I live in Raleigh on the East side of town (in Brad Miller's district). The last time I heard it was from a Repub up the street, but it hasn't been all that long ago that I heard it from a pretty moderate Dem.
The sad fact is, that if you remember it as I do, the not so liberal Raleigh News & Observer harped on him daily for missing so many votes during his exploratory run for the Presidency. The local conservative talk station did the same (610 AM).
I didn't say that I believed it (in fact, I'll be voting for Edwards in 2008 if he's in the race), I'm just saying what I hear from my side of Raleigh, NC that's all. And i agree with you, he has done a lot of good things while in the Senate, but if you compare him to say Clinton, this is what you get:
Statistics from
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=300039===================================================================================
Hillary Clinton
Number of Years in the Senate: 6 years
Percentage of Votes Missed: 2%
Average Number of Bills Sponsored Per Year in the Senate: 48 bills per year
Number of Sponsored Bills Successfully Enacted: 2 successful bills during her 6 year tenure
John Edwards
Number of years in the Senate: 6
Percentage of Votes Missed: 15%
Average Number of Bills Sponsored Per Year in the Senate: 13.5 per year
Statistics: John Edwards has sponsored 81 bills since Jan 19, 1999, of which 74 haven't made it out of committee (Average) and 0 were successfully enacted (Average, relative to peers). Edwards has co-sponsored 531 bills during the same time period (Average, relative to peers).
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In other words, he hasn't helped his cause by missing 15% of his votes.
Then to top it all off, we had to endure numerous hit pieces on the poor guy from the likes of:
The John Locke Foundation
http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=1100snip
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Wouldn’t you like to have a job where you showed up for work only 78 percent of the time — a job where you hobnobbed with cultural elites in Hollywood and crisscrossed the country in private jets?
That’s the life of North Carolina’s “Part-Time Senator” John Edwards, now “officially” running for president.
Edwards has outgrown the little people of North Carolina. He now wants to be commander-in-chief of the world’s only superpower.
Case in point. On May 5, Edwards wrote a letter to his Senate colleagues requesting support for an amendment to the energy bill to remove language that threatens existing moratoria that protects sensitive coastal and marine areas. “ I am leading an effort to prevent drilling for oil and natural gas off the Atlantic coast of North Carolina,” Edwards said. (Edwards’ press release 5/14/03)
However, when the Senate voted June 12 on the amendment, Edwards was absent. According to CNN, Edwards missed the vote because he was on his way to Nashville to “meet and greetTennessee Democrats.”
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Only the Winston Salem Journal tried to stand up for the guy (that I could find):
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031770817111snip
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Edwards, like other presidential candidates who serve in Congress, regularly misses roll-call votes as he campaigns.
Edwards skipped 38 votes of the 119 tallies cast during June and July, Senate records show.
That is a better attendance record than most of his Democratic rivals for the White House.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts missed nine out of every 10 votes during the two summer months that Congress was in session, the Greensboro News & Record reported. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut did slightly better by missing about eight in 10 votes. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida was away for half the votes.
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