Campaigning with candor

She was making her first campaign foray into California in a round-the-clock race to help her husband’s Democratic presidential bid. But Elizabeth Edwards did it her way, and that meant low-key.

She landed here Thursday on a commercial jet. Alone. There were no frills, no handlers, no pushy PR types. Just the down-to-earth and highly independent other half of Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Wherever she goes, she deals with The Question. Not about her husband’s stance on the Iraq war or his plans to improve the economy.

No, folks want to know what it’s like to be married to somebody who is so, well, good-looking.

Like a comedian seeking new material, she seizes on the topic as good campaign fodder. She calls herself the anti-Barbie to her husband’s Ken-doll looks. When introducing him on the trail, she says with mock annoyance that he still looks exactly like he did when they were married 26 years ago -- much to her chagrin.

“Frankly, John has never had my ideal of good looks anyway,” she says. “The best-looking man I’ve ever seen is Tyrone Power. And John’s no Tyrone Power. If you’re married to someone this long, you really quit paying so much attention to what they look like.”

Still, to keep pace with the boyish-looking senator -- who at age 50 still looks 35 -- she jokes about dyeing her hair so she isn’t mistaken for his mother. A self-described “lifelong dieter,” she makes no bones about being a 54-year-old with the audacity to look her age, who has given birth to two children in the last five years.

“The worst part of the campaign is being served lunch every day by 25-year-olds with racing metabolisms,” she says. “I’ve got a whole wardrobe room full of clothes an entire size smaller than I am now.”

Throughout her husband’s presidential run, Edwards has tried to “stay beneath the radar screen,” preferring to play the role of the trusted advisor he consults before making any key decision.

But the growing demands of the Democratic race -- in which her husband has emerged as the last major rival to the front-runner, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts -- have forced her into the all-consuming public spotlight.

And so she has hit the road. While her husband campaigns on the East Coast before the 10 contests March 2 -- including the California primary -- she wooed voters Friday in San Francisco and Berkeley.

“My first job is not to lose votes,” she says. “Now that this is a two-man race, all I ask is that voters look as closely at John Edwards as they do John Kerry.”

Experts say Elizabeth Edwards mixes the charm of Laura Bush with the moxie of Hillary Clinton. But she adds her own variable to the political equation: She is fearlessly glib, to the point of sometimes making campaign aides cringe.

“I just brushed my teeth,” she announces as she walks into an interview during her two-day tour of Northern California. Then she talks about the high calories of Midwestern food and the new haircut that makes her hair go every which way, “like Prince Harry.”

Many find such candor refreshing, especially in the scripted world of presidential politics. “She’s an incredible asset to her husband -- she is comfortable with herself and knows how to conduct herself in public,” says Myra Gutin, a historian at New Jersey’s Rider University who teaches a course on first ladies.

Edwards’ self-effacing demeanor is a graceful counterpart to her husband’s assured and confident campaign style, causing friends and family to marvel at the roles the two have assumed on the public stage. That’s because, they confide, she was always the smarter one.

She and John both graduated near the top of their class at the University of North Carolina law school. Elizabeth once worked on a PhD in American literature and studied the works of James Joyce. She quit a successful practice as a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh, N.C., to concentrate on her family.

Her husband rose from humble roots to become a successful trial lawyer and senator. “In my speeches I may be able to use a larger vocabulary than John, but there are learned people and there are smart people,” she says. “John is smart, just not in the categories we overvalue in our society.”

While her husband’s accent oozes his Southern roots, there’s no quaint drawl with Elizabeth. The daughter of a naval aviator, she spent much of her youth overseas and is used to dealing with strangers -- a useful trait on the campaign trail.

Meeting voters, giving interviews, she moves easily from such subjects as the Romantic poets, global politics and, as a rabid sports fan, a breakdown of the latest University of North Carolina basketball game.

“Elizabeth is a total Renaissance woman,” says David Kirby, her husband’s former law partner in Raleigh, N.C. “But it’s not an in-your-face intelligence. She’s totally charming. But smart as a whip.”

She pushed her husband to seek the endorsement of former University of Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer, a move credited with helping Edwards almost win the Oklahoma primary. And she’s urged him to resist publicity stunts just for the camera, such as flipping burgers at some state fair midway.

“He can flip pancakes because he does that at home,” she says. “But no costumes. No funny hats.”

Edwards is the kind of political spouse who avoids the effete cocktail scene, preferring to stay at home, reading the classics and books on foreign policy, watching C-SPAN into the wee hours, providing the emotional glue that bonds the family together.

The couple endured the death of their oldest child, Wade, in a 1996 car crash. The loss came to define both their lives.

John refused to go into his law office for six months. His son’s death was one of the reasons he decided to enter politics, winning his Senate seat in 1998.

In the wake of Wade’s death, Elizabeth abandoned for good her law practice in Raleigh. Like John she was nearly catatonic, friends say, and sought solace watching the Weather Channel nearly nonstop.

But slowly, the couple returned to life. As a form of therapy, Elizabeth began once again entertaining Wade’s friends as a way to return the sound of young voices to the house.

She also began a vigorous regimen of hormones in the hopes of conceiving again. She had daughter Emma Claire at 48, son Jack at 50. Their older daughter, Cate, is a senior at Princeton University and often campaigns for her father.

Elizabeth makes sure the youngest children join them on weekends on the campaign trail and places several calls a day to Cate.

Friends say Elizabeth tends to be overprotective of her husband. But she says that after the pain he went through after their son’s death, “I never want to see him suffer another day.”

As she crisscrosses the country these days on her husband’s behalf, she’s quick to make fun of the mishaps that occasionally occur.

Like the time she got her hairbrush stuck in her hair moments before a big TV interview and had to use a fork from the previous night’s room service to get it free. Or the day in rural Iowa she spilled tangerine juice all over her white blouse and had to make a last-minute stop at a Salvation Army thrift store.

At the end of a long campaign day, she often imagines that she is slurring her words and asks herself, “Is my tongue getting too large? Am I talking too much?”

Then there was the night in Wisconsin when she fell ill. “I suspect it was the truck-stop ham melt,” she says, “but there I was all alone in some hotel, feeling terrible and the only person you know in the entire state is the person who is driving you and you’ve known him for all of two days.”

Not that she’s complaining.

“You get revved up each Tuesday when people go to the polls,” she says. “You think, ‘What can I do? Who can I call? What can I do to make a difference for John?’ ”