Edwards campaign slams Clinton push for rural vote
Former North Carolina senator John Edwards could not have dreamed up a better chance to draw a contrast with rival Hillary Clinton, a New York senator.
Yesterday morning, ABC News reported on its website that Clinton had scheduled a "Rural Americans for Hillary" lunch for later this month. But the location for the lunch, which features a briefing from members of Congress and senior campaign staff, is anything but rural: the Washington office of Troutman Sanders Public Affairs, a lobbying firm representing Monsanto, the agribusiness and biotechnology giant.
Edwards had spent the past two days on the ground in Iowa promoting his rural agenda and looking for caucus votes. His hometown newspaper, the News & Observer in Raleigh, rewarded him with this headline: "Edwards gets boots dirty as he woos rural voters."
"While John Edwards has introduced policies to ensure family farmers can compete against big agribusiness, protect the food we eat and preserve farming communities, Hillary Clinton, beholden to Washington lobbyists, is tailoring her rural policy to reflect the needs of big agribusiness," Edwards's communications director, Chris Kofinis, said in a statement yesterday. "While corporate America and lobbyists may want someone like Clinton in the White House, regular Americans are ready for someone who will stand up for them and fight for real change."
But a rival campaign said Edwards, too, has had ties to Monsanto, including investments in a private-equity firm that invested in the company.
In May, Fortress Investment Group, a publicly held private-equity fund for which Edwards worked part time last year, held 9,700 shares in Monsanto worth a relatively insignificant $533,000, US Securities and Exchange Commission documents show. The Fortress fund had shed those shares as of August, records show. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that Edwards had roughly $16 million invested in Fortress funds.
When Edwards ran for president in 2004, one of his top aides, Peter Scher, was a registered Monsanto lobbyist at the firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer accused Edwards of ignoring his links to Monsanto and attacking the senator out of desperation.
"In 2004, John Edwards said, 'If you are looking for the candidate that will do the best job of attacking the other Democrats, I am not your guy,' " Singer said. "But he's become that guy now that his 2008 campaign has stalled."
Kofinis responded that it was "disappointing that the Clinton campaign seems determined to make weak and baseless attacks, instead of facing the truth that selling out family farmers is wrong for Iowa and wrong for America."
Unlike Edwards and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, Clinton has taken tens of thousands of dollars from lobbyists and political action committees. Her two rivals have sought to make that distinction central to their efforts to overtake her campaign.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story on yesterday's Nation pages about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards incorrectly described the role played by Peter Scher, a lobbyist for agribusiness giant Monsanto, in Edwards's political career. Scher managed Edwards's campaign for vice president in 2004. 