too much at stake to continue.
In the meantime, the senator was more affectionate toward his wife and our friendship was never closer. In part, this was due to the fact that I was raising extraordinary amounts of money for his various causes, and this made him respect me more. My confidence was climbing, but I never ceased to support the senator in any way he asked. When his son Jack needed surgery—not a major operation, but still serious—he wanted me to go with him to the hospital. After the operation, when he knew everything was okay, he left Mrs. Edwards with Jack and came to tell me the news. I suggested he call his parents, which he did, and when that call ended, I asked him if he wanted to call anyone else. I expected him to dial up family and friends. He noted that he had some time and a quiet place to work, and it seemed like a good idea to call some of his more important donors. “Andrew, it will mean something for me to call them from here,” he said. “It’ll make them feel important.”
I thought Edwards’s idea was strange, especially since like most candidates, the senator didn’t enjoy fund-raising. (Actually, he hated many of the chores one must perform to gain office and did them reluctantly.) To make it easier on him, we sometimes parked a couple of staffers at his house with cell phones and let them dial down a list of bigwigs until they got someone who was willing to wait, on hold, for the candidate to come on the line. He would walk around into his library and in front of the massive fireplace, chatting away about some big interview or event, and then he’d offer an anecdote that was “just between you and me.”
When he got a donation, he’d hang up and say, “Shit, they love me—they would do anything for me. Make sure we follow up on that one! Who’s next?” If someone else kept him on the line too long, he would roll his eyes, look at me with a sarcastic face and a half grin, point at the phone, shrug, and mouth to me, “Ass kisser.” If he hung up without getting a commitment, he would say, “What the hell—why are they wasting my time? I’m going to be president. I don’t have time for this shit. Everyone wants to give me advice. I don’t want advice. I want their money.”
A
s the summer of 2006 began, both of the Edwardses had taken on an overwhelming amount of work. He was campaigning full-time. She was working with the editors for her book and planning a nationwide media and signing tour that would start at the end of September. Together, they were taking responsibility for all the major decisions related to the presidential campaign. As part of this effort, the senator joined the Wake-Up Wal-Mart tour, which was sponsored by a union that was pressuring the company to improve its pay and benefits. The tour was conducted from a brightly painted bus and brought politicians and celebrities to towns and cities across the country. They spoke about Wal-Mart’s employment practices and called on the company to buy more American-made products. For John Edwards, the tour offered a chance to connect with local politicians and voters who might come to his side in the primaries, but it also provided settings where his speeches and other performances could be captured by his new videographer, Rielle Hunter.
Having used part of her first check to buy a camera, Rielle joined the senator as he flew to and from events on a jet provided by his friend Fred Baron. The five-minute film she made about the Wal-Mart
tour, called The Golden Rule, opens with Boyd Tinsley singing, “When you look into the mirror, do you like what’s lookin’ at you?” It shows the senator making speeches about the misdeeds of the world’s largest retailer—“It’s about responsibility and basic human morality”—and signing autographs, and it ends with outtakes, including Edwards sharing an inside joke with Rielle and saying, “Very graceful, camera girl.”
In another webisode, Rielle caught Josh Brumberger as he sat inside Fred Baron’s jet and filled out forms for a trip to China. (He actually never went.) The camera focused on him and he said, “I never know what to put for ‘Occupation.’ Perhaps I should put ‘His bitch.’ ” This little scene was still available on the Internet at the end of 2009.
By the middle of the summer, Camera Girl was booked to accompany the senator on many of his trips, and I soon had an idea of what was going on between them. The senator would often tell me his cell phone battery was dead, ask to use my phone, and dial her number. (In fact, Mrs. Edwards had a habit of checking his calling history, and he didn’t want her to see Rielle’s number.) They would talk about the campaign and politics, but their long conversations included too many “I miss you”s to be considered strictly business.
Rielle also developed the habit of telephoning me directly to ask about the senator’s schedule, to offer critiques of his performances on television, and to ask for favors. In one case, she requested backstage passes to a Dave Matthews concert in New York City. I got them for her and later heard that she had practically tackled Matthews when she saw him. A member of the band’s staff called me and asked, “What’s up with this Rielle chick?” and told me she had “weirded out” everyone backstage.
A dramatic person who seemed to act before thinking, Rielle worried me for many reasons. She was flashy and loud, and she acted as though every man she met wanted her. I was worried that she might do something to make her relationship with the senator public. And I was also concerned about how she might affect important relationships, like the one between the senator and members of the band. It’s hard to overstate the value of having rock-star friends. I once organized a special trip to a Dave Matthews concert, with backstage access included, to reward a busload of big Edwards donors. (To show off, the senator also had the group meet him at the airport to see his new jet.) The experience of hanging out with a presidential candidate and musicians who made thousands of fans scream for two hours was enough to persuade one fellow to give $2 million to “combat poverty.” I didn’t want to lose access to that kind of star power because of Rielle Hunter.
With the risk she posed in mind, I told the senator about Rielle’s behavior at the New York event and watched him carefully when he reacted. He seemed most concerned that she had offended Dave Matthews and promised to speak to her about it. The fact that she may have been flirting so aggressively with another man did bother him, but I would later learn that he and Rielle had agreed to an “open” relationship. They were free to do whatever they wanted with whomever they wanted, just as long as they were honest with each other. I soon found out that they told each other everything about their sexual histories and behaviors. To my embarassment, they also told me far too much about their sexual activities.
