The Politician

by Andrew Young

  “This is bigger than any of us,” he said, evoking the many causes-peace, health care, poverty, and so on-that he represented. This struck me as disingenuous and I really wasn’t listening. I was thinking about what I was going to tell Cheri. We were both mourning my stepfather, and were about to fly to Shelter Island, New York, for his funeral. This wasn’t going to go over well.

  When I finally agreed with his plan, the senator said, “Andrew, nobody has ever done something like this for me. You are the best friend I ever had in the world.” I put down the phone and walked into the kitchen to find Cheri. Her reaction was what you might expect.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “We just have to deal with this. I know it’s ridiculous. But it’s not going to be for very long.”

  Cheri had seen so much crazy stuff where the Edwardses were concerned that she wasn’t exactly surprised. Instead, she was angry and disgusted. But she trusted me enough to just shake her head in a weary way and say okay.

  Rielle caught a flight on American Airlines and arrived at the Raleigh airport at about nine-​thirty P.M. She came out of the terminal wearing tight jeans, sunglasses, and the long pink scarf that was her signature accessory. I drove her to the house in the four-​wheel-​drive convertible Jeep I had bought once Mrs. Edwards barred me from driving her husband and I no longer needed the Suburban. I had the top off, and Rielle complained about the rough ride all the way down Interstate 40 and through the security gate at the Governors Club. When she got to the house, which was a pretty impressive million-​dollar place, her mood changed. She followed me up to the door as I carried her bag. As she entered the foyer, which was lit by a big chandelier, she took a spin like Mary Tyler Moore’s whirl in the opening of the 1970s TV show and cried, “I’m heeeeere!” As she squealed, her sunglasses flew off her head.

  Cheri was as kind as she could be for a wife greeting the mistress of her husband’s boss at ten-​thirty P.M. She welcomed Rielle and listened as she excitedly told us how she had evaded the photographers and escaped to North Carolina. Rielle has an almost childish voice and the Valley girl habit of making statements in a tone that rises at the end of the sentence, making it sound as if she’s asking a question. She laughed a lot and spoke about her day as if it had been an adventure. She seemed to like the idea that she was being pursued. She genuinely admired John Edwards and believed she could help him present himself to the world in a more effective and appealing way. But she also liked the power that came with being the woman with a secret that could bring down a presidential candidate.

  The next morning, when the kids awakened to find a strange lady in the house, we explained that she worked with me and she needed our help. This explanation seemed to be enough (we had had many staffers stay with us over the years), and since Rielle barely interacted with the kids or even showed much interest in them, they didn’t ask many questions. We had to leave town for my stepfather’s funeral, and when we came back, the senator told me to rent a house in the Governors Club where Rielle could live by herself. This seemed the best option for keeping her quiet and safe during the pregnancy. It would also allow the senator to come visit by claiming to have an appointment with me.

  With funds supplied by Bunny Mellon, who did not know the nature of the expenses she covered, I signed a year long $2,900-per-​month lease on a house for Rielle that was less than half a mile away from mine. We went together to buy her a $28,000 BMW. (She approved the “energy” of the car based on color, styling, and extras like a sunroof and premium sound system.) And I got her a credit card under the name R. Jaya (Sanskrit for “Victory”) James. This name change was her idea, and it was inspired, of course, by Jesse James. We tried to call her Jaya but often slipped and called her Rielle. For my purposes here, I’ll stick with Rielle.

  Rielle lived with us for about two weeks while waiting for the lease on her place to start. She had some annoying habits, like using her hands to pick at her food or refusing to let the kids watch cartoons on TV if she was interested in catching theƒin news. The senator came to see her at least twice in this period, and I was there for one of his arrivals. He drove from his place in his Chrysler Pacifica, which I had arranged for him to buy as a symbol of his all-​American family man persona. For a disguise, he wore aviator sunglasses and a ball cap pulled down low, which was pretty silly considering the EDWARDS FOR PRESIDENT bumper stickers plastered all over the rear end of the van. I met him at the security gate, and he followed me through the development to the Montross house; the garage door opened automatically, and he steered into the garage so he could access the house without being seen. Cheri and the kids and I stayed away, and later Rielle told me they had exciting, clandestine, we’re-​in-​this-​thing-​together sex. Fortunately for us, they used the guest bedroom.

