Poverty Group Helps John Edwards’s Presidential Bid

A nonprofit group, founded by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards with the mission of alleviating poverty, seems to have served as a political vehicle for Mr. Edwards, keeping his profile in the public’s attention and financing travel and staff members, reports The New York Times.

The Center for Promise and Opportunity, a tax-exempt organization, raised $1.3-million in 2005, much of which supported Mr. Edwards’s travel around the country and meetings with foreign leaders. The center’s staff members are now campaign staff members for Mr. Edwards. Donations to the organization were not tax-deductible, and it does not have to disclose its donors.

“He was not a U.S. senator; he had no office,” says Ferrel Guillory, a political-program director at the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. “So he set up a series of entities to finance his travel, to finance a political shop, and to finance an issue shop. It all adds up to a remarkable feat of keeping a presidential candidacy alive without any of the traditional bases for it.”

Mr. Edwards’s campaign defends the center as a legitimate poverty-fighting venture. “One of the Center for Promise and Opportunity’s main goals was to raise awareness about poverty and engage people to fight it,” says Jonathan Prince, deputy campaign manager. “Of course it sent Senator Edwards around the country to do this.”

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