Edwards’ Campaign Makes It an Issue Again

By Thomas Sheeran

CLEVELAND — Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, on an eight-state swing to highlight poverty issues, visited a struggling neighborhood Tuesday in Cleveland, the nation’s poorest big city.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator and John Kerry’s running mate in 2004, began his swing Sunday in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.

“It’s not a Cleveland problem or a New Orleans problem, it’s an American problem,” Edwards said Tuesday during a walking tour of Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

With the sleeves of his dark-blue, button-down shirt rolled up and without a tie, Edwards spent about 40 minutes walking through the neighborhood, a mix of renovated and boarded-up homes. He waved to residents saying, “How are you all doing?”

Edwards spent four minutes on a porch chatting with homeowner Glenn Curry, 57, who said his home was close to foreclosure because of his wife’s medical bills, a cut in his hours as a school bus driver and a refinancing that he described as predatory.

Edwards called for the enactment of a national law to regulate predatory lenders, who push high-interest loans on home buyers who have bad credit or low incomes. Otherwise, he said, “They just move to another place where they are not regulated.”

He also called for a national fund to provide assistance to working people at risk of losing their homes.

Edwards said he had seen different aspects of poverty across the country.

In Census Bureau rankings released last August, 32.4 percent of Cleveland’s 452,200 people were living below the poverty level. Cleveland’s median household income of $24,105 was the lowest among large cities.

Chris Taylor, regional press secretary for the Republican National Committee, said the poverty tour highlights Edwards’ hypocrisy.

“It’s difficult to relate to the homeless when you reside in a 28,000-square-foot mansion,” Taylor said. “This is a guy who has taken fees for speaking about the poor in the past.”

After the Cleveland stop, Edwards went to Youngstown to visit the Beatitude House shelter for homeless women and children and participate in a discussion with civic leaders at the Youngstown Business Incubator, which promotes job creation.

At Beatitude House, Edwards sat at an outdoor picnic table with an administrator and four women who are current or former program participants.

Edwards expressed concern about the poverty that resulted in the four women seeking help in the program run by the Ursuline order of Roman Catholic nuns.

“What was the situation like when you felt like you had nowhere to go? I’d like to know, what did it feel like?” Edwards asked. One of them, 38-year-old Felecia Williams, responded immediately.

“I was embarrassed. I felt hopeless. I didn’t think I could ever get out of the situation I was in,” said the single mother, who is now employed, on her own and raising a child.

Edwards commended the women for taking a step to improve their lives.

“All of you should be very proud of what you’ve done here,” he told them.

Youngstown, once a steel-making powerhouse but now a shrinking Rust Belt city, is trying to reinvent itself by demolishing abandoned homes and emphasizing a “smaller is better” approach to its blue-collar neighborhoods.

Located between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the city estimates that it has lost more than 40,000 manufacturing jobs. The population is about 82,000, about half of what it was some 40 years ago.

Youngstown spent $1.2 million for demolition last year and may spend $1.5 million this year razing mainly single-family houses. The city took down about 400 housing units last year and may exceed that number this year.

Edwards, Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York all have made multiple swings through Ohio already this year.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois came to Cincinnati on Tuesday evening for a fund-raising event, as the pace of visits by top presidential contenders continued to pick up in a state that was pivotal in the 2004 election.

After Edwards’ appearance at the Youngstown Business Incubator, he was asked about Obama’s appearance in Cincinnati and whether Edwards is satisfied with his own campaign fund raising.

“It’s not a fund-raising contest,” Edwards said. “This is a question of who is prepared to be the next president of the United States, who is addressing in very specific terms the issues that face this country.”

He said the primary issues he’s tried to discuss on his campaign are “millions of people who live in poverty, and 45 million people who have no health care coverage. What are we going to do to get out of this mess in Iraq?”

(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.