  The senator’s risk taking made Rielle feel she was his true love. She talked constantly about how Edwards was fighting against his “destiny” and that he should “let the universe take him where he is supposed to go.” At the top of this agenda was honesty, she said, and for this reason she protested how he asked her to “live a lie” by hiding the relationship. Every time she heard the senator mention how much he loved his cancer-​stricken wife-this line was a campaign staple offered primarily to women voters-Rielle became angry and resentful. Over and over again, she said she didn’t know how much longer she could violate her superior moral code by staying silent. But then we would go shopping for a car, or the deliveryman would arrive with something she’d bought over the Internet, and her impatience would subside. It seemed like every few minutes I got an e-​mail confirming a purchase Rielle had made from Pierre Deux, Restoration Hardware, or The Children’s Place.

  Empowered with a credit card and money that unknowingly came from Bunny, through me, Rielle furnished all four bedrooms (including one for the baby) along with the other living spaces, and bought clothes, kitchen-​ware, draperies, and linens. I was on call whenever she needed curtains hung or furniture assembled, and we gave her a reference to use the obstetrician who delivered our babies. Cheri did Rielle’s grocery shopping and other errands so she wouldn’t be caught by paparazzi. We did notice that Rielle was willing to take the risk of being sighted when she zipped off in her Beemer to a boutique, but she didn’t want to greet the cable repairman at her door. But since this was supposedly a short-​term arrangement, we kept our mouths shut.

  Other people, however, talked. Within days of Rielle’s arrival in North Carolina, the Enquirer quoted a “friend” of the mistress who explained how the two met and that “sparks flew immediately.”

  The tabloid report made Mrs. Edwards furious, and as the senator told me time and again, she screamed and yelled and cried and repeatedly threatened suicide. In the coming months, she would do everything possible to monitor his movements and track his contacts. Her telephone calls and demands for attention would make him late for many campaign appearances. But through it all, he never seemed to grasp the magnitude of the trouble he faced. Instead, he would tell me that if the truth ever came out, it would be, at worst, a one-​day news story because “everyone knows” that politicians screw around on their wives. What this position denied was the fact that ƒ thhis wife had cancer and he had sold himself to the American public as a devoted husband and family man who talked about his faith in order to appeal to Christian voters.

  The senator’s minimizing may have been a psychological strategy, a way for him to stay calm while heading down the path to self-​destruction. I say this because if you look at what he did rather than what he told me, the fear is obvious. Why else would he work so hard to get me to serve as his protector? Almost immediately after the paper reported on Rielle, he issued a statement denying the affair and accusing the paper of fabricating the whole thing. “The story is false,” he said. “It’s completely untrue, ridiculous.” Speaking to reporters, he added that he had been “in love with the same woman for thirty-​plus years” and that she remained “loving, beautiful, sexy,
and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story’s just false.”

  The accusation and denial rippled through the mainstream media but did not build into a wave. In fact, if you got your news from the big papers or TV networks, you probably didn’t know a scandal was rumored. In the blogosphere, however, people feverishly shared insights, information, and gossip in an attempt to piece together the truth. Many bloggers announced that The New York Times was investigating another possible affair between the senator and a woman recently graduated from Duke University. A New York Post item that had been published weeks earlier about a politician visiting the city to see a mistress suddenly made sense. To others, the fact that the Enquirer was owned in part by Clinton backer Roger Altman’s investment company was proof that the charges were pure politics. When her name began to appear in many posts, Rielle gave a statement to Democratic blogger/strategist/consultant Jerome Armstrong: “When working for the Edwards camp, my conduct as well as the conduct of my entire team was completely professional. This concocted story is just dirty politics and I want no part of it.”