Whenever Rielle called me, she tried to talk explicitly about her relationship with the senator. For obvious reasons, she couldn’t talk about these things with anyone else, so I figured I was serving as a sort of safety valve, letting her blow off steam. When the details about specific sexual acts, love bites, or the condition of her vagina got too graphic, I cut her off, but my attempts to set limits on Rielle were only partly effective. She was a bright person who loved to talk, and she tried hard to get close to people by sharing her spiritual insights—including her predictions of the future—and her opinions. Senator Edwards listened when she discussed his campaign performances. (She was right about how he sometimes “switched off” and came across at half power.) He also fed off her devotion, since she promised to do anything he asked because he was destined to be world leader. I wasn’t surprised when I heard that she would accompany him to Uganda on a trip that would add a little foreign policy exposure to his résumé.
As the trip approached, it fell to me to arrange for the senator to get the required vaccines at the last possible moment. Rielle was in town, so when I told him he was up against a deadline, he invited her to go with him to a walk-in clinic. I didn’t like this, because folks in the rather gossipy community of Chapel Hill would see them together. To make matters worse, the senator’s parents were due for a lunch visit, so he just told them to meet us at the clinic.
The scene, as Bobbi and Wallace Edwards came upon it, found their son hidden away in the doctor’s private office with a younger woman who was not his wife. They sat side by side chatting playfully, like a couple preparing to go away on their honeymoon. Unlike the nurse who attended the senator and Rielle, who looked at them incredulously as she did her work, Bobbi and Wallace didn’t seem to notice anything was strange. I went to a nearby deli to get sandwiches, and we all ate together. When we finished, Wallace and Bobbi wished their son well in Africa and went home.
The Africa tour was sponsored by the International Rescue Committee, which was trying to address a humanitarian crisis caused by a civil war that had displaced more than one million people. Rielle filmed Edwards, clad in khaki pants and a Tar Heel blue T-shirt, inspecting refugee camps and listening as groups of children greeted him with songs. On video he looked like the great white leader who had come to save the country. Later he and Rielle would tell me that during this trip, when they spent every night together, he said “I love you” to her for the first time.
When the senator and Rielle returned to the United States, he stumbled into the house exhausted, brought his luggage into the huge dressing room where he kept his wardrobe, undressed, and then flopped into bed. At some point a secret cell phone he had left in his suitcase began to ring. Mrs. Edwards heard it, found it, and, noting a number from a New York City area code, answered.
Without hearing a “Hello,” Rielle Hunter launched into a romantic monologue about how much she missed the man who was supposed to answer the phone. In her defense, this particular phone had been purchased by Rielle for the sole use of John Edwards, and she was the only person who had the number. Still, unless she intended to force some kind of showdown, Rielle’s blurted professions of love and adoration were a big mistake.
After ending the call, Mrs. Edwards, carrying the phone in her hand, went to the senator and demanded to know what was going on. He confessed to having had a one-night stand but didn’t say with whom. For some reason, she accepted this explanation but demanded he return the call and, as she watched, end the relationship. He did as he was told, but as soon as he was able, he telephoned Rielle again to tell her what had happened and reassured her that they were still in a relationship.
The senator explained all of this to me soon after it happened. We were alone backstage at an event, and as often happened, the conversation got around to the fact that he was unhappy in his marriage. He said that Mrs. Edwards was being overly demanding, obsessive, even “crazy.” But he also said that he would never seek a divorce. For one thing, he still loved Elizabeth in certain ways. And he believed that his wife was more popular with many voters than he was and that if he left her, he might as well forget ever becoming president. (I cringed when he said this.) When I thought about how it would look if he divorced a wife of almost thirty years, who had lost a child in a car wreck and was living with cancer, I had to agree with him about the political impact. And since becoming president was his single driving ambition, it was never going to happen.
W
hen Mrs. Edwards left Chapel Hill to start her book tour, the senator brought Rielle to his home, where she met Jack and Emma Claire and even interviewed them briefly while holding a video camera to capture their replies. (She also interviewed Edwards’s parents, who were there that afternoon.) When I went to the house to see
him, I discovered her sitting in the living room curled up in a chair like a cat, with her shoes and socks off. She wore blue jeans and had a colorful scarf around her neck and sunglasses perched atop her head.
The mood in the house was relaxed and upbeat. Instead of the news blaring out of various TVs, which Elizabeth kept tuned to C-SPAN. I heard music playing. I noticed because the senator had told me he had stopped listening to music when Wade died, and I had seen him turn off music whenever it was playing. We went on a run together, following our usual route past a cow pasture full of mooing heifers and waving to neighbors who hailed us from their front porches. While we were gone, Rielle napped in Cate’s room.
That evening, we ate take-out ribs from a place called Nantucket Grill and sat on the senator’s back porch, a huge space covered by a sturdy roof. The group included me, the nanny, Heather, and her husband, Jed, the senator, his kids, and Rielle, who talked excitedly about everything from national politics to astrology. She said she had been a spiritual teacher and that she believed the future was foretold by the stars. Rielle took great pleasure in noting that John Edwards’s future was limitless, and every once in a while she punctuated her observations about him with a laugh and the line “It’s good to be king.”
As the wine flowed and Heather put the kids to bed, the senator and Rielle became more comfortable touching each other and dropped the pretense that they weren’t involved. At one point, they started musing about how the house seemed like a happy place with Elizabeth and her “negative energy” removed. Rielle talked about living in the mansion once Mrs. Edwards was out of the way. A new family would be formed, the senator said, after he and Rielle married on some rooftop in Manhattan with a celebration that would include music from Dave Matthews. As Rielle listened to the senator spin this fantasy, she smiled like a little kid who had gotten her way.
The Politician Page 19
