Edwards unofficially began his presidential campaign as early as 2001, when he began to seek speaking engagements in Iowa, the site of the nation’s first party caucuses. On January 2, 2003, he announced formation of an exploratory committee, allowing him to begin fundraising while not officially campaigning. On September 15, 2003, Edwards unofficially announced his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (a news and political satire show), thus fulfilling a promise he made as a guest during TDS’s coverage of the 2002 midterm Elections. The next morning, Edwards made the announcement official from his hometown, Robbins, North Carolina. He declined to run for reelection to the Senate in 2004. Edwards’s campaign was chaired by North Carolina Democratic activist Ed Turlington.

As Edwards had been building support for a presidential bid essentially since his election to the Senate, he led the initial campaign fundraising, amassing over $7 million during the first quarter of 2003, more than half of which came from individuals associated with the legal profession, particularly Edwards’s fellow trial lawyers, their families, and employees.

Edwards’s campaign was often characterized by the American news media as populist. His stump speech spoke of “two Americas”, one composed of the wealthy and privileged, and the other of the hard-working common man. His refusal to level direct negative attacks at his fellow Democratic contenders also attracted attention. After campaigning for most of 2003, Edwards’s campaign struggled to gain large support in the Democratic Party. But in early 2004, weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Edwards began to catch fire and his support and poll numbers began to rise steadily. Edwards’s late-stage momentum, as well as his departure from the negative campaigning which characterized other leading candidates, carried him into a surprising second place finish in Iowa with the support of 32% of caucus delegates, behind only John Kerry’s 39% and ahead of former front-runner Howard Dean at 18%. Edwards finished with 12% support in the New Hampshire primary one week later, in fourth place behind John Kerry, Howard Dean, and Wesley Clark. The following week, during the February 3 primaries, Edwards won his birth state of South Carolina’s primary, lost to Clark in Oklahoma, and lost to Kerry in the other states. Edwards also garnered the second most number of 2nd place finishes, again falling behind Wes Clark.

After Howard Dean’s withdrawal from the contest, Edwards became the only major challenger to Kerry for the Democratic nomination. Remarking on an unexpectedly strong finish in the Wisconsin primary on February 17, Edwards humorously cautioned Kerry: “Objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear.”

Edwards maintained a positive campaign and largely avoided attacking Kerry until a February 29, 2004 debate in New York, where he attempted to put Kerry on the defensive by characterizing the front-runner as a “Washington insider” and by mocking Kerry’s plan to form a committee to examine trade agreements.

Edwards’s campaign ended after a disappointing finish in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 2, when Kerry finished well ahead of Edwards in nine of the 10 states voting that day. (Dean, despite having withdrawn from the race two weeks earlier, won his home state of Vermont.) Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry in Georgia, but, failing to win a single state, chose to withdraw from the presidential race. He announced his official withdrawal at a Raleigh, North Carolina press conference on March 3, 2004.

News of Edwards’s withdrawal from the race made major media outlets relatively early on the evening of Super Tuesday, at about 6:30 p.m. CST, before polls had closed in California and before caucuses in Minnesota had even begun. This influenced many people in Minnesota to vote for other candidates, which may partially account for the strong showing of Dennis Kucinich in that state. Edwards did win the presidential straw poll conducted by the Independence Party of Minnesota. He also later won the Democratic caucuses in his home state of North Carolina, making him the only Democratic candidate besides John Kerry to win nominating contests in two states.

On July 6, 2004 John Kerry announced, first in an email to his supporters and later in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that Edwards would be his vice presidential running mate. Kerry’s decision was widely hailed by Democratic voters in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders in interviews. According to sources close to Kerry, other individuals said to have been under consideration for the vice presidential nomination by the Kerry campaign were Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, Florida Senator Bob Graham, retired General Wesley Clark, and Congressman Richard Gephardt (the New York Post had incorrectly reported a day earlier that Kerry had decided on Gephardt for the running mate slot). Though Ralph Nader and many Democrats supported the nomination, others criticized Kerry because of Edwards’s perceived lack of experience. In particular, the nomination caused the business community, including the Chamber of Commerce network, to throw its support to Bush when they had been neutral in previous presidential elections, because of Edwards’ opposition to tort reform.

Edwards was involved in two well-publicized controversies during the electon. One of these centered on a comment he made in Iowa in October 2004: “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.” While offered in the context of Kerry’s support for stem cell research, some observers, such as conservative Washington Post columnist and Fox News Channel contributor Charles Krauthammer, saw the statement as a an implication “that Christopher Reeve was kept in the wheelchair because of the policies of the Bush administration on stem cells.” Krauthammer complained that Edwards’ statement was the most “loathsome display of demagoguery” he’d witnessed in his twenty-five years covering Washington politics. Kerry supporters point out that Krauthammer and the other conservative commentators were responding to a doctored quote originally posted on the right-wing gossip website, Drudge Report. That quote left out “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president.” In so doing, the selection removed the context that it was stem cell research that would produce the result and that this research would be better supported by a Kerry administration.

Another controversial moment took place on October 5, 2004, when, in a response to a question regarding gay marriage, during his televised debate with Vice President Dick Cheney, Edwards said:

I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can’t have anything but respect for the fact that they’re willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It’s a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

In response, Vice President Cheney replied “let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much.” Conservatives in general and Lynne Cheney (who authored a lesbian romance novel several years before) in particular were incensed. Lynne Cheney called it “a cheap and tawdry political trick. . . . The only thing I can conclude is he’s not a good man. I’m speaking as a mom.” A week after polls showed some public discomfort, Cheney prounounced himself “a pretty angry father,” when Edwards running mate, John Kerry answered a similar question in the same vein. Mary Cheney, who had been out of the closet for a decade and had been the lesbian/gay corporate relations manager for the Coors Brewing Company, objected (while promoting her new book more than two years later) stating she thought it was a “cheap and blatant political ploy on behalf of Senator Edwards.” Conversely, the Cheneys were silent when Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes actually criticized Mary Cheney for being gay.

The Kerry/Edwards ticket lost the 2004 election. Edwards’s presence on the ticket failed to deliver his home state of North Carolina for the ticket. This was widely expected since no Democratic presidential candidate had carried North Carolina since 1976. Many pundits speculated that Edwards’ presence on the ticket was designed to appeal to rural and middle-class voters in midwestern states, but Kerry ran behind Gore’s 2000 results with these voters.

In the Electoral College, Edwards received 252 votes to Vice President Dick Cheney’s 286 votes. Edwards also received 1 Electoral Vote for President (due to a faithless elector pledged to Kerry voting for Edwards).

[From Wikipedia]