  Remarkably, the senator’s denial, Rielle’s statement, and our effort to keep her away from reporters and photographers dampened interest in the story advanced by the Enquirer and a few other outlets. From mid-​October to mid-​December, we heard barely a peep from the press. Political insiders, however, remained alert to the possible scandal and the senator’s vulnerability. First and foremost among them was the senator himself. Every time we spoke, he reminded me that I was his main protector. He wondered aloud whether interest in the story might fade permanently (he hoped so), and he speculated whether Hillary Clinton’s camp might have been behind the Enquirer’s interest in Rielle. After one debate, the senator told me that Mrs. Clinton spoke to him privately to say she was sorry that he was in tabloid hell and to assure him that her campaign had nothing to do with it. Coming from someone he trusted, Hillary’s words would have been reassuring. But he didn’t trust her, and he didn’t believe her.

  No ambiguity could be heard in the message Elizabeth Edwards left on my telephone in mid-​October, which I saved. Apparently, someone had told her that I had been helping her sister look for a house. (Obviously my inquiries about a rental to accommodate Rielle-whom I had referred to as my sister-got relayed to her in a mixed-​up way.) After complaining about this, Elizabeth wƒis,ent on to say, “Do not communicate anything about our family to people. You have no authority. I don’t want you talking to anyone as if you have some position with my family. You do not. And I want you to stop. If I hear about it again, I’m going to see what kind of legal action I can take.”

  The threat was unmistakable, and so was the anger in her voice. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the senator had persuaded her that although he had spent one night with Rielle, I had been involved with her for some time. If she believed this fiction, Mrs. Edwards also believed that I was a bigger threat to her husband’s dreams-and her own-than any of his political opponents. All they had worked for, from their personal ambitions to causes such as health care reform and ending the Iraq war, was being undermined by my supposed sexual sins and betrayal. No wonder she hated me.

  I wouldn’t have blamed Cheri if she hated me, too. Rielle was a very demanding and self-​absorbed person who focused intently on her social life and fashion and had the manners of a teenager. If we prepared a salad for dinner and set it on the counter, she’d come in and start eating it with her hands. If we ran out of bottled water, she expected Cheri to run out for more immediately. To her credit, Cheri was patient about all of this and struggled to be helpful to a woman whose values were almost an affront to her own. Cheri cared about our family and our future, and therefore she worried about the way our lives had become entwined with the life of John Edwards. These concerns motivated her to help Rielle, not any sense of obligation to her as a friend or as someone important to the future of America, which was how Rielle increasingly viewed herself.

  The senator and Mrs. Edwards were just about the only sources of conflict in our marriage, but they provided enough trouble to spark frequent arguments. Although I was disillusioned, I was stubborn about my commitment to the senator and to the issues he represented. Ever since 2000, when he was hailed as the future of the Democratic Party, I had operated as if I were helping to make history. Cheri had long since stopped trying to stand against the cause and agreed to follow my lead if possible. But this didn’t mean she was happy about it. In fact, eight years after I started working for a politician, she still didn’t like or trust any of them. And she was furious about the time one particular politician demanded from me. But it was a good time for me. In this period I raised almost $3 million in donations and was paid a percentage of the money I made, which increased my income substantially. It was a long way from the days of the phone banks.

  I would have had an easier time persuading Cheri to have a little faith in politicians if the one I worked for hadn’t become so reckless and selfish. These flaws had always been part of his character, along with the small-​town insecurity bred in Robbins and the immaturity that comes with being Mama’s favorite boy who could never do anything wrong. But the more people told him he could and should be president and invested their time and money in making it happen, the more pronounced these flaws became. As he was welcomed into the seats of power in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and other places, Edwards came to believe hisƒ to place there was part of the natural order of things. When he told me, “This thing is bigger than any one of us,” he meant that his destiny was practically born in the stars. This status could justify almost anything.

  The senator wasn’t the only one who got intoxicated by power. Mrs. Edwards had knowledge of her husband’s affair and understood that if he won the nomination, the Democratic Party and the country could be traumatized if the truth about Rielle came out. She also had the power to demand he drop out, but she did not. Instead, she pressed on with the drive for the White House and became increasingly strident and critical. On November 9, 2007, after she and the senator had finally hired a few more professionals to help the campaign, she sent this blistering e-​mail to Joe Trippi (who had helped make Howard Dean a star in 2004), Jonathan Prince, and pollster Harrison Hickman:

  The videos I saw (which Kathleen forwarded me, as if it was somehow forbidden for anyone to speak to me directly) were well-​shot (with the exception of the set piece that had the dismal background, a visual completely inconsistent with the message) but that is all I can say good about them.

  The complaints that followed were numerous. Mrs. Edwards charged Trippi, Prince, and Hickman with “doing a lousy job” and being so focused on undermining one another that they had not developed any coherent advertising strategy. She dubbed them a dysfunctional “white boys’ club,” and her litany of failures criticized the negative content of the material, and bitterly complained about what she presumed was their expenditure of “money John raised (by being away from his family) to focus group that lousy bunch of advertisements… Testing lousy material to see what is the least lousy is hardly the way to run a presidential campaign.” According to Mrs. Edwards, they had “the best candidate in the race with which to work,” but were “producing the worst possible product.” Rather than presenting John Edwards as a “contemplative” or “energetic” candidate, or a “candidate with hope,” she claimed the videos made him look like “[j]ust a sanctimonious bellower.” In a particularly vivid barb, she charged, “You may end up having crapped on one another, but it all sticks to John.” She claimed they hadn’t listened to her in the past, and doubted they would listen to her now. Finally, in closing, she issued the following imperitive: “And Jonathan, you can keep testing me but this is a test I will win. Send it now.”

  These last two lines in the message, copies of which went to eight additional staffers, referred to Rielle Hunter’s phone number. For months, Mrs. Edwards had been demanding that Jonathan Prince hand it over, and he had dodged these requests
. Eventually, he would be able to tell her that he didn’t have the number, because, in fact, we changed it many times. I thought he was wise to avoid being triangulated between the senator and his wife. Joe Trippi responded this way:

  It has been an honor working for you and John. I have done the best I could under the circumstances. But I will step aside. Your email makes it clear to me that I have outlived any usefulness to the campaign. I am sorry for that.

  Mrs. Edwards’s outburst had revealed how her dark side was coming to the fore to obscure all of her better qualities. The better parts of John Edwards were as real as his faults, and these gifts-his intelligence, compassion, energy, and courage-had led me, over the years, to invest my future in his success. In that same time I had learned that many, if not most, powerful men operate with the same sense of entitlement shown by the senator.

  By the year 2008, Internet outlets had buzzed with rumored affairs involving Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and both John and Cindy McCain, so I thought that all of the viable candidates for president faced potential scandal. Republican rule had been such a disaster for America that I was almost desperate to see a Democrat win, and I believed Edwards had the best shot, especially since he might win a few states in the South that I believed were beyond the reach of the others. This concern, combined with our long-​standing relationship, explains why, even after I knew so much about his shortcomings, helping him remained a reflex.

  I thought we would get a break from Edwards duty at Thanksgiving. Cheri and I took the kids to her parents’ house in Illinois while Rielle entertained her old roommate from New Jersey, Mimi, and Mimi’s two adolescent sons. Most of the communication I got from her over the holiday was innocuous. Comically, after the turkey feast she sent me a text message that said she was watching the movie Knocked Up and “it’s great.” Two days later, she wrote that her holiday was going well except for the fact that she was “not hearing from him.” I was off duty until Sunday, when I would have to go home to North Carolina to get the Batphone and deposit it in the campaign jet before the senator left on a speaking tour.