WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- North Carolina's John Edwards, one of the smaller of the nine Democratic blips on the party's presidential radar screen, has taken another step toward political irrelevancy by announcing he would not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
Under state law, Edwards could have run both for re-election and for president on the November ballot but state Democrats, fearful of losing the seat, had in recent weeks been increasing vocal in their calls for Edwards to make a decision.
In a letter to North Carolina Democratic Chairwoman Barbara Allen, Edwards said he believed that his presidential campaign was going well; therefore, "I will not seek re-election to the United States Senate, in order to devote all of my energy to running for president." Edwards is expected to make a formal announcement of his presidential bid next Tuesday in Robbins, N.C.
"In your role as chair of our state party," Edwards wrote Allen, "I know you will encourage strong candidates to organize campaigns for what I always will think of as Terry Sanford's seat in the Senate. Be assured that I will help in any way I can to ensure a Democratic victory in the fall of 2004."
Had Edwards, a multi-millionaire trial attorney who could self-fund his re-election bid, stayed in the Senate race, history suggests he would have been in an uphill battle. The seat he occupies is really a revolving door, changing hands -- and parties -- in every election since 1974.
The last person to hold the seat for more than a term was the venerable Democrat Sam Ervin Jr., who was appointed to the seat on June 5, 1954, by Gov. William Umstead. Ervin, later to gain considerable fame as chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, replaced U.S. Sen. Clyde Hoey, D-N.C., who died in office.
Serving until the last day of 1974, Ervin was replaced by North Carolina State Attorney General Robert B. Morgan, a Democrat elected in 1974, who took 62 percent of the vote when he ran against Republican William E. Stevens, who won 37 percent.
Morgan held the seat for six years. He was defeated in his bid for a second term by Republican John P. East, who won by just more than 10,000 votes of the almost 2 million cast during the 1980 Reagan presidential landslide.
East, who did not live out his term, had already announced he would not seek re-election at the time of his suicide. North Carolina Republican Gov. Jim Martin appointed U.S. Rep. Jim Broyhill, R-N.C., whom the GOP had already chosen as its standard bearer in the general election, to the seat.
Broyhill lost the 1986 contest to former North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford, who ran because almost no one else wanted to, by 56,000 votes out of 1.6 million cast as the Democrats were retaking control of the U.S. Senate.
Sanford lasted one term, losing the 1992 race by more than 100,000 votes to Republican Lauch Faircloth, a conservative former Democrat and ally of the state's senior U.S. senator, Republican Jesse Helms.
Faircloth was himself given the boot after just one term, losing to Edwards by 80,000 votes in a 1998 three-way race.
Historical precedent is not an accurate predictor of future outcomes. Nevertheless, 30-year record of one particular U.S. Senate seat changing hands in each election cannot be ignored. There appears to be a simple explanation for its volatility: In 1974, 1986, and 1998, years without a presidential election, the Democrats -- Morgan, Sanford, Edwards -- won the seat. In 1980 and 1992, years with a presidential election in which the Republican presidential nominee carried North Carolina, the Republican candidate -- East and Faircloth -- won.
Presidential politics has a strong influence on North Carolina politics. The "Jessecrats" in eastern North Carolina tend to be more active in presidential years and in years when Helms was on the ballot. Until Elizabeth Dole was elected to the Senate in 2002, no Republican besides Helms had won major statewide office in a non-presidential year.
If Edwards becomes the presidential nominee, he might have helped the candidate running to succeed him in the Senate -- with initial speculation centering on former White House Chief of Staff and 2002 nominee Erskine Bowles, former State Rep. Dan Blue and 2nd Congressional District U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge. Current polls suggest, however, that an Edwards presidential nomination is unlikely.
A national CBS News poll from late August found Edwards was the choice of 2 percent of the sub-sample of registered Democrats who voiced an opinion about who the party nominee should be in 2004.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., led the pack with 14 percent of respondents, followed by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean at 11 percent and former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., at 10 percent.
Also ahead of Edwards are U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights agitator, who were tied at 5 percent a piece, and U.S. Sen. and former Florida Gov. Bob Graham, who drew the support of 4 percent of Democrats in the survey, which had an error margin of plus or minus 6 percentage points.
In Iowa, a Research 2000 poll of 403 likely caucus participants conducted for KCCI-TV has Edwards at 6 percent, putting him in fifth place behind Dean, Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman.
In New Hampshire, another critical early state, Edwards is again in fifth place among respondents, again with 6 percent. The poll, conducted for The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV, of 400 Democrats who said they were likely to vote in the party primary has Dean leading with 38 percent; Kerry in second place with 26 percent; and Gephardt and Lieberman in a tie for third place at 7 percent.
The only place where Edwards seems to be running well, as he acknowledged in his letter to Allen, is in neighboring South Carolina, where a Zogby poll from the end of July had him leading the field with 10 percent of respondents, trailing only the undecideds, who accounted for 46 percent of the respondents. That poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.
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(The Peter Principles regularly explores issued in national and local politics, the American culture and the media. It is written by Peter Roff, UPI political analyst and 20-year veteran of the Washington scene.